← See the axis · The meaning of life
ArgumentHolding out without cheating
A life can be fully worth living without a meaning beyond it: to recognize the absurd and hold it in lucid revolt is to reclaim one's life without cheating.
Supports
Camus ·
- Our reason demands a meaning, a reason to be; the world, for its part, stays silent. From this confrontation between our demand and the muteness of things arises the .
- Two escapes present themselves, equally dishonest: hope, which invents a hidden meaning so as not to see the silence; and renunciation, up to suicide, which removes the demand so as to suffer the silence no longer.
- There remains a third path, the only lucid one: to hold both terms without reconciling them, to keep the demand for meaning while looking the silence in the face. This is , paid for by neither illusion nor abdication.
Therefore So a life can be fully worth living without a meaning beyond it: its worth lies in the lucidity and intensity of the revolt, not in an answer that will not come.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely