Camus’ Despair

Albert Camus wrote; “We are born without reason, we suffer without meaning, and we die without purpose. The universe doesn’t know we exist—and it never cared.“

I have a different opinion about the matter of course, as a Christian. I wanted to consider the quote objectively though.

I like Camus’ writing (e.g. The Plague). His opinions here are plain enough and also inconsistent with the logic of French rationalism of Sartre’s type- aka existentialism. Absurdism is different than existentialism. It is a kind of unreasoned phenomenalism without depth. In each of Camus’s propositions he is declaring knowledge (or lack of) of other’s thought. One cannot really ever know what an other thinks-just what they say or choose to disclose. The Universe is itself an other although humans are embedded within it.

Camus was an ‘I’ born, to his knowledge, without implicit self-aware purposes or reasons for being. If the Universe (whatever it is), doesn’t have sentience, Camus would have no way of knowing that himself. Life is another state of matter, and consciousness is also a different state of being than minerals, molecules, atoms or quarks for example. One might believe equally than any sufficiently intelligent being aware in the Universe, of the Universe and its content forms would also be aware of the appearance of sentient consciousness.

Camus was born during difficult times in Europe, France and Algeria and lived his life through those times of wars. It is easy to understand his fundamental despair about being. Some of those living in Ukraine today will perhaps feel that way too and write about it eventually. Sometimes the lost remain so. It is easy to understand his fundamental despair about being- his liberating despair. Sometimes the lost remain so and may glory within that.