What Did Albert Camus Really Mean by the Absurd?

It is widely (but wrongly) believed that what Camus means by the absurd is something like life viewed from a distance is completely meaningless. What Camus actually says is that life viewed in a particular way only appears meaningless. The crucial nuance, often missed, is that Camus makes a case for viewing life in a way that reveals meaning rather than claiming life is meaningless. The absurd is best understood as an unsettling sensation brought on by attempting to understand life without the benefit of myth.

A mistake found repeatedly in the secondary literature is based on the assumption that when philosophers talk about “the absurd,” they are all talking about the same thing. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre used the essay Camus wrote on the absurd, The Myth of Sisyphus, as a guide when he reviewed The Stranger, but he interpreted both works using his own understanding of the absurd and not Camus’s version. The upshot of this has been decades of misreading as subsequent philosophers attempt to force Camus’s texts to fit Sartre’s account. This effort is doomed to failure simply because when Camus and Sartre talk about the absurd, they talk about different things. Before we look at Camus’s account of the absurd, it will be useful to look at how other philosophers have used the term.

Sartre’s Account of the Absurd

For Sartre, the absurd refers to a failure to understand our contingency and existence. For him, life has no meaning or purpose, so it is up to the individual to choose one for themselves. Awareness of our contingency in the world brings on what Sartre calls “nausea,” also the title he gave to one of his most popular novels. Nausea (1938) tells the story of Antoine Roquentin, a melancholic historian who has lost touch with his friends and family. Roquentin’s life becomes unbearable, with a sickness brought on by a feeling of disorientation and alienation from the world. Eventually, Roquentin begins to doubt his own existence.

A major difference between Sartre’s and Camus’s account of the absurd is that while Sartre believed the idea should remain at the back of our minds to be used in moments of philosophical reflection, Camus believed we should be consciously aware of the absurd as much as possible. His concept of “rebellion” is best understood as the continual contemplation of the absurd.

In 1971, Thomas Nagel published a paper entitled “The Absurd” in the Journal of Philosophy. His essay has proved extremely popular over the years: the collection it is included in has been reprinted sixteen times, at the last count. This is due to Nagel’s lucid style, which offers an extremely clear and useful overview of the philosophical problem. However, his essay falls in Nagel’s characterization of Camus’s understanding of the absurd.

It is clear from reading “The Absurd” that Sartre’s work on the subject most influences Nagel. His conclusion is much the same as Sartre’s. That is, absurdity exists and is a problem, but it should not take over your life. For Nagel, awareness of the absurd only plays a small role in our lives and only when we take a step back and contemplate our existence. Indeed, contrary to Camus, who advocates constant contemplation of the absurd as an active rebellion, Nagel thinks the absurd should arouse little more than an ironic smile.

For Nagel, absurdity occurs when there is a conspicuous discrepancy between our pretension or aspiration and reality. Camus gives a good example in The Myth of Sisyphus when he asks us to imagine a man armed only with a sword attacking a machine gun post. If this man seriously believes he can emerge as the victor, then there is a significant gulf between his aspiration and the reality of the situation. To talk of the absurd, some kind of absurdity must occur that affects us all as human beings. For Nagel, it is the clash between the seriousness with which we must take our lives and the continual thought that life is meaningless.

Something these accounts of the absurd have in common is that they are concerned with the idea of yearning for meaning in a meaningless universe. It is, therefore, important to be clear what we mean by “meaningless.”

The universe is not devoid of meaning. Human beings populate our planet, giving meaning to their lives and the world around them. In this sense, the universe has meaning. When we say the universe is meaningless, we mean that it does not already have a meaning.

Because there is no meaning, human beings must create meaning for themselves. Camus believes this is a good thing. In an often misunderstood passage in The Myth of Sisyphus, he says that life will be all the better if it has no meaning. Here, he refers to a predetermined meaning; he does not mean a meaningless life is better than a meaningful life.

To make sense of the world, we need to give things names to talk about them. The first human beings to walk upright were confronted with a horizon from which they knew not what would emerge. At this point in our history, everything in the world was beyond the limits of human understanding. A way to bring that understanding to the surface needed to emerge. This was the language of myth.

Galileo once said that without the language of mathematics, life would be like trying to navigate a labyrinth in the dark. In the same way, life without the language of myth was incomprehensible for the first bipedal humans. The development of myth led to later discoveries, which improved our ability to comprehend the world and universe.

The use of myth is not a relic of the past. Today, we still use myths to express ideas that are beyond the limits of human understanding. It is important to remember that there are many different kinds of myths. We sometimes use the word “myth” as a shorthand to say something widely believed but false. However, “myth” here refers to creating dramatic stories to express the truth about life or the world.

For example, consider the idea that all human life is valuable. Most of us feel this is true, but there is no way to measure the value of human life. That is, no way other than a completely practical measuring system that farmers may use with cattle or slave-owners once did with slaves. The idea of calculating human worth in this way is abhorrent. We need to find a language to express our abhorrence of such things. Nothing in our scientific vocabulary will do the job. We need to use myths when discussing things such as “human dignity” and the value of life. Remember, this is not a false or fictional myth but a dramatic way of expressing truth.

Camus’s essay on the absurd concludes with a myth—his telling of Sisyphus’s myth. Here, he uses myth to express the idea that life is valuable. It is valuable because it is meaningful. In the final line, Camus tells us we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Much of the essay is spent exploring the problem of the absurd. The problem comes about from having to justify the meaning we create. In other words, how do we know that the truths about meaning expressed in our myths are truths?

We saw in our discussion of Nagel that the feeling of the absurd often arises because the seriousness and importance we have to give our lives to live clashes with the idea we often have that life itself is meaningless. We face a pressing problem: if life is meaningless, why do we also believe it is important?

In the myth of the wisdom of Silenus, King Midas catches the satyr and refuses to let him go until he reveals his wisdom. Silenus asks the King why he wants to hear what the worst thing for human beings is to know: that the best thing is to have never been born, and the second best is to die as soon as possible. His wisdom, then, is that life has no value. For Friedrich Nietzsche, the whole of Greek mythology is an attempt to counter Silenus. Nietzsche was a huge influence on Camus, who tells us in The Myth of Sisyphus that he is following Nietzsche’s lead.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche recommends dedicating one’s life to something, such as music, the arts, philosophy, etc. The idea is to find a passion that makes life worth living. Sartre and Nagel agreed, advocating for awareness of the absurd while not allowing it to take over. For them, life is worth living if one chooses to make it meaningful.

Camus’s Account of the Absurd

Camus, on the other hand, is worried that we will not have solved the problem of the absurd if we just pick something to dedicate our lives to. Imagine saying life is meaningful because you have art. Now imagine someone asking you what about art makes it meaningful, and you reply, “Oh, nothing really. I just choose to believe it has value.” Here, we seem to have a textbook case of Nagel’s clash between pretension and reality based on his definition of absurdity. Saying something is valuable because you arbitrarily choose it to be valuable is absurd.

Camus wants to find something in the universe that we can say is definitely valuable and gives life meaning. To discover this, he needs a myth.

The absurd is experienced when two beliefs clash: that life is valuable and meaningless. Life cannot be both. It cannot be lived without taking it seriously and giving it meaning. But when we step back and examine it, the meaning we assign to it does not appear to be justified.

We are all born into societies in which the justifications for what we usually consider important are taken for granted. Nietzsche, for example, pointed out that while many atheists reject Christianity, they continue to hold moral values justified by Christian myths. However, when someone rejects Christianity, they must also reject Christian myths, and new justifications must be found. Both Nietzsche and Camus attempted to do just this by creating new myths. The point is not that without Christianity, life is meaningless and, therefore, has no value.

Life seems valuable, but we cannot be sure until we find myths that justify this belief.

For Camus, the absurd is the unpleasant experience of being bereft of myths expressing life’s value. His Sisyphus myth attempted to remedy this.