… learning all over again to see, to be attentive, to focus consciousness; it is turning every idea and every image, in the manner of Proust, into a privileged moment (p. 20).
My experiences, my passions, my ideas, my images and memories are all that I know of this world — and they are enough. The absurd person can finally say «all is well».
I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me at the same time. They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I must carry it alone (p. 41).
Camus then follows his notions to their logical conclusions and insists that people must substitute quantity of experience for quality of experience. The purest of joys is «feeling, and feeling on this earth». Of course, this statement cannot be used to claim a hedonism as Camus's basic philosophy, but must be thought of in connection with the notion of the absurd that has been developed. Man is mortal. The world is not. A person's dignity arises from a consciousness of death, an awareness that eternal values and ideas do not exist, and a refusal to give in to the notion of hope or appeal for something that we are uncertain of and cannot know. Is it possible in the technological civilization?
The human subject is at one remove from the technological subject because the authority of the former precedes that of the latter by virtue of the instability of the dynamics of consciousness. Creativity is multidirectional: Janus has many faces, some of which are forever hidden from knowledge. Meaning occurs at the interface of what exists and what does not yet exist, the one infinitely regressive, the other infinitely progressive; hence, for example, the ambivalence of art in relation to the past, and the determining function of memory in thought. Technique is what inscribes the subject in the world where absurdity and creativity are the reciprocal conditions of the event itself, rather than of the subject. Technique is the sanction of the finite subject, because it brings to bear a multiplicity of constitutive energies upon a circumscribed occasion of meaning. This is the creative, non- transcendent obverse of Husserl's re-activation of the past: what is more urgent is to find the value of the activation of the present, its precariously creative plenitude and catastrophic self-evacuation, its paradoxical status as both temporal process and a temporal form, its inability to be either identical to itself or different from itself. The irony is that such values can only be performed, not thought; and this is precisely the motive of technology. There is no greater power, political, moral etc., that could direct at will its potential. And finally, science, especially after Hiroshima, is not a pursuit for truth any more, but for power. An emerging ideology of science is soteriology — the view that only science holds the key to the future. Science has become divine. This image of science entails a high status of experts, who all too often fail and resolve nothing. Many needs and trends are absurd. A pursuit for producing more and more at all costs and doing it faster and faster is also absurd. The latter feature strikes a blow at democracy, which is slow. Moreover, some very costly projects are launched with no clear vision for their purpose (e.g. orbital stations, space anti-nuclear defense systems), or knowing that their full power will not be used (e.g. fast cars), only because technology makes it possible. It is absurd to rely on technology as the means of increasing productivity. Specialized technology requires specialists, which easily lead to emergence of the class of technocrats. This technology results in centralized power that has to oversee, for instance, nuclear power plants.
Our civilization is characterized by an inability to leave anything in nature alone. «If it can be done, do it» is a maxim of technological civilization. Technology is the starting point for the moral imperatives of present time. Technology is the starting point of moral imperatives of modern time that make moral considerations of our forefathers, both individual and social, to seem ridiculous. Ethical considerations become irrelevant, and the sense of sanctity of life unimportant. For example, to satisfy technological needs, i.e. to do what can be done, man has manufactured weapons for mass destruction of our civilization and human beings in general. The use of such weapons would lead to a situation in which it would not be required, or moreover, it would not be possible to use technology nor any of its products. However, what is more frightening and absurd in our technological civilization is that technology does not end with «If it can be done, do it» maxim. On the contrary, this maxim is being transformed into a new maxim or imperative: «Everything that has been invented, has to be applied». This means that not only every invented weapon could be effectively manufactured, but also that every manufactured weapon had t be used effectively. We can say that we live in a civilization that has been constantly manufacturing its own apocalypse for half a century. The only thing we cannot claim with certainty is to predict the moment when it will happen.
Such conditions, to a great extent, go hand in hand with the arguments about the absurdity of life. There are different arguments which might vary from individual to individual, but the most common argument is that whatever we do as individuals throughout our life does not make any sense after a 100 years or so. Behind this argument of the absurdity of our existence is the fear of death. Inconsistency of human life makes us wonder what the ultimate goal is. Man works to earn money to pay living expenses, to create a family and take care of it, to build a career, but where does this all lead to when at the end we face death, not only individual, but also death of the whole human civilization?
Some people try to avoid absurdity by looking for wider foundations for their desires that could not be digressed from. In a way, the idea is to give life some meaning by imagining a certain role or function within something bigger than themselves. Often such meaning of life is being searched for by having a particular function or role in the society, the state, a revolution, development of mankind, scientific development or in religion. We must admit that when people take part in something big they feel that that is part of them. This makes them feel less worried about what is typical of them because they identify themselves with the big challenge that fulfills them. In this way, their life has meaning. However, we must not forget that even such a big goal can be doubtful in the same way that we doubt the goals of individual life. Since we can step aside the goals of individual life and doubt their meaning, we can do the same with any higher goal that we have set ourselves — our participation in scientific development, society, or our devotion to God. The reason for this lies in what we believe makes sense, justification and meaning of things, and that is the fact that after a certain point we do not need additional reasons. Eventually, the reason for having doubts on the limited goals of individual life initiates the existence of the same doubt in terms of any higher goal that gives support and meaning to our life. Once this fundamental doubt exists, it can not be avoided.
However, we must admit that observing ourselves from a much wider perspective than the one we have as individuals, we become observers of our own life. Being aware that we cannot do much as observers of our own life, we continue to live our life, and as Thomas Nagel says, «we dedicate ourselves to something that is nothing more but something extraordinary, similar to a ritual of an unknown religion» [281] . In this case, our unimportance as individuals and the fact that the whole mankind will disappear in the end with no trace are just metaphors that we use when we make the step forward to observe ourselves from outside and to discover that the unique form of our lives is interesting and at the same time unusual. This means that we as human beings are aware that the transcendental step is a natural thing for us humans. The absurdity of our existence faces us with a problem that requires appropriate solution. This, of course, is the way Camus approaches this question He finds support in the fact that we are anxious to avoid absurd situations. He rejects suicide as a way out from absurdity of our lives and suggests resistance and despise instead. Camus believes that we as human beings can save our own dignity by opposing the reality that does not listen to our desires, and by continuing to live despite the situation. Of course, this will not void our lives of being absurd, but it will give them a noble trait. Yet, there will be a certain amount of doubt. I would not say that our absurd guarantees so many opposing accidents to happen. Although I risk being labeled not original at the end of this essay, I would like to finish with the words of Thomas Nagel:
The absurd is one of the most human things for us; it is a manifestation of our most advanced and most interesting features. As skepticism in epistemology, the absurd is interesting because we possess a form of analyzing things — an ability to transcend ourselves in our thoughts [282] .
Anders 1980 —
