A Brief Exploration of the Possible Meaning of Life

 by Daisy Watson-Rumbold

'There is but only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.' - Albert Camus. 'The Myth of Sisyphus'.

Sisyphus by Titian (1549)

The desire for meaning is one that has burdened some of the greatest minds in history. The value we hold our lives in is decided by us, within our minds, sometimes our hearts. It's a subjective and wholly selfish decision by many counts. It's vulnerable to change with time, with growth, and based on the company we keep. Meaning for many of us roots itself in enjoyment, the feeling of fulfilment, and the details of our lives that we hold closest. Sometimes, the meaning we attribute to aspects of our lives becomes overwhelming. The tasks we cannot complete, the people we will never meet and the places we will never go all give us a value. It is an endless discussion that many philosophers have attempted to navigate, the French philosopher, Albert Camus being a prominent one. 

The Ancient Greeks wrote of Sisyphus, a man who tried to cheat death and defy the order of the Gods. Following this 'heresy' of sorts, he was sentenced to spend all eternity in hell. It was not the hell we all know and love; there weren't flames or satanic presence, just a boulder and a mountain. He was to spend the rest of time pushing this boulder up the mountain, and just as it was to reach the top, it would tumble down to the bottom once again. 

The Greeks, known for their industriousness, saw this as the ultimate torment. The punishment of all punishments had been found, with no hope of completion, there was no meaning to his existence. He has ever since been regarded as a pitiable figure in Greek culture, and a brute warning from the Gods to obey their order.

Camus adopted the character Sisyphus to demonstrate his metaphor for the lack of meaning our lives hold. 

'The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.'

Influenced by fellow philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Camus was an absurdist. Absurdism refers to the conflict between humankind's tendency to seek meaning and inherent value in life and the inability to find any in an irrational universe. 

To Camus, Sisyphus is at peace with his struggling: 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy'. There is no tragedy in his starting again; he defies the punishment each time he begins pushing the boulder again. In the last section of his essay, he outlines the legend and presents the ceaseless toil as a metaphor for our modern lives. He reflects on how this monotony becomes tragic when we become conscious of the pointless routine.  

'In a man's attachment to life, there is something stronger than all the ills in the world.'

Camus' allegory attempted to justify the ideology that life is meaningless, absurd and exhibits no real purpose but should be taken as a challenge. Considering this, Camus stated that a person has three ways to deal with such a reality. Firstly, suicide, which Camus saw as a rejection of freedom. It is fleeing due to the illusory of meaning, and worth. It is impossible for life to truly have no worth as there is the option to embrace the absurdity. The second option, to take a leap of faith, is what Camus regarded philosophical suicide. The controversial idea of 'giving in' to religion as a means to feel comforted instead of facing 'reality.' According to Camus, however, the ideal option is to trust in a world devoid of purpose. 

There is indeed no way to reconcile the unknown, but there is a comfort to be found. Simply, facing the idea of the absurd does not entail hopelessness, but it allows us to live to the fullest, with no limits. What we truly find in the absurd, in Camus’ words, is 'peace in nothingness'. In less existential terms, all great ideas, relationships, art or knowledge is rooted in the ridiculous. The chance of that experience or thought of becoming an idea in that one moment is wholly absurd. The saddening thing is that we find ourselves in a world which we manufactured to reject the absurd. 

Sooner or later, the 'stage-set' we have so carefully managed for centuries will collapse. The tragedy is found in realisation, not in action. The rhythm of days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday; wake, eat, work, walk, sleep is not the misfortune, it is the ticking clock waiting for our awakening. 

Before encountering the absurd, we live with goals, concern for the future, and a justification of our morality. After realisation, those attributes are upset, but the freedom to be is elevated. Any other feeling of freedom is a falsehood. The absurd man realises that the social and moral liberties he thought he had were superficial in the light of true freedom. Once the irrelevancies and illusory we convey as normalcy become alien to our minds, the world seems void of what we once saw as worth. The strangeness, vagueness and indetermination of it all leave us deflated. However, the world evading us is a sign of truth. And there is a desire to escape within all of us, as Husserl claimed, the 'inveterate habit of living and thinking certain well-known and convenient conditions of existence.' 

'A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world.'

Camus identifies the characteristics of achieved absurdity in four characteristics: 

'Revolt'; as represented in his essay by Ivan in the 'Brothers Karamazov'. His character exclaims that 'Everything is permitted' if the individual feels morally right. The revolt carried out against higher orders, and moral judgement with that single sentence is symbolic of the absurd. Camus' philosophy rejects God, and so this revolt holds a front against religious code just as firmly. There is, however, an issue with Ivan, his erraticacy delves into the depths of anarchy, straying away from the likes of absurdism. Everything is permitted does not mean nothing is forbidden. Absurdity restores remorse by removing order; it does not encourage chaos. The revolt against the need for meaning leads us into a life enriched by passion and freedom.

'Seduction'; represented by Don Juan. 'If it were sufficient to love, things would be too easy.' Therefore, Juan represents the syndrome of desire. A wealthy libertine who devoted his life to seducing women, never staying with one woman for long. Camus rejects the idea that Juan was searching for 'true love', or that he is callously selfish, instead he claims him a man living for passion in the moment. He lives with no hopes for any transcendent significance, and lives for the experience. This was encapsulated when a lover of his exclaimed, 'At last… I have given you love.' for Don Juan replied with 'Once more.' Our outlook is that to love rarely is to love much; this begs whether we should love often to love for experience. 

Our emotions should be considered equal. Love should equate to misery or joy. The meanings we attach to a singular concept create divisions. It is the madman who seeks no division that is the sagacious man of his existence. Pursuing passion at the moment acknowledges the end and the divisions we create are negligible. 

'Drama'; represented by the 'Actor'. Camus had genuine respect for those who acted on the stage, the people who live a million lives in their one lifetime. 'Sweeping over centuries, and minds, by miming man as he can be and as he is.', the actor could never identify himself, nor the lives he portrays. He will raise a cup the way Hamlet did, and speak verse as Romeo did, but will never separate any one character from himself. The absurd man cannot take himself seriously, and he must acknowledge his cosmic insignificance. The actor is free as they do not live for truth; they live for another being's fiction.

'Conquest'; represented by the 'Conqueror'. This character lives exclusively for the world he inhabits, taking great concern in political struggles whilst paradoxically understanding that he could never reach eternal victory against said struggles. History will always overtake the eternal, and 'fact' condones the church for its oppression. 'One must choose between contemplation and action… God or time, that cross or this sword.' Absurdity is all of nothing. It is living and dying or deluding yourself with false hope. The Conqueror sees that every man has felt equal to that of a God at a time, ‘feeling the grandeur of the human mind', and whilst others fall out of that state, he stays. 

There are endless possibilities when embracing the absurd. The rebel, the lover, the actor, and the conqueror shows the abundance of 'freedom' Camus speaks so highly of. Whether one personally agrees with his philosophy, it is impossible to deny the fascination and logical intricacy of Camus' absurdism. It makes us wonder whether the lives we lead so meticulously enable us to reach our true potential, or whether there is any potential to be reached at all. One message that remains evident amongst all of the premises is to find strength in your own being without relying on external sources for validation. To find peace in simply existing is a valuable and rare skill, one we must find.

'In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.'