Is the absurdism of Camus a form of nihilism? Is the absurd nihilistic? What is that which leads to solidarity and to what extent could solidarity save and distance the absurd subject from nihilism?
Seeing the absurd and nihilism as closely related or as even leading to each other is justified and expected because there are in Camus’s writings direct and indirect suggestions that nihilism is inescapable.
That is, there are in Camus’s writings scattered assumptions and signs implying or indicating that nihilism is one of the inevitable consequences of encountering the absurd, of coming face to face with the meaninglessness lying at the heart of human existence and acknowledging its force.
For instance, Camus’s announcement that “everything is permitted” appears to be placing the absurd and nihilism into the same site and rendering them closely related or perhaps even equal, for if “everything is permitted”, then nothing is forbidden.
Another example showing how nihilism and absurdism come close to each other in Camus’s writings is the cruelties and brutalities of Caligula. That is, what the conspirators in Caligula carry out and attempt to bring about indicate or make apparent that nihilism is one of the inevitable consequences of absurdism or that there is no boundary separating nihilism from absurdism.
This nearness of absurdism to nihilism is something that Camus denies and repeatedly argues against. Camus says that “everything is permitted” does not necessarily mean that nothing is forbidden because the absurd “does not liberate, it binds. It does not authorize all actions”.
The absurd, Camus says, “does not recommend crime, for this would be childish, but it restores to remorse its futility”. In his review of Sartre’s Nausea, Camus announces that the “realization that life is absurd cannot be an end in itself but only a beginning”.
The realization that meaninglessness holds sway or that the silence of the world is unavoidable is the beginning of the journey toward finding and creating human values. The absurd, Camus says, acknowledges and welcomes the possibility of creating human and earthly values.
This welcoming or this preparedness to create values is what distances Camus’s absurdism not only from nihilism, but also from Kierkegaard’s thinking-philosophizing, since nihilism is the perpetual and intentional rejection of all values, and since Kierkegaard’s thinking-philosophizing escapes the absurd by committing philosophical suicide in its turning toward the infinite.
In other words, the difference between Camus’s thinking and both nihilism and Kierkegaard’s thinking-philosophizing is that Camus attempts to create earthly or human values from out of the meaninglessness lying at the heart of human existence, whereas nihilism negates all values and every valuing and Kierkegaard negates the earthly by turning toward the infinite.
Camus insists that his thinking thinks against, and is thus distanced from, the injustice, violence, and cruelty of history, our history. He renders equal thinking and fighting and says that his thinking is a fighting against the “darkest nihilism”, an endeavor to “transcend our darkest nihilism”:
Like all men of my age, I grew up to the sound of the drums of the First World War, and our history since that time has remained murder, injustice, or violence. But real pessimism, which does exist, lies in outbidding all this cruelty and shame. For my part, I have never ceased fighting against this dishonor, and I hate only the cruel. I have sought only reasons to transcend our darkest nihilism. Not, I would add, through virtue, nor because of some rare elevation of the spirit, but from an instinctive fidelity to a light in which I was born, and in which for thousands of years men have learned to welcome life even in suffering…To the unworthy but nonetheless stubborn sons of Greece who still survive in this emaciated century, the scorching heat of our history may seem unendurable, but they endure it in the last analysis because they want to understand it. In the center of our work, dark though it may be, shines an inexhaustible sun, the same sun that shouts today across the hills and plain.
Albert Camus, Personal Writings
In the space, opened up and first made possible because of this welcoming, this welcoming of suffering, the sun shines and, in its shining, reveals a path leading to that from out of which the attempts at challenging, negating, and transcending nihilism emerge.
Human Solidarity as a Response to Absurdism
Human solidarity announces itself in Camus’s writings as a possible response to absurdism. For instance, Caligula and The Plague are two examples showing how the coming together of people could challenge the holding sway of the absurd and lead to revolt.
Solidarity as the coming together of people around each other into the same site is what links absurdism together with revolt in Camus’s writings. Camus says that this coming together of people around each other, this togetherness as solidarity, is the only luxury for the absurd subject. For Camus, human relations form the ground from which the fight against nihilism arises.
According to Camus, because suffering permeates human existence, it allows people to come together and form a togetherness in the face of the lack that it inserts into existence.
In other words, the absurd subject, Camus says, realizes sooner or later that the meaninglessness pervading its own existence is itself the same meaninglessness defining and deciding human existence in its entirety.
That is, the absurd subject eventually realizes that its own condition is itself the human condition regarding the holding sway of emptiness, silence, strangeness, and meaninglessness. This realization brings people together, for it makes clear that everyone suffers from the same loss, emptiness, and strangeness.
In The Rebel, Camus says that the coming together of people around each other allows the absurd subject to realize that suffering is not individual. This realization renders valuing possible and leads to the emergence of what should be considered the “first value”:
Suffering is individual. But from the moment when a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience. Therefore, the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe . . . this evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel – therefore we exist.
Albert Camus, The Rebel
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