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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings.
Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinc— tively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.
This divorce between man and this life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death.
suicide is a solution to the absurd.
it often happens that those who commit suicide were assured of the meaning of life.
Schopenhauer is often cited, as a fit subject for laughter, because he praised suicide while seated at a well-set table.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
Hope of another life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live not for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it.
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.
is there a logic to the point of death? I cannot know unless I pursue,
consequentialism - we don't know if something morally correct or good unless we see the consequence of the action
In certain situations, replying “nothing” when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man. Those who are loved are well aware of this. But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void be-comes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity.
there is no experience of death. Properly speaking, nothing has been experienced but what has been lived and made conscious. Here, it is barely possible to speak of the experience of others’ deaths. It is a substitute, an illusion, and it never quite convinces us.
The mind, when it reaches its limits, must make a judgment and choose its conclusions. This is where suicide and the reply stand.
The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
The feeling of the absurd is not, for all that, the notion of the absurd.
absurd is not feeling alone. there are some essence of it
The important thing is to find out how people get away in the first case and why people stay in the second case.
“It’s absurd” means “It’s impossible” but also “It’s contradictory.” If I see a man armed only with a sword attack a group of machine guns, I shall consider his act to be absurd. But it is so solely by virtue of the disproportion between his intention and the reality he will encounter, of the contradiction I notice between his true strength and the aim he has in view.
a demonstration by the absurd is achieved by comparing the consequences of such a reasoning with the logical reality one wants to set up.
to compare the expected likely possible consequence of one's action with one's imaginable result
absurdity springs from a comparison.
the feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.
the feeling of absurdity is the result of a comparison between two realities -not the comparison
itself
There can be no absurd outside the human mind. Thus, like everything else, the absurd ends with death. But there can be no absurd outside this world either.
I have just defined it as a confrontation and an unceasing struggle.
Is it the absurdity is just a prolonging conflicts between two sides that both co-exist in the same place? I.e. life and death is just 2 nature "forms" at both exists. The nature of such is the absurd.
There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral: namely, that a man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. One has to pay something.
most people say sorry not because of they actually feeling sorry about their mistake but because the truth is discovered
“The only true solution,” he said, “is precisely where human judgment sees no solution. Otherwise, what need would we have of God? We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice.”
the absurd is sin without God.
Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one’s consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.
My reasoning wants to be faithful to the evidence that aroused it. That evidence is the absurd. It is that divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints,
It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.
The contrary of suicide, in fact, is the man condemned to death.
Before encountering the absurd, the everyday man lives with aims, a concern for the future or for justification (with regard to whom or what is not the question). He weighs his chances, he counts on “someday,” his retirement or the labor of his sons. He still thinks that something in his life can be directed. In truth, he acts as if he were free, even if all the facts make a point of contradicting that liberty. But after the absurd, everything is upset. That idea that “I am,” my way of acting as if everything has a meaning (even if, on occasion, I said that nothing has)—all that is given the
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The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future.
By losing themselves in their god, by accepting his rules, they become secretly free. In spontaneously accepted slavery they recover a deeper independence.
they feel free with regard to themselves, and not so much free as liberated.
in a sense they are free of thinking, free of having to encounter and react to the external world but at the same time, they are in a cage barried with their own freedom. In the sense of conflict, that is absurdity
He enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules.
life—it is clear that death and the absurd are here the principles of the only reasonable freedom: that which a human heart can experience and live.
But what does life mean in such a universe? Nothing else for the moment but indifference to the future and a desire to use up everything that is given. Belief in the meaning of life always implies a scale of values, a choice, our preferences. Belief in the absurd, according to our definitions, teaches the contrary.
if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.
A man’s rule of conduct and his scale of values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences he has been in a position to accumulate.
on the one hand the absurd teaches that all experiences are unimportant, and on the other it urges toward the greatest quantity of experiences.
To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them. Being aware of one’s life, one’s revolt, one’s freedom, and to the maximum, is living, and to the maximum.
By what is an odd inconsistency in such an alert race, the Greeks claimed that those who died young were beloved of the gods. And that is true only if you are willing to believe that entering the ridiculous world of the gods is forever losing the purest of joys, which is feeling, and feeling on this earth.
Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide.
He is an ordinary seducer.[16] Except for the difference that he is conscious, and that is why he is absurd. A seducer who has become lucid will not change for all that. Seducing is his condition in life. Only in novels does one change condition or become better.
Don Juan does not think of “collecting” women. He exhausts their number and with them his chances of life. “Collecting” amounts to being capable of living off one’s past. But he rejects regret, that other form of hope. He is incapable of looking at portraits.
There are those who are made for living and those who are made for loving.
There, too, there are several ways of committing suicide, one of which is the total gift and forget-fulness of self.
Beware of those who say: ‘I know this too well to be able to express it.’ For if they cannot do so, this is because they don’t know it or because out of laziness they stopped at the outer crust.
“There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man. Such wrenches are dreadful. But for a proud heart there can be no compromise.
The individual can do nothing and yet he can do everything.
