The Absurd And The Meaning Of Life

The Absurd is the first and the most important theme of Camus’ work. This paper does the philosophical study on the theme of the Absurd in Camus’ work, its purpose is to reach the full disclosure of the logical circuit of the Absurd Reasoning, namely, is to find out how Camus argues for the Absurd and how did he derive his conclusions from it. After that, I will make a simple comment on Camus’ ethics of the Absurd.In the theme of the Absurd, the central problem of Camus’ discussion is suicide or judging whether life is or is not worth living. Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. On the contrary, Camus is concerned here with the relationship between individual thought and suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living contains a sub-question:what is life like? According to Camus, life is absurd, he argues for this point from three planes:enumerating the feelings of the Absurd, on the plane of intellectual and on the plane of history. In the end, he finds out that the Absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in their presence together. It is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. So, life is absurd, does this require people to escape from absurd through suicide? The relationship between absurd and suicide is the specific problem that Camus concerns about. In the Absurd Reasoning, Camus insists on the principle of sincerity that requires something I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. This principle is very important in the Absurd Reasoning.The essence of the Absurd is separation. To clarify the reason of the Absurd, this paper uses the method of phenomenology to analyze the process of the separation of the Absurd, and then find the reason of the Absurd is the wake of self awareness. As the wake of self awareness, people look at his existence beyond everything, namely separate people from everything to the existence of themselves, thus, the meanings connected with external world are "epoche". The only thing that last is himself, facing the large irrational world, and man’s sober consciousness constitutes the absurdity of existence. The more important thing is that this paper finds that in this process, the foundation of the Absurd Reasoning is what I really know and sure of. Through the separation of people and everything, the only thing left is consciousness, and what I really know and sure of is appearances of the world and man, and these appearances are strange to me. Based on what I really know and sure of, Camus deduces the Absurd.According to the principle of sincerity, people should preserve the absurd, in other words, preserve what I know and sure of. To preserve what I know and sure of, Camus will inevitably against the leap, because the leap is based on what I do not know or am not sure of, and it violates the principle of sincerity. Also, because suicide cancels one of the confrontations, it also violates this principle. After giving up the conclusion of the leap and suicide, Camus brings out three conclusions of his own:rebel, freedom and passion. And this is the whole process of the Absurd Reasoning. However, the Absurd Reasoning just made a way of thought, in real life, Camus uses colorful characters like Don Juan, drama, conquest to illustrate the absurdity of life. Absurd men, in short, who preserve the absurd, are the conductors of the Absurd conclusion.