Preview

Albert Camus Views On Life Without Meaning

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1846 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Albert Camus Views On Life Without Meaning
We ask ourselves everyday if our life has meaning. We view our lives and others' lives in different ways. I agree with life being viewed as a game, and life as learning is adding meaning to our life. I disagree with life having no meaning at all. Every human being views life differently and believes your life is influenced by different ideas and lessons. Life as a game creates a theory that we can't just take our lives too seriously or else we won't be happy and feel as if we have fulfilled our lives and/or our purpose on earth. In our textbook it says if you believe your life is a game, you must pick the type of game you wish to play in your life. You can play games that are purely for fun, for superiority, social, hurting your opponents, …show more content…
Albert Camus said in his book The Myth of Sisyphus that "the absurd had become a widespread sensibility in our times." He also relates life having no meaning at all to atheism. If there is no external meaning, then he believes there is no point in life. If life had no meaning then wouldn't we careless about our future and live for that moment. If life has no meaning then would we be in school trying to receive a quality education? Albert Camus believes that most humans are frightened by the idea of living on earth with no purpose to life. And this allows humans to create a purpose to live.
In our textbook it states a quote from his book, "The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of it own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor." This to me means that when you are asked to conquer something that is impossible for you to accomplish, then it is the worse thing that would happen in your life. This makes you feel like you have failed at what god has asked you to
…show more content…
Each and every one of us has our own opinion of life and if it has meaning. We truly can't look up the definition in the dictionary and believe that is what life is. We need to look at our personal situations, as well as experiences to see how it molds our view of what life means. The definition of life from The American College Dictionary states "a corresponding state, existence, or principle of existence conceived as belonging to the soul." This to me means that as long as we have a presence on earth they have life on earth. This definition isn't the only one about life; we create our own meaning which is molded to our

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The meaning of life is not an easy thing to talk about among common people. They do not like to question whether or not their life has a meaning to it, for they have the fear that the answer will be: no. Then again, another problem with that question is that everyone has a different idea about what makes life meaningful. Some people may think that having a high-paying job is meaningful, while another person may think have a family and not worry about money is meaningful. I have learned that their have been many discussions over the subject of life and meaning, but most of the time these discussions take place at one o’clock in the morning at some college bar, which people are not able to remember the conversations the next day, although that may or may not be a good thing. I now realize that the meaning of life is not an appropriate subject for everyday life, but I will continue to discuss it in hushed conversations with friends, during a secrete…

    • 680 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What is life for human beings ? Is a life of mere existence worth living? Is that what we want? Or do we want to be just like McCandless and actually live life to the fullest by taking chances to discover our deeper selves. I'm not saying we should all go do something that we want to and go die. What I'm saying is that life is…

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I believe our lives are similar to the fate of Sisyphu because of the way life is perceived after death. He was given an endless, meaningless task that can be compared to the things we do in our own lives. Sisyphus showed through his actions that he would rather help his friends and family than to blindly follow the tyranny of Zeus. In The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, he wrote, “He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on condition that Esopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water.”(2) Sisyphus, although a wise man, rebelled against the will of the gods and deferred to give his friend peace of mind.…

    • 499 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The meaning of life is different to everyone. In the book “First they killed my father“ there are many examples of what Loung considered the meaning of life. She suggests that the meaning of life is to have a full loving family to count on. She shows this by being sentimental over her mother's belongings, the way she admires Pa (her father), the thought she put into how her father was killed, the grief she felt when she realized Geak and her mother were killed, when she was holding back tears when she thought about how Ma, Pa, Keav, and Geak could never make it to America. “Chou and I come home to find Kim in the corner of the hut watching the mother go through our things. I climb the steps and sit by him, holding in my anger” (Ung 133). Her…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Metaphors In The Family

    • 1628 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Viewing life as a game can impact the way we think about our lives. You may feel that life is a game and that you are always competing; or that the decisions were already made for you before you were born, and you’re simply playing the cards you were dealt. Either way, thinking about life as a game can be very powerful and living life as though the “book is already written” has its own positive effects. It depends on how we choose to view…

    • 1628 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The real standard of existentialism is the dismissal of God, which is extremely apparent in Camus' The Stranger, where the protagonist, Meursault, declines the idea of God's existence. Most of the existentialists believed that there are two replacements for the issue of God, either individuals are not free and God, the supreme, is in charge of shrewdness; or individuals are free and dependable yet God is not supreme. When it comes to Meursault, the second option appears to be a more grounded likelihood, which implies that God is not almighty, and man gets to be god, who likes to stay and face the world and its absurdity by battling against it. Though Camus did not consider himself as a part of The Theatre of Absurd, most of his works were witnessed to be somehow related to the idea of how the world is an absurd place. Therefore, though he refused to be labelled as a existentialist, he is considered to be one.…

    • 425 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    4. The Mesopotamian view of the meaning of life is to live life to the fullest. Mortal life is short so it should be enjoyed and treasured in the short time span that we have.…

    • 1545 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the main reasons Thoreau went to the woods was to learn what life really is. He wanted to know that when he came to die, he wouldn’t discover that he has not yet lived. He says “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow out of life” getting everything he can out it. Thoreau said that most people are here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.” But they are coming to a conclusion to quickly. You will get the full genuine meaningless of life when you reduce it to its lowest terms and learn from what it has to offer you.…

    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Question of Meaning or Purpose is answered by the Hinduism Worldview as everything is an illusion. "Like a dream or a mirage, our life and everything around us does not really exist as we know it"(Weider & Gutierrez, 2011). Its believed that if a person does not grow to understand that concept that they will remain in the lifecycle of birth, death, rebirth.…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Richard Taylor states that before he addresses the purpose of life, he must first describe a meaningless life. A meaningless is best described through the life of Sisyphus. Sisyphus betrayed the gods by providing divine secrets to mortals, and as a consequence, he was giving a meaningless task of rolling a huge stone to the top of a hill. This task was meaningless because there was no significance behind this task. He would push a stone to the top just to have the stone fall back down and continue this same task for all eternity. Taylor continues to address the purpose of life by stating, “ Sisyphus’ existence would have meaning if there were some point to his labors…” In other words, the point of living a meaningful life is simply to be living…

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever wondered what was the purpose of life was? The purpose of life is confusing and there are many questions to answer. Well, one person had done an experiment on himself for two years in the woods and his name Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau wanted to know about the purpose of life. So, on July 4, 1845, he went to Concord, Massachusetts in to Walden’s woods near a pond. During his two years in the woods, he wrote a journal explaining about the purpose of life at the woods.…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In his work he gives several proofs that life itself is pointless and devoid of value. (Schopenhauer, n.d.) He says “All our striving is in vain because of death; the goal of our being is non-being”. The one I will focus on is his proof via the existence of boredom (as it shows up in several of its works). From Schopenhauer’s essay On The Vanity of Existence, the proof goes like this: the fact that boredom exists is a direct proof for the meaningless of life. If existence had any meaning, it would fulfill us all of the time. Man by nature has needs: hunger, sleep, sensual, curiosity, academic, etc. Man is constantly striving to satisfy these things. Some are easier to satisfy than others. However, once these have been satisfied, we enters a state of “painlessness,” but that only leads to boredom. As Schopenhauer puts it “boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence. For if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfill and satisfy us.” Schopenhauer goes on to say we only take real pleasure in existence when we are striving towards something, otherwise boredom, the emptiness of existence, consumes us. All of this leads Schopenhauer to believe that human life in itself must be some sort of a mistake. I have even heard the phrase from an unknown source: “we are evolved chemical byproducts that have tragically achieved self awareness.” An evolved chemical byproduct stuck hurling away on a rock through an indifferent universe; a universe who does not care whether we live, die, succeed, or…

    • 3074 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chapter one in the book “The Achievement Habit," by Bernard Roth, explains how nothing is what we think it is. Bernard Roth is a professor of engineering at Stanford University. He has been teaching there for over 50 years. He wrote this book to teach us how to get a better handle on our perceptions, emotions, and behavior. I agree with Roth’s statement of “nothing is what we think it is.”…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Camus 's The Stranger, illustrates the absurdity of human existence. Through Meursault 's bereavement, Camus emphasizes his philosophy that individual human life has no rational order or structure. Also, as life is connected through the certainty of death, it inevitably faces the same meaningless end. Camus ridicules the inanity of dogmatic systems as an attempt to establish meaning in an otherwise trivial existence.…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Views Towards Death

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Nihilism is a belief which argues that there’s no meaning to life. Nihilists think that life is lack of explanations and purposes. If it’s true that there’s nothing left after death, what will be the values of experiences, relations, and discoveries? In nihilists’ belief, there are no reasons and values for all of them. There are no goals to life, and the cycle of creation and destruction lack sense, purpose and reasons.…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays