The Absurd — From Latin absurdus (dissonant, contrary to reason). In existentialist philosophy, and particularly in the work of Albert Camus, it designates the confrontation between the human demand for meaning, unity, and clarity and the irrational indifference of a world that remains silent before that demand. The absurd resides neither in the human being nor in the world taken alone, but in the relation that sets them against each other — it is a “divorce,” a rupture (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942). Camus distinguishes the feeling of the absurd, which may suddenly arise when the everyday settings of life are drained of meaning, from the clear notion that reflection draws out of it. The decisive philosophical question then becomes that of suicide: if life has no meaning, is it worth living? Camus rejects both physical suicide and “philosophical suicide” — the Kierkegaardian leap of faith or the reconciliation that dissolves the contradiction into the Absolute — because each eliminates one term of the tension and thereby flees the absurd rather than facing it. The authentic response is to keep that tension alive, from which three consequences follow: revolt, a lucid and constant defiance of one’s fate; freedom, release from the illusions of purpose; and passion, the intense multiplication of experiences. Sisyphus, condemned to push his rock eternally up the mountain, is the absurd hero par excellence: his victory lies in the consciousness of his condition, and so “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” The concept must not be confused with nihilism: the absurd does not deny the value of life but affirms it despite the absence of metaphysical meaning, later opening onto Camus’s idea of solidary revolt.
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