Is meaning inscribed in things?
On the axis: The meaning of life · the order of things
Does the world carry an order or design that precedes us, as the Stoics and providentialisms hold, or is it silent? Constructing one's meaning, revolting, or renouncing all share the same starting point: nothing is given.
Justification
The cosmos is a single living being pervaded by the , the divine reason; man is a part of it endowed with a fragment of that reason. « Living according to nature » therefore means living according to reason, one's own and that of the whole, which coincides with virtue. The meaning of existence is not to be invented: it lies in the right place one holds within the rational order, against an Epicurean world of indifferent atoms.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations · Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, book II
Justification
Two terms are equally certain for Camus: the human mind demands unity and meaning, and the world stays silent before that demand. lodges in neither term but in their divorce, in the confrontation itself: it is therefore neither a property of the world nor a defect in man, but a relation that cannot be dissolved without suppressing one of its terms. So meaning is neither given in advance nor purely absent: no transcendent meaning fills the divorce, yet the man who holds it without fleeing forges values in the present, hence a share of constructed meaning.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) · The Rebel (1951)
Justification
The world has neither providence nor hidden harmony: this is a tragic outlook, in which man faces an indifferent universe that does not answer his demand. Camus nonetheless keeps this lucidity clear of despair, which makes it an accepted tragic stance rather than a nihilism.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) · Nuptials (1939)
Anchors: the Stoics · Camus
leads to: Tonality of reality