Summary
The fundamental subject of The Myth of Sisyphus is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate.
Thus declared Camus, the philosopher-novelist of the absurd, in 1955. A little later, he goes on to say:
There is but one serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions … comes afterwards. (Camus, 1955: 3)
In more general terms, the fundamental problem posed by Camus may be described as that of suffering. It is suffering in the most general terms which results in ‘nausea’ and a sense of the absurd. Let us, however, return to Camus for a disconcerting dramatisation of the absurdity of human existence:
It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. (1955: 19)
This sense of the absurd is what Frankl (1965) describes as the ‘existential vacuum’. When the ‘why’ arises it becomes insistent, almost a compulsive neurosis. The answer to this ‘why’, as Camus and Frankl would tell us, takes various forms ranging from a mild sense of discomfort to psychopathological reactions and sometimes to contemplations of suicide. In this essay, I prefer to leave aside the more general problems of the absurdity of human existence in order that I may pay attention to some specific aspects. Here I wish to refer to that form of human suffering known as illness. It must be during those particularly solitary moments in the sickbed that the ‘why’ articulates itself with the force of a sledgehammer.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Being Black in the World , pp. 57 - 64Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2019