A Response to Camus
Camus declares life to be absurd and takes this given as the starting point for his philosophy. He claims that this absurdity is established in the “impossibility of knowledge” which we respond to with “everlasting nothingness” and “irremediable despair”. Yet the reasons for this love affair with absurdity does not seem to be sufficiently borne out in his works.
Existentialists would agree that man is confronted by this seemingly insurmountable gap between what is and what ought to be, between what we long for and what the world provides us with. But there is not sufficient evidence to claim that this gap is truly unbridgeable. Camus provides us with a disclaimer: “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.” This phrase ‘just now’, is of particular importance. This gap may ‘just now’ be impossible to bridge, but if we describe absurdity as simply a transient condition, that would render the ‘irremediable despair’ unwarranted. What evidence does Camus provide that this impossibility extends for longer than ‘just now’ or to others besides himself?
We have accounts of those who claim to have through philosophical, experiential, or spiritual undertaking bridged this gap. While existentialists stand against self-deception, Camus selects a few existential thinkers and rejects their attempts at transcending the gap wholesale in discounting the possibility for transcendent knowing. But what response does he have to the man or woman who with intractable conviction claims to have experienced a meaning that transcends absurdity? We also have reason to believe that mankind may well be on its way to transcend this condition. What response does he have for the transhumanist (who nonetheless must be regarded with suspicion for the existentialists) who has technological reasons for foreseeing a future where man has tamed nature and death?
It would be more accurate then to make the claim that it is uncertainty, rather than absurdity, that best describes our condition. We do not yet know enough about reality to be certain of anything, including absurdity. Embracing absurdity — rather than being a rejection of escapism — seems to be simply another form of escapism. One ought to be skeptical even of skepticism. Nonetheless, existentialists would agree that given this uncertain condition, we are still plagued by anxiety. There might seem to be only a semantic difference between absurdity and anxiety, but whereas anxiety is unsure even of the reasons for its anxiety, absurdity has already resigned itself.
If Camus’ Sisyphus smiles, he does so only by holding back a flood of tears. If we are to accept Camus’ pronouncement that our condition requires rebellion, the true Rebel, I insist, is the Sisyphus who smiles because he is bidding his time, carrying his rock, increasing his strength, till he is strong enough to challenge the gods, and liberate himself from this condition. If man is master, he is master also of the silence of the world. He can negotiate his condition.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. trans. by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books. 1991.
