Week 8 Study Questions

Tuesday (CR 117-24)

1. Albert Camus says that "to understand is . . . to unify" and that the mind's deepest desire is for familiarity, unity, and the absolute. What does he mean by this? Why does he think that the world frustrates this desire?

2. Camus' essay is devoted to a unique feeling or experience of an aspect of the human condition that he calls "the absurd." We experience this feeling, or become aware of this aspect of our condition, in a number of ways. For example, he says a feeling of weariness over "daily routine" and the "acts of a mechanical life" can lead sometimes lead to the feeling of absurdity. What's so absurd about daily routine? After all, daily routine is familiar and comfortable. Routine also gives unity and order to life, and our daily repeated activities are perfectly meaningful, since they are mostly devoted to promoting our life and well-being. Where's the absurdity?

3. Another way in which we might encounter the absurd is through the realization that we are mortal. Camus says that sometimes when a person "situates himself in relation to time," taking stock of how much time has passed, and recognizing the inevitability of death, this lead to a feeling of revolt that is the absurd. Why should death provoke the feeling of absurdity? Death is perfectly natural, and part of the natural order of the organic world. Why is death absurd?

4. What does Camus mean when he says that when we experience the absurd, we recognize that the world is "foreign," "strange," or "inhuman"? He says that the world loses its "illusory meaning." What meaning is he referring to, and why does he think it is an illusion?

Thursday (CR 125-32)

1. What are the "two certainties" on which the absurd depends? Camus' view of the human condition is correct only if these supposed "certainties" are true. Do you think they are?

2. Camus says of the absurd man that "all he feels" is his "irreparable innocence." Kafka, Sartre, and the narrator in Camus' own novel The Fall, on the contrary, say we are guilty. How do you think Camus would respond?

3. Why does Camus think that the fact of death means that we are not truly free? Yet he also thinks the absurd individual feels less hampered and, in a sense, "freer" than the other people do. Why?

4. In Camus' description of the mythical character of Sisyphus, he says that we "must imagine Sisyphus happy." Do you think it is possible for Sisyphus to be happy, despite his predicament?