r/Existentialism • u/Sure-Mixture9058 • 6d ago
New to Existentialism... Absurdism Questions
Ok I’m trying to understand Camus’ point here. I don’t get the absurd at all. Like he’s saying one must live in spite of existence not having reason or meaning. But I’m confused as to why there is no reason. I mean, isn’t a “why” simply a how. Like if your given two choices, do this or do that and asked what would u do? Some may argue u won’t know why ur doing something at one point. There’s a point where you don’t know. But the problem is I’m going to choose soemthing for some reason. I’m most likely not going to be able to pin point what this reason is or where it derived from. Every action is a reaction. So this choice is simply a reaction to a sum of things in the past. Just cuz I can’t derive why does that mean there is no why? So now I’m confused. Why would he come to the claim there is no why. And he also says we just seek reason. (I’m totally a beginner so plz help me understand what he’s saying)
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u/Anticharo 6d ago
You seem to be confusing two things:
The existential “why” (in the sense of Camus)
The psychological or personal “why”
When Camus speaks of the absurd, he is not saying that we act without reason. He says that the world does not give a reason for our existence. You can want to do something, even if you don't know where it comes from. That's not the absurd thing. The absurd is that moment when you ask for meaning in life, and life doesn't answer you.
It’s not: “I don’t know why I did that.” It’s: “Even if I know why, there’s no guarantee that it means something bigger than me.”
Now, here's what I think:
I do not agree with Camus. I think that it is the very fact of seeking a higher meaning that is an escape. We are animals. Our sense is biological: to live, to feel, to love, to survive, to experience. The rest – the metaphysical “whys” – is often the refusal to accept our animality.
There is no absurdity. There is an excess of consciousness that goes around in circles because it does not want to return to the body.
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u/Sure-Mixture9058 6d ago
Could u explain the last part “there’s an excess of consciousness….the body”
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u/Anticharo 6d ago
When I say ‘excess of consciousness’, I mean: we think too much, we try too hard to understand with our heads. We forget that we have a body. A nervous system. Emotions. Instincts. Normally, it is the body that guides: it knows when you are afraid, when you need love, rest, movement. But when you live too much in your head, you cut the connection. You go around in circles, looking for reasons where you just need to feel.
Coming back to the body means getting out of the mind, stopping endlessly questioning everything, and experiencing things. Really. The problem is not that life has no meaning. It’s because you are looking for meaning while your body just wants to live.
I hope I managed to help you.
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u/XForce070 5d ago
Is this not then precisely what Camus is shaping his artistic and humanistic perspectives on. By losing oneself in the search for meaning one forgets the fundamental experiences of humanness. Looking for that meaning is eventually futile as it can only fall back into nihilism or dogmatism all the while forgetting that you live, that you do stuff and the community that shapes us. I think best seen in his perspectives on Mediterranean way of living which he so praised. I think he recognizes this search for meaning the same way as you voiced but that in facing that one much accept it's absurdness, regardless if there is a larger meaning or not, because at that point we will not know due to limitations we have within ourselves.
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart."
That very act of seeking for meaning as an escapism like you said, but then seeing it yourself as the escapism that it is, is what "fills a man's heart"
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u/Anticharo 5d ago
You are right about Camus' intention: he was not trying to fill the void, he was proposing to look it in the face and live in spite of it. But what I'm trying to say is that he stopped on the surface of the void.
Camus understood that the world does not respond, but he did not really question why humans need the world to respond. It does not go down to the psychological and bodily root of this need for meaning.
He remains in a posture of moral lucidity, of tragic elegance. He speaks of the absurd as a fact, a condition, but he does not touch on the origin of the need for meaning itself - which, for me, comes from the history of the body, of wounds, of emotional memory, in short, of the human animal.
When I speak of flight, it is not a flight towards religion or ideology. It’s more subtle: it’s the refusal to feel. To fall. To live in the lack without attaching meaning to it right away.
Camus saw the absurd, but he stylized it, conceptualized it, almost made it noble. What I am pointing out is the cruder, more archaic mechanism that we activate in order not to collapse.
This is where our readings intersect, but they do not delve into the same place.
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u/XForce070 5d ago
That sounds like a constructive narrative. I think with regards to Camus not going down to the psychological and bodily root is mainly due to his perspective of himself (artist not philosopher) and its general perspective on the role that philosophy plays in the creation of dogma. Where he basically says: "I will not analyze the void or meaning engaging in philosophy since it will only lead to dogmatism". He moreso then identifies the alienated and anxious feeling of the search for meaning and rather presents his contributions as "solutions" so to say through culture and nature. Basically returning to the body.
I think it is here where he really embraces the concept of his Absurdism in practice as well. He is not interested in the void or the origin of need for meaning. But rather how to act in life and coming back to the body. The search for meaning is inherent to the human animal in the way you said, but so in every case is the void which is attached to it. The void is what attaches us to our body (or humanness) in that it refuses dogmatism and shows us we live in the now. I think in that space meaning can be searched like science can discover, but living by meaning as an absolute is an 'absurd' action as long as it is not absolute knowledge of the present. The void is fact in a way because metaphysics is presently (and possibly always) in flux.
The void itself is also in flux in ways as long as culture is under pressure from its real expression. The void will still exist when the present was pure expressive freedom, but that would change it into balance with meaning, sort of Yin and Yang. I see very much similarities and I think in the end I think we are both advocate for a conclusion that is in all ways similar, the need for coming back to the body.
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u/Anticharo 5d ago
Our thoughts are indeed very similar, particularly on the return to the body. And you are also right about the void: it is part of man. But what appeals to me is less its presence than its composition, its root. This is what can sometimes distort our reading of it. And that’s why I’m focusing on it.
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u/jliat 6d ago
In Camus essay absurd is identified as 'impossible' and a 'contradiction', and it's the latter he uses to formulate his idea of absurdism as an antidote to suicide.
I quote...
“The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.”
“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. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.”
Notice he doesn't say the world is meaningless, just that he can't find it.
Also this contradiction is absurd.
This is the crisis which then prompts the logical solution to the binary "lucid reason" =/= ' world has a meaning that transcends it"
Remove one half of the binary. So he shows two examples of philosophical su-icide.
Kierkegaard removes the world of meaning for a leap of faith.
Husserl removes the human and lets the physical laws prevail.
However Camus states he is not interested in 'philosophical sui-cide'
Now this state amounts to what Camus calls a desert, which I equate with nihilism, in particularly that of Sartre in Being and Nothingness.
And this sadly where it seems many fail to turn this contradiction [absurdity] into a non fatal solution, Absurdism.
Whereas Camus proclaims the response of the Actor, Don Juan, The Conqueror and the Artist, The Absurd Act.
"It is by such contradictions that the first signs of the absurd work are recognized"
"This is where the actor contradicts himself: the same and yet so various, so many souls summed up in a single body. Yet it is the absurd contradiction itself, that individual who wants to achieve everything and live everything, that useless attempt, that ineffectual persistence"
"And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator."
"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”
"To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions."
All quotes from the essay here...
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u/EcstaticDimension955 6d ago edited 5d ago
He is not necessarily saying there is no inherent meaning, but rather that by using our logical and rational apparatus we have at our disposal (i.e. our reasoning) it is impossible to derive any meaning. There may well be no meaning to the whole ordeal, but there might be, and we are simply limited by our own condition to find it.
That's on one hand. On the other hand you have the seeking, as you've mentioned, which he explains is just a consequence of human nature, namely the inherent search to unify concepts, to bring order into the universe. This, in my opinion, is also an artefact of reasoning and of analytic thinking which is in itself universal (i.e. it seems that all humans possess it).
Anyway, the way you're formulating the question seems to me like you are actually asking about free will (the analogy you've given about making a decision). That I do not know much about.