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In the novel The Outsider, Albert Camus gives expression to his philosophy of the meaningless of Meursault life. The novel is a first- person account of the life of Meursault from the time of his mother’s death up to a time evidently just before his execution for the murder of an Arab. The Misunderstanding Caligula The state of siege albert camus pdf. First published 2007. Camus, Albert. The state of siege albert camus pdf.
OnThe Myth Of SisyphusAn Absurd ReasoningAbsurdity and SuicideThere is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and thatis suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts toanswering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mindhas nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.
These aregames; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims,that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example,you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precedethe definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they callfor careful study before they become clear to the intellect.If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgentthan that, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails.
I havenever seen anyone die for the ontologi-cal argument. Galileo, whoheld a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with thegreatest ease as soon as it endangered his life.
In a certain sense, hedid right.1 That truth was not worth the stake. Whether the earthor the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profoundindifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. On the otherhand, I see many people die because they judge that life is notworth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideasor illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called areason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I thereforeconclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.How to answer it? On all essential problems (I mean thereby thosethat run the risk of leading to death or those that intensify the passion of living) there are probably but two methods of thought:the method of La Palisse and the method of Don Quixote.
Solelythe balance between evidence and lyricism can allow us to achievesimultaneously emotion and lucidity. In a subject at once sohumble and so heavy with emotion, the learned and classicaldialectic must yield, one can see, to a more modest attitude of mindderiving at one and the same time from common sense andunderstanding.Suicide has never been dealt with except as a socialphenomenon. On the contrary, we are concerned here, at the outset,with the relationship between individual thought and suicide. Anact like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a greatwork of art.
The man himself is ignorant of it. One evening hepulls the trigger or jumps. Of an apartment-building manager whohad killed himself I was told that he had lost his daughter fiveyears before, that be bad changed greatly since, and that thatexperience had “undermined” him. A more exact word cannot beimagined.
Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The wormis in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must followand understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the faceof existence to flight from light.There are many causes for a suicide, and generally the mostobvious ones were not the most powerful. Rarely is suicidecommitted (yet the hypothesis is not excluded) through reflection.What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable.
Newspapersoften speak of “personal sorrows” or of “incurable illness.” Theseexplanations are plausible. But one would have to know whether afriend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed himindifferently. He is the guilty one. For that is enough to precipitateall the rancors and all the boredom still in suspension.2But if it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step whenthe mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itselfthe consequences it implies. In a sense, and as in melodrama,killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life istoo much for you or that you do not understand it.
Let’s not go toofar in such analogies, however, but rather return to everydaywords. It is merely confessing that that “is not worth the trouble.”Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gesturescommanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which ishabit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, eveninstinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of anyprofound reason for living, the insane character of that dailyagitation, and the uselessness of suffering.What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mindof the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained evenwith bad reasons is a familiar world.
But, on the other hand, in auniverse suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels analien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprivedof the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. Thisdivorce between man and this life, the actor and his setting, isproperly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thoughtof their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation,that there is a direct connection between this feeling and thelonging for death.The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship betweenthe absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is asolution to the absurd. The principle can be established that for aman who does not cheat, what he believes to be true mustdetermine his action. Belief in the absurdity of existence must thendictate his conduct.
It is legitimate to wonder, clearly and withoutfalse pathos, whether a conclusion of this importance requiresforsaking as rapidly as possible an incomprehensible condition. Iam speaking, of course, of men inclined to be in harmony withthemselves.Stated clearly, this problem may seem both simple andinsoluble. But it is wrongly assumed that simple questions involveanswers that are no less simple and that evidence implies evidence.A priori and reversing the terms of the problem, just as one does ordoes not kill oneself, it seems that there are but two philosophicalsolutions, either yes or no. This would be too easy. But allowancemust be made for those who, without concluding, continuequestioning.
Here I am only slightly indulging in irony: this is themajority. I notice also that those who answer “no” act as if theythought “yes.” As a matter of fact, if I accept the Nietzscheancriterion, they think “yes” in one way or another. On the otherhand, it often happens that those who commit suicide were assuredof the meaning of life. These contradictions are constant. It mayeven be said that they have never been so keen as on this pointwhere, on the contrary, logic seems so desirable. It is a commonplace to compare philosophical theories and the behaviorof those who profess them.
But it must be said that of the thinkerswho refused a meaning to life none except Kirilov who belongs toliterature, Peregrinos who is born of legend,3 and Jules Lequierwho belongs to hypothesis, admitted his logic to the point ofrefusing that life. Schopenhauer is often cited, as a fit subject forlaughter, because he praised suicide while seated at a well-settable. This is no subject for joking. That way of not taking thetragic seriously is not so grievous, but it helps to judge a man.In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must weconclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one hasabout life and the act one commits to leave it? Let us notexaggerate in this direction. In a man’s attachment to life there issomething stronger than all the ills in the world. The body’sjudgment is as good as the mind’s and the body shrinks fromannihilation.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring thehabit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us toward death,the body maintains its irreparable lead. In short, the essence of thatcontradiction lies in what I shall call the act of eluding because it isboth less and more than diversion in the Pascalian sense. Eluding isthe invariable game. The typical act of eluding, the fatal evasionthat constitutes the third theme of this essay, is hope.
Hope ofanother life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live notfor life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it,give it a meaning, and betray it.Thus everything contributes to spreading confusion.Hitherto, and it has not been wasted effort, people have playedon words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaningto life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. Intruth, there is no necessary common measure between these twojudgments. One merely has to refuse to he misled by theconfusions, divorces, and inconsistencies previously pointed out.One must brush everything aside and go straight to the realproblem. One kills oneself because life is not worth living, that iscertainly a truth yet an unfruitful one because it is a truism. Butdoes that insult to existence, that flat denial in which it is plungedcome from the fact that it has no meaning? Does its absurdityrequire one to escape it through hope or suicide—this is what mustbe clarified, hunted down, and elucidated while brushing aside allthe rest. Does the Absurd dictate death?
This problem must begiven priority over others, outside all methods of thought and all exercises of the disinterested mind. Shades of meaning, contradictions, the psychology that an “objective” mind can always introduce into all problems have no place in this pursuit and this passion.It calls simply for an unjust—in other words, logical—thought. That is not easy. It is always easy to be logical.
It isalmost impossible to be logical to the bitter end. Men who die bytheir own hand consequently follow to its conclusion theiremotional inclination.
Reflection on suicide gives me anopportunity to raise the only problem to interest me: is there a logicto the point of death? I cannot know unless I pursue, withoutreckless passion, in the sole light of evidence, the reasoning ofwhich I am here suggesting the source.
This is what I call anabsurd reasoning. Many have begun it. I do not yet know whetheror not they kept to it.When Karl Jaspers, revealing the impossibility of constitutingthe world as a unity, exclaims: “This limitation leads me to myself,where I can no longer withdraw behind an objective point of viewthat I am merely representing, where neither I myself nor theexistence of others can any longer become an object for me,” he isevoking after many others those waterless deserts where thoughtreaches its confines.
After many others, yes indeed, but how eagerthey were to get out of them! At that last crossroad where thoughthesitates, many men have arrived and even some of the humblest.They then abdicated what was most precious to them, their life.Others, princes of the mind, abdicated likewise, but they initiatedthe suicide of their thought in its purest revolt. The real effort is tostay there, rather, in so far as that is possible, and to examineclosely the odd vegetation of those distant regions. Tenacity andacumen are privileged spectators of this inhuman show in whichabsurdity, hope, and death carry on their dialogue.
The mind canthen analyze the figures of that elementary yet subtle dance beforeillustrating them and reliving them itself.Absurd WallsLike great works, deep feelings always mean more than theyare conscious of saying. The regularity of an impulse or a repulsionin a soul is encountered again in habits of doing or thinking, isreproduced in consequences of which the soul itself knowsnothing. Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendidor abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world inwhich they recognize their climate. There is a universe of jealousy.
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