To do or not to do, that is not the question!

It is awful how these philosophers not only make their lives miserable, but that of the readers too! People who are not mentally strong should avoid reading Albert Camus.

Just laid down “The Myth Of Sisyphus”. Camus sets in action by laying down a proposal: “There is but 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.”
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 [the questions of suicide].”


The nucleus of Existentialism is that there is no point or reason of our existence. So if there is no rationale behind our existence then why should we go on living? But this is not the question or the subsequent answer. If this was so then all existentialist would have killed themselves.

We try to give the world a social, intellectual, philosophical and religious meaning. The stage is set for your existence. Rise, transport yourself to office. 10 hours of office work or at the factory, breakfast, lunch, snacks, tea or coffee, dinner, sleep, rise and again transport to office…. Monday, Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday. The same rhythm, the same path followed day after day, month after month and year after year. Then one day you ask “why?”

Through this book, Camus calls our existential condition, absurd. On one hand the world is erratic and chaotic. Life comes and goes. Ideas are proven to be true and then false. One belief is as good as another. Our moods too are persistently altering. Camus on the other hand proposes our invariable efforts to obtain a meaning from meaninglessness. And this he says is absurd.
Camus surveys some probable responses. First he scrutinizes a religious answer and argues that the religious leap of faith is unnecessary. This is an escape from the fact of life’s absurdity, a “philosophical suicide”, as he puts it. Next he looks at the opening question of the essay, what about suicide as a response to the absurd? He concludes that this too is an unnecessary escape from the reality of life’s absurdity. He points out that a life without meaning does not necessarily lead to the fact that life is not worth living:
“People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments.”
As Camus goes through the possible responses to this feeling of the absurd, it becomes evident that he has directly envisaged this absurdity and has spent much of his life struggling with it.

He covers just about every existential thought I’ve had and many more. Only a man who has drowned himself in existential questioning can come up with such delicate and significant philosophical points. For example he notes that philosophers like
Chestov and Kierkegaard go to great lengths to show the limits of reason and man’s helplessness in the face of life’s absurdity. This, they say, is why man must take a leap of faith and turn to God. But if this leap of faith is in fact a solution to life’s absurdity then the absurdity never existed in the first place which means the need they described for a leap of faith did not exist either. I doubt I could have ever come up with such an insight on my own.

However in the end I was not completely obligated by Camus wrapping up the book. His claim that a philosophical life is a constant struggle sounded true, but I was not able to understand the historical and literary examples he used to illustrate this “life in revolt”. I did not see the horror in the "philosophical suicide" that he attributes to religious philosophers. I have worn out plenty of philosophies on life and will probably continue to plow through many more. I have seen that a sixth sense or experience can solve an existential dilemma as well as, or even better than, the clearest thinking.

I am not a true philosopher, but the reasons I would avoid suicide would be my family, certain moments of inspiration, my freedom from being a corporate slave, my accumulated interests in music, movies and books, the choice of not choosing a choice and my consciousness of being conscious of my consciousness…….And the fact remains that like all men, I too will cling on to life. It after all happens only once. I can only experience it once! In any case we all will die eventually. So why hurry up. Let’s try and enjoy our absurdities!