In the writings and works of Camus, two forms of hope are placed over against each other: infinite hope and finite hope.
Both forms of hope arise from out of our coming face to face with the absurd, with the absurdity of existence, and thus assume their force.
For Camus, infinite hope indicates a certain negating of the absurd, a decision to escape the lucidity only belonging to the absurd. Finite hope, on the other hand, is hoping whilst remaining in the space that the absurd opens up. Finite hope is an absurd hope; the hope of the absurd, hoping despite everything.
Infinite Hope as a Philosophical Suicide
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus says that he is interested “not so much in absurd discoveries as in their consequences”, for the absurd, according to Camus, leads one to either “dying voluntarily” or “hoping in spite of everything”.
Hence, in the thinking of Camus, “hoping” is itself placed over against “dying voluntarily”. This opposing of “hoping” to “dying” shows that the space reserved for thinking hope in Camus’s writings and works is central, since “dying voluntarily”, or suicide, is that against which the whole thinking of Camus is directed in its thinking and confirming of the absurd.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus speaks of and discusses two kinds of suicide: physical suicide as the actual event of killing oneself and philosophical suicide, taking place as faith through leaping.
Camus rejects both forms of suicide and says that the lucidity belonging to the absurd must be confirmed and maintained and that “dying voluntarily” is nothing but an attempt at escaping the meaning and the value that the absurd has rendered present and available to us.
The Myth of Sisyphus is itself a long, non-systematic, and non-structured argument against “dying voluntarily” in its two forms. (The article, Camus On The Kinds Of Suicide, introduces and discusses Camus’s arguments against physical suicide and philosophical suicide)
Camus’s refusal of “dying voluntarily”, of suicide in its two forms, does not mean that he simply and directly accepts hope. Camus’s attitude toward hope, toward any attempt at hoping, is neither simple nor optimistic.
In Hope and the Absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka, Camus says that Kafka rediscovers hoping and brings hope back into a world where hope has faded away, disappeared, and become completely absent.
Yet, this rediscovering and this bringing back, according to Camus, resemble, repeat, and follow the same detours of Kierkegaard’s “philosophical suicide”, Kierkegaard’s attempts at killing every “earthly hope”, for “only then can we be saved by true hope”.
This means that Camus brings together Kafka’s hoping and Kierkegaard’s leaping into the same place and hence renders them related, close to each other, and linked together.
This bringing together of Kafka and Kierkegaard into the same place, opened up by their carrying out different yet the same philosophical suicides, makes apparent that, for Camus, it is not any hoping that is required, but rather a very specific form of hope.
In Hope and the Absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka, Camus says that Kafka “refuses his god moral nobility, evidence, virtue, coherence, but only the better to fall into his arms”, and notices that in the writings of Kafka “the absurd is recognized, accepted and man is resigned to it, but from then on we know that it has ceased to be the absurd. Within the limits of the human condition, what greater hope than the hope that allows an escape from that condition? As I see once more, existential thought in this regard (and contrary to current opinion) is steeped in a vast hope”.
All “existential thought”, including Kafka’s work, for Camus, is linked together by the same hope attempting to escape the absurd, by hoping to negate and deny the absurd. There is hoping in Kafka’s work, but it is only directed toward endeavoring to leave the absurd behind by leaping into what kills all “earthly hope”.
That is, it is not that Kafka does not recognize and come face to face with the absurd, but rather that he accepts the absurd only as long as this accepting negates and hollows out the absurd and hence renders it empty and powerless. This is why Camus asks: “How can one fail to see the mark of a lucidity that repudiates itself?”
This hoping to evade the absurd, this attempt at negating the absurd by leaving it behind through leaping into what kills all “earthly hope”, is a lucidity repudiating itself. This form of hoping is a philosophical suicide.
According to Camus, there exists in Kafka’s work “an attempt to recapture God through what negates Him, to recognize Him not through the categories of goodness or beauty, but behind the empty and hideous aspect of His indifference, of His injustice and of His hatred”.
Hence, there appears to be a distance, intentionally inserted by Camus himself, separating Camus’s work and hoping from each other, since hope, for Camus, implies a belief in the eternal, a belief that takes place only when lucidity repudiates and negates itself in itself and only when there is a leap of faith that allows an escaping from the absurd to be carried out.
Camus’s view that recognizing the absurd “implies a total absence of hope” confirms and makes firmer the distance separating Camus’s work from any attempt at hoping. Yet Camus’s insisting that “total absence of hope” “has nothing to do with despair” shows how non-simple and non-linear the relatedness, into which Camus brings hope and the absurd together, is.
Finite, Absurd, and Lucid Hope
When Camus says that hope is “an attempt to recapture God”, he appears to be speaking of a very specific way of hoping, a certain hope that is turned toward the eternal and is thus an infinite hope emerging from out a certain leap into the unknown.
Hence, Camus’s arguing against hope is thus not a refusal of hope in general, but rather a rejection of only one manner of hoping; it is a refusal of the hope that is turned toward the eternal and is thus infinite.
In Camus’s works, this infinite hope constantly finds itself placed over against another form of hoping, which is, earthly, finite, and lucid, that is, absurd. For instance, in Caligula and The Plague, there is hope and hoping takes place, but only as what is finite and lucid. The place of this hope is the relations between people, the relations linking together people with each other in the world. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus speaks of a distinction:
“There is hope and hope. To me the optimistic work of Henri Bordeaux seems peculiarly discouraging. This is because it has nothing for the discriminating. Malraux’s thought on the other hand is always bracing. But in these two cases neither the same hope nor the same despair is at issue”
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Camus thus speaks of two kinds of hope. There is an infinite hope occurring as a philosophical suicide in the works and leaps of Kierkegaard and Kafka, and there is another hope, which is finite and lucid.
Finite hope, according to Camus, does not attempt to either escape or negate the absurd; it allows human beings to think their absurd existence philosophically and ethically without ever endeavoring to leave the absurd behind, toward and into the eternal and the infinite. Finite hope is an earthly hope, a worldly hoping that is not turned toward the eternal in its thinking of and relating to itself.
Finite hope is an absurd hope, the hope of the absurd, in its lucidity, in its realizing and recognition of the boundaries limiting the scope of human comprehension. To this realization and recognition belong, according to Camus, a rejection of any endeavor to transgress the limitedness of what human consciousness could glimpse and observe, and a refusal of any attempt at escaping or negating what human consciousness has rendered apparent and clear, that is, the absurd itself.
This means that when Camus says that “the absurd is the contrary of hope” or that coming face to face with the absurd “implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair)”, he is only speaking of the infinite hope, to which the works of Kafka and Kierkegaard belong.
Camus opposes his way of hoping, or finite hope, to Kafka’s and Kierkegaard’s infinite hope. Finite hope arises from out of the absurd and belongs to it; it belongs to and responds to the human condition.
In this belonging to the absurdity of existing, finite hope is pervaded by the Sisyphean scorn, which is the origin of rebellion. The Sisyphean scorn is what prevents finite hope from ever nearing or becoming infinite hope. Scorn is the distance separating both forms of hope from each other. Scorn is the scope into which the force of the absurd extends itself as that from out of which rebellion emerges and announces itself.