This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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How did people react to Albert Camus’s philosophy of the absurd? Why did some think that suicide seemed like a reasonable response?
According to Albert Camus, suicide isn’t the answer. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus draws on existentialist theory to argue that humans are doomed to an absurd condition. He asserts that, rather than surrendering to this belief via suicide, you should derive fulfillment from your brief existence.
Continue reading to learn more about Camus’s views on suicide in the context of the absurd.
Albert Camus on Suicide
Camus begins with the claim that both the universe and death are unknowable. Theories of existence—such as the belief that God provides life and an afterlife, that there’s a cosmic purpose to human existence which we may realize through our actions, or that death is the end of consciousness and life has no inherent meaning—are just theories, unprovable within the limits of human experience. Despite this, Camus argues that humans have an innate need to believe that our lives have purpose and that there’s continued existence after death, to the point that our inability to definitively answer these questions torments us. This contradiction between our needs and our reality is what Camus calls the absurd.
Camus recognizes that the absurd is frightening and upsetting. He argues that both negative responses to it—philosophical rejection and suicide—attempt to escape these emotions by providing answers for what’s unknowable and breaking down the contradictory relationship at the absurd’s heart. Philosophical rejection denies the premise that life is finite and possibly meaningless, while suicide denies the premise that the human desire for eternity and meaning is innate. According to Albert Camus, suicide and philosophical rejection are forms of self-delusion that fail to offer a convincing alternative—logically or emotionally—to the truth of the absurd.
Camus notes that suicide is a much less common response to the absurd than philosophical rejection. He argues that this isn’t because there’s no rational argument to be made for suicide but because most people value their lives too highly to give them up, even in the face of life’s meaninglessness. The desire to live is itself absurd since everyone will eventually die no matter what they do, but it’s also an undeniably powerful motivator—people will make almost any sacrifice, even denouncing their own deeply held beliefs, in order to continue living.
(Shortform note: Examples of the power of this drive to live can be seen in the phenomenon of hysterical strength—when life-threatening circumstances cause people to display exceptional strength. Examples can also be seen in the ineffectiveness of torture or brainwashing in actually extracting information or changing people’s minds. Researchers generally conclude that people will say or do nearly anything to avoid pain and death, regardless of whether it’s true or aligns with their morals.)
Camus observes that, while many philosophers have considered the question of whether life is worth living and some even defended suicide as a valid answer, almost none followed their logic to the point of death. Though suicides can be ideologically motivated, as in the case of political or protest suicides, most are emotionally motivated—the person is overwhelmed by feelings of despair or hopelessness, which can have any number of causes. For his part, Camus considers whether suicide is an appropriate reaction to the absurd, but ultimately concludes that it isn’t, as it’s another attempt to escape the absurd rather than cope with it.
(Shortform note: Examples of political suicides can be seen in the self-immolation protests surrounding the Vietnam War—Thích Quảng Đức died by suicide in 1963 to protest the persecution of Vietnamese Buddhists by the South Korean government, and in 1965, several American anti-war protesters did the same in front of US government buildings. Interestingly, some mental health advocates argue that even those who die by suicide for primarily emotional reasons don’t truly want to die. When a person desperately needs change in their life but sees no way to achieve it, suicide becomes the only way out.)
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Myth of Sisyphus summary:
- A breakdown of Albert Camus’s theory of the absurd
- Why humans should try to derive as much fulfillment from life as possible
- That there is no greater meaning to life, which is why life is so meaningful
