by
EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is
suicide,” thus Albert Camus opens his book The Myth of Sisyphus.
“Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the
fundamental question of philosophy. All
the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has
nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards.
These are games; one must first answer.”1
To get ahead of Camus’ story, the answer he gives to his own question
is: yes -- in spite of everything --
life is worth living. Of course, that position is by no means
peculiar to Camus. All of us who
continue to live in spite of life’s difficulties share that position. But the road by which Camus arrives at that
answer constitutes this French philosopher’s unique contribution to twentieth
century philosophy.
Camus starts his inquiry by pointing out what he calls the “absurdity”
of man’s condition. Simply put, man’s
condition is absurd because he wants – nay, he needs – life to have an inherent
meaning, yet he soon realizes that life is totally devoid of such a meaning.
Man hopelessly demands meaning from an utterly meaningless world. The reason why man often finds it hard to
understand life is that life, in fact, is without
reason. This “confrontation” between
“the irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human
heart”2 comprises man’s permanent dilemma.
Other philosophers have offered man a way out of this dilemma by
appealing to a transcendent source of
meaning. By positing the idea that there
is a God who, as it were, holds everything – including man and his life – in
His hands, man is given the assurance
that his life is, after all, not irrational.
How can human life be devoid of reason when it has been created and is
being looked after by no less than an all-knowing and an all-powerful God? Man may not be able to discover all the
answers to his questions now. He may not
be able to understand everything now. But, later on, he will find the answers and
attain the understanding that presently elude him. For the moment, all that is asked of him is
to believe that – thanks to God --
his life is meaningful in spite of its apparent meaninglessness.
In truth, the very irrationality of life necessitates, for the above
philosophers, this appeal to the existence of a God. They maintain that the logical alternative to
belief is, after all, suicide. Either
one believes in God or one eventually finds life so intolerable, so
meaningless, the only reasonable thing to do is to stop living.
And it is in this context that the novelty of Camus thought shines
forth. Camus proposes that there is, in
fact, one more alternative to belief – and it is exemplified by the
mythological figure named Sisyphus.
According to the myth, Sisyphus was punished by the gods for an offence
he had committed. His punishment was
rather unique: he had to roll to the top
of a mountain a rock that inevitably rolled down, of its own weight, as soon as
it got to the top. Sisyphus’ punishment
was to do this task over and over: to
roll the rock to the top of the mountain and to do it again once it rolled down.
The fact that Sisyphus was aware of the
incurable futility of his efforts made his punishment a real torture. But this same awareness was the key to his
eventual victory. For Sisyphus could,
then, choose his attitude toward his
punishment. He could choose to embrace
the permanent fruitlessness of his efforts – nay, to be happy about his
apparently hopeless condition. He could
rebel against his fate by choosing to
accept and even enjoy it. Hence, Camus
writes: “The lucidity that was to
constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by
scorn.... If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also
take place in joy.”3
Camus teaches that all of us can follow the example of Sisyphus. We can choose to rebel against our fate by
embracing the inherent meaninglessness of our life and even rejoicing in
it. We do not have to make an appeal to
any transcendent source of meaning. We
do not have to ask God to come into the picture. In fact, in Camus’ view, we would actually be
better off if we evacuated God from the landscape of our life altogether. For if there is no God, then you and I are totally free. If there is no God, then you and I are
absolutely free to construct our own meaning out of the meaningless bits and
pieces that constitute our life.
I have heard many people express how Camus’ philosophy has kept them
from ruining themselves. It has been a
saving hand to many men and women who have reached a point in their life when
suicide seemed to be the most logical step to take. In particular, Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus has been a wellspring
of courage for those who have lost heart but who, for some reason, cannot bring
themselves to turn to God for solace.
Camus, in short, has made it possible for people to find sense in living
without having to believe in God.
Ironically, however, the strength of Camus’ book constitutes its very
weakness. Note that Camus does not
offer any arguments for God’s non-existence.
His atheism is a decision, not a conclusion. He has chosen
not to have faith in God in the belief that by doing so he would do man a great
service: henceforth, man will be freer
to construct his own meaning in the midst of this universe bereft of meaning. Yet, by ejecting God from human affairs,
Camus has actually cut off man’s lifeline to his one and only source of true
meaning. By negating God, Camus has not
really freed man. He has, on the
contrary, bound him further.
As he neared his fifties, the Russian writer Leo Tolstoi experienced a
spiritual crisis that almost made him decide to take his own life. In his long essay, “A
Confession,” Tolstoi recalled: “My
question, the one that brought me to the point of suicide when I was fifty
years old, was a most simple one that lies in the soul of every person, from a
silly child to a wise old man. It is the
question without which life is impossible, as I had learnt from
experience. It is this: what will come of what I do today or
tomorrow? What will come of my entire
life? Expressed another way the question
can be put like this: why do I
live? Why do I wish for anything, or do
anything? Or expressed another way: is there any meaning in my life that will not
be annihilated by the inevitability of death which awaits me?”4
Unlike Camus, however, Tolstoi’s questionings eventually led him to a
reaffirmation of his belief in God.
“Faith,” he later confessed, “remained as irrational to me as before,
but I could not fail to recognize that it alone provides mankind with the
answers to the question of life, and consequently with the possibility of
life.... For me, as for others, faith
provided the meaning of life and the possibility of living.”5
Whether we like it or not, the meaning of human life is inextricably
linked with God. God is, in fact, the
fountainhead of such a meaning. No
wonder, our search for life’s meaning is almost indistinguishable from our
search for God. Tolstoi (and the other thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard whom
Camus criticizes for making a leap of faith after coming face to face with the
apparent irrationality and senselessness of human life) saw this clearly. Camus, I guess, saw it too. But he opted to turn his eyes away.
In Camus' most famous work, The
Stranger, a painful encounter transpires between the novel’s hero Meursault
and a priest. Camus describes the
encounter thus:
The priest gazed around my cell and
answered in a voice that sounded very weary to me: “Every stone here sweats with
suffering. I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling
of anguish. But deep in my heart I know
that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their
darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.”
This perked me up a little. I said I had been looking at the stones in
these walls for months. There wasn’t
anything or anyone in the world I knew better.
Maybe at one time, way back, I had searched for a face in them. But the face I was looking for was as bright
as the sun and the flame of desire – and it belonged to Marie. I had searched for it in vain. Now it was all over. And in any case, I’d never seen anything
emerge from any sweating stones.6
There is indeed a divine face embedded in the walls of human
existence. Unfortunately, it is only
with the eyes of faith that anyone can ever discern it.
NOTES
1Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Justin O’Brien, trans., with an introduction by James Wood (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 11.
1Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Justin O’Brien, trans., with an introduction by James Wood (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 11.
