The Existential Meaning of Life (Camus)

The existential meaning of life

The meaning of life is an ethical question that is vital to our existence. Human agency is different in the ability and interest in learning about the outside world, ultimately about the meaning of one’s own existence. Numerous approaches to this topic have been offered, through religious, spiritual and philosophical standpoints. A more extensive knowledge of the topic has led me to be closest to the existential idea of what the meaning of life is.

It would be most suitable to start with the claim that humans define their own meaning of life. Most of the existential writers dedicated their works to exploring human freedom and how it leads one to ultimate responsibility for one’s own life. People are the creators of meaning of their own existence. Throughout our lives, we plan, aim for particular goals and then act according to our intentions; this shapes us, makes us an individual, different and unique in every sense.

Albert Camus addresses the issue of the meaning of life in a lot of his works, explicitly or through various metaphors. There are three main claims that Camus bases his ideas from. First of all, God is dead. Friedrich Nietzsche was the originator of this idea, however Albert Camus has taken up the idea and incorporated it in his thoughts. There are a lot of consequences from refuting the existence of God; the most important one is the simultaneous crush of all morals and values that were believed to be presented to us by a Higher Being, God, Gods, mythological creatures. Another claim is that life is absurd. Life is absurd for a number of different reasons. Life is absurd because in search for meaning in life, most humans find themselves at a dead-end, without finding what they were looking for, and getting lost even more. Life is absurd because of the overwhelming freedom, which a human being is granted with by existence of thereof. Life is absurd for one fails in understanding what the purpose of it all...