THE RESTLESS SOUL’S SEARCH FOR AN EXISTENTIAL JUSTIFICATION:
AN EXPLORATION OF THE MEANING OF LIFE CONSIDERING FYODOR
DOSTOEVSKY AND ALBERT CAMUS
by
BIYING CHEN
Bachelor of Arts in General Studies with Distinction, Trinity Western University, 2020
Thesis
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS in INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES (PHILOSOPHY)
in the
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY

October 2024
© Biying Chen, 2024

ii

Dedication

To my mother, Li Meiru, whose strength and love continue to inspire me. As I reach the age
you were when you left this world, I carry your memory with me in all my endeavor.

iii

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Robert P. Doede, who has
been an invaluable academic mentor and a caring father figure in my life. Thank you for your
unwavering support, both emotionally and intellectually, throughout this journey.
I am also deeply grateful to my friend Lindsey Cai, whose companionship during the thesiswriting process made the long hours not only bearable but also enjoyable. Additionally, I
wish to thank my friend Kirat Saran for your support and assistance with the editing process.
Thank you all for being an integral part of this chapter in my life.

iv
Abstract
Human identity, its relationship to the universe, and the implications of death are
significant to philosophical inquiry. Though such questions elude complete resolution, they
are crucial to how individuals navigate lives. Failure to address them leads to a crisis of
meaning in most people, confronting them with the absurd. This thesis examines Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s faith and Albert Camus’ rebellion, aiming to address contemporary
metaphysical concerns through the two thinkers’ responses to the absurd. While definitive
answers may be elusive, I argue that Camus’ love for life and humanity creates a meaning
that humans can comprehend, and therefore, is to be preferred to Dostoevsky’s embracing of
faith, because human love is the only certain source of salvation and meaning that humanity
can attain in the face of transcendental uncertainty. I believe that our instinctive attachment to
life and each unique experience help fill the void left by the absence of transcendental
meaning. Ultimately, acknowledging the limits of reason, embracing this void with
reverence, and remaining open to the unknown allow for growth and exploration within life’s
mysteries.

v
Table of Contents
Dedication

ii

Acknowledgements

iii

Abstract

iv

Introduction

1-5

Chapter I

The Frightening Discovery: Absurdity

6-24

Chapter II

Dostoevsky’s Solution: Faith in Immortality

25-41

Chapter III

Camus’ Solution: Rebellion

42-70

Chapter IV

Morality Without God

72-97

Conclusion

The Unsolvable Human Predicament

98-104

Bibliography

105-108

1
Introduction
“Everyone’s toil is for their mouth, yet their appetite is never satisfied.”
Ecclesiastes 6:7, NIV.
Man is bound closely with the earth, yet the earth cannot fulfill his entire being. At some
point in his life, man starts feeling uncomfortable and uncertain about his existence, longing
for something that he is unable to articulate clearly. Bread is enough to satisfy his appetite,
but he continues to crave something else. And this craving is intensified every time its objects
fail to satisfy it. Consequently, man is distressed even if all his physical needs are met. His
unidentified nostalgia distinguishes him from other living things and vaguely suggests that
man may have another homeland. With this troublesome feeling of incompleteness and
dissatisfaction, man starts his search for answers that may help him achieve existential
serenity.
Who am I? Why do I exist? Is life worth living? Is death the end? Is there a God? If so, is
He responsible for everything? Fundamental questions like these have pressed on humans for
ages, as evidenced in ancient texts like Ecclesiastes. However, while the existential crisis is
not solely a modern phenomenon, it has intensified in contemporary society. Therefore, this
thesis will primarily focus on the existential issues relevant to contemporary individuals, as
modern existential concerns are especially relevant to us today.1 Individuals struggling with
these questions bitterly realizes that they have undertaken a difficult, if not impossible, task.
It is difficult because the questions that arise in their hearts are unanswerable by the material
world. Nevertheless, they are essential to human existence, for the failure to respond
inevitably leads man to existential crises. It is precisely for this reason that Fyodor
Dostoevsky and Albert Camus are worth studying.
Dostoevsky and Camus are explorers of the human soul, writing both about and for
human beings. Both writers were deeply afflicted by these existential questions themselves.
They understand the reality and seriousness of metaphysical suffering, and that solving it is
necessary if man is to go on living. Embracing their responsibility as artists, Dostoevsky and
Camus dedicated themselves to understanding human nature and the mysteries of existence.
1

When I use terms like “man,” “mankind,” “human beings,” or other words that represent
humans, I am focusing on contemporary individuals.

2
Both thinkers employed a medium of novelistic fiction to experiment with and convey their
philosophical ideas. In their novels, Dostoevsky and Camus used philosophical frameworks
to guide their characters, demonstrating how their complex and abstract ideas take form in
practical reality of everyday life. These philosophical novels not only allow readers to engage
with the authors’ intellectual insights but also provide a vivid depiction of how such ideas
can be allied and what their consequences might entail.
In this thesis, I examine and compare the ideas of Dostoevsky and Camus, bringing their
thoughts into conversation. While their perspectives diverge in many ways, they also overlap
significantly. This thesis facilitates a dialogue between Dostoevsky and Camus that
transcends the boundaries of time and place. Through this imagined conversation, I explore
their varying or shared views on similar existential issues. Their points of agreement and
divergence not only enhance my understanding of these profound questions but also deepen
my own existential inquiry. Building upon their ideas, I aim to construct a personal attitude
toward life and an answer to existence that resonates with me at this stage of my journey.
Dostoevsky and Camus start their searches from a similar departure point, that is, the
discovery of the absurd. The absurd that Dostoevsky and Camus discuss is “an absurd
sensitivity” rather than “an absurd philosophy.”2 It is a direct experience of life’s opacity and
lack of unity. Dostoevsky writes in A Writer’s Dairy that the feeling of life’s
incomprehensibility is “a direct feeling, and I cannot overcome it.”3 Camus points out that
the feeling of the absurd is different from the notion of the absurd. More specifically, the
feeling of the absurd lays the foundation for the notion of the absurd and “is not limited to
that notion.”4 In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus defines the feeling of the absurd as a “divorce
between man and his life,” which occurs “in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and
lights.”5 This disillusionment happens because the human heart’s “wild longing for clarity”6
2

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (New York: Vintage International, 2018), 2.

3

Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 229.

4

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 28.

5

Camus, 6.

6

Camus, 21.

3
cannot be fully satisfied in a world where the irrational is also a part. Without a coherent,
clear explanation of existence—of past, present, and future—man “feels an alien, a stranger,”
as he is “deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.”7 Although
Dostoevsky does not explicitly define the feeling of the absurd, based on his works, it can be
understood as an anguish about existence that arises from the inability to clearly comprehend
life and death.
Both thinkers discern that human existence requires a coherent explanation that can
enlighten man about his identity and purpose. However, man finds no satisfactory
explanations on earth; when he turns to the sky, he receives an interminable silence. While
there are scriptures, revelations, and natural laws, these sources often leave one feeling
incomplete, ambiguous, and unable to fully dispel existential uncertainty, as they either fail to
fully address existential questions or require belief beyond human comprehension. Man’s
urgent inquiry, hence, becomes a metaphysical dead-end. The lack of a firm existential
foundation shakes man’s whole being and consequently leaves him with the feeling of
perplexity and anguish. He does not understand his existence, but he has the inherent need of
understanding. It is under such circumstances that man feels restless and encounters the
absurd.
The discovery of the absurd is important, even necessary, because any meaningful search
for the truth of human existence begins here. Man’s realization of the lack of meaning and
justification drives him to re-examine his existing knowledge and perceive the emergency of
constructing something out of this collapse. Although Dostoevsky and Camus depart from
the same place, they diverge significantly in their response to absurdity. The two thinkers, if
they could speak across time and space, would have conducted penetrating dialogue by
challenging one another. In fact, Camus initiates a dialogue with Dostoevsky when he
interacts in his writings with some of Dostoevsky’s characters in a critical but highly
appreciative manner. Camus’s writing, in a sense, can be seen as a response to some of
Dostoevsky’s beliefs and struggles. The Algerian writer shares many of Dostoevsky’s
concerns and struggles, but, in the end, Camus navigates a different road than Dostoevsky to
deal with life.

7

Camus, 6.

4
This thesis begins by discussing the shared starting point of Dostoevsky and Camus—the
absurd. It delves into the causes that provoke the experience of absurdity, the existential
suffering it brings, and the dreadful consequences it may lead to. Building on this foundation,
the thesis further examines the different countermeasures each thinker takes to combat the
absurd, and the different philosophies of life they derive from their battles.
For Dostoevsky, the root cause of existential anguish lies in the loss of faith in
immortality. He chooses faith as a way to combat the absurd and the ensuing nihilism,
believing that connecting with immortality is humanity’s only solution in an absurd world.
He is convinced that only through Christ can human beings find the true meaning of life,
genuinely love one another, and attain hope for both this life and the afterlife. In contrast,
Camus argues that humans must confront the absurd directly, without disguising it with any
illusory meaning. Through a lucid and persistent struggle, they must fully experience the
transient life while continuously striving for earthly happiness. He believes that collective
moral constraints, human solidarity, and the fight against evil and injustice are enough to
establish a kingdom on earth—without the need for transcendental support—where
individuals can find fulfillment in the present.
After examining and comparing the intellectual journeys and solutions proposed by
Dostoevsky and Camus, I will present my own judgments in the concluding chapter. Building
on their ideas, I will discard the elements I find unconvincing, embrace those that deeply
resonate with me, and modify aspects that I find unsatisfactory. In doing so, I will attempt to
articulate my own justification of human existence: Life possesses absolute value, even if the
source of that value remains obscure. Our instinctive attachment to life, our direct
experiences, and the beauty and love we perceive—without the intervention of reason—all
demonstrate that reason is not the sole filter for understanding life. In fact, both reason and
irrationality8 are equally important, working together to form the complexity of human
nature.
8

I do not see reason and the irrationality as absolute binary; rather, I see them as domains
with distinct functions and boundaries. While life certainly encompasses more than just these two
categories, this categorization is used here to facilitate discussion. By making this distinction, I aim to
highlight the areas in which reason and irrationality operate independently while acknowledging that
both are integral to the full spectrum of human experience. Reason, as I define it, refers to a mode of
inquiry reliant on evidence, logic, and empirical verification—its validity is confined to the
observable world and verifiable experience. In contrast, irrationality addresses areas beyond the scope

5
Recognizing the limits of human intellect allows us to approach life and the unknown
with reverence, accepting the opacity and void inherent in human existence and the universe,
while maintaining a sense of curiosity that allows life to gradually reveal itself to us. What
we should do is to remain open to the unknown and avoid becoming overly attached to any
particular theory. After all, no single theory can fully explain life. Although we may not find
ultimate answers or definitive explanations for human existence, we can embrace life as it
unfolds and continuously learn from each unique experience. Understanding life is an
ongoing exploration, and we gain new insights as we navigate each day.

of reason’s confirmation, such as questions of meaning and transcendence. It entails embracing truths
that may lack empirical proof but hold personal significance within a framework of belief.
Additionally, non-quantifiable elements like emotional responses, instincts, love and passion are
classified as irrational, as they involve dimensions of experience that reason alone cannot fully
capture. I do not intend to simplify complex realities; rather, I seek to bring clarity to their respective
contributions to our understanding of the human experience.

6
Chapter I
The Frightening Discovery: Absurdity
“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a
chasing after the wind.”
Ecclesiastes 1:14, NIV.
v Triggers of absurdity: Mortality and Consciousness
The instinct to survive and the inertia of the acquired habits of life are enough to keep a
person functioning in daily life. Life in this mode seems natural, daily affairs are familiar,
and human efforts are directed towards something purposeful. The struggle for food,
clothing, shelter, and basic emotional needs is enough to engage a person in daily life. He
could continue so peacefully if he does not become aware of his mortality, for this awareness
triggers the experience of absurdity.
Death is frightening because it is a dreadful unknown that opposes everything that human
beings comprehend and enjoy. But even more frightening is the devastating impact of the
awareness of death on existing certainties. Mortality breaks “the chain of daily gestures,”9 as
Camus puts it, leaving man in shock and turmoil. It is as if for the first time, man suddenly
catches a glimpse of the terrible reality of life— “Men die; and they are not happy.”10 With
this discovery, he starts questioning the usefulness of his daily struggles and inevitably feels
discouraged because the harsh fact of mortality leads him to this conclusion: ultimately
nothing lasts, and nothing matters. Everything he does or cares about is as futile as
constructing sand sculptures.
Dostoevsky writes unless man is “a flower or a cow,” it is impossible for him to obtain
happiness since he is conscious that everything that brings him joy will be annihilated when
death comes.11 Likewise, Camus writes, “If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals,
this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to

9

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 12.

10

Camus, Caligula and Three Other Plays (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 8.

11

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 229.

7
this world.”12 Unfortunately, man is conscious of both the world and his mortality, as well as
the possibility of a transcendent existence beyond his understanding. This consciousness sets
man forever “in opposition to all creation.”13 Being aware of and facing the reality of death is
truly unfortunate because it compels humans to confront the inevitability of loss, making it
difficult to find lasting happiness and leaving them in a perpetual struggle with their
existential condition. How can a man be happy when he is aware of his existential condition?
The awareness of mortality not only robs people of the possibility of happiness, it also
destroys their motivation to be active in life. If death is the inescapable fate of all, and
callously turns everything into nothingness, why, then, bother to strive for anything? Because
of mortality, everything is as transient as fleeting clouds. Human affairs are no longer serious
matters but rather become “merely an amusing game, or tiresome”14 and therefore not worth
continuing. As Dostoevsky’s character Kirillov expresses, “Life is pain, life is fear, and man
is unhappy.”15 This state of mind will naturally lead to the destructive realization of the
futility of life itself. The question evolves from whether my daily efforts are worthwhile to
whether my life is worth living.
The answer does not seem promising. Camus observes, “Animals take pleasure and die,
man marvels and he dies.”16 Human lives and animal lives are equally meaningless because
of mortality. This is indeed a depressing discovery. The awareness of the transitory nature of
human life generates a sense of indifference and precludes man from committing to life. At
the very least, it decreases his enthusiasm and downgrades his certainty towards life. It does
not seem to matter whether he dies young or lives a long life, since in either case he “would
still be the one dying.”17 Continuing to live and live with all these struggles, therefore, seems
pointless. People who come to this realization no longer belong to the slumbering crowd of

12

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 51.

13

Camus, 51.

14

Camus, The Fall (New York: Vintage International,1991), 86-87.

15

Dostoevsky, Demons (New York: Vintage Classics, 1995), 115.

16

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 328.

17

Camus, The Stranger (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 114.

8
which they were once a part. They are outsiders of life because their hearts are filled with
existential perplexity and melancholy. They no longer feel serenity and hesitate to engage
with life because they are deeply troubled by its futility. The flow of daily life becomes rather
absurd when seen from this lens.
The confrontation with mortality triggers a deep existential inquiry within humans,
revealing that the true source of suffering lies not only in the inevitability of death but in the
acute awareness of it, which underscores the limitations of material existence in providing
meaningful answers. This awareness arouses a quest for an explanation that could unite all
the pieces of life’s puzzle. And yet, such an explanation seems nowhere to be found. Between
the confrontation of his ability to think and the unfound answer lies his tragedy. His suffering
is metaphysical. A cure is difficult to find in this material world, as it cannot provide humans
with the transcendental meaning that explains life and death.
Humans are superior to animals because they are conscious of themselves. And for the
same reason, they are much more miserable than animals. Consciousness, therefore, is both a
gift and a curse. Well-aware of the double-edged sword of consciousness, Dostoevsky writes,
“It would have been better had I been created like all animals”18 because consciousness is the
birthplace of human suffering. Camus agrees with Dostoevsky and laments in his notebooks:
“Alas, that I ever dared to think.”19 “Beginning to think,” according to Camus, “is beginning
to be undermined.”20 Be that as it may, Dostoevsky still prefers the troublesome
consciousness over the possibility of feeling happy because “[i]t’s better to be unhappy and
know, than to be happy and live…as a fool.”21 Camus shows the same preference in his
depiction of the tragic hero Sisyphus—though “a man is always a prey of his truths,”22
consciously carrying the weight of life and moving forward is the dignity of man and the
evidence that he is superior to his fate.

18

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 229.

19

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951 (New York and London: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1978), 154.

20

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 4.

21

Dostoevsky, The Idiot (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 607.

22

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 31.

9
Consciousness opens the door to metaphysical anguish, but consciousness also defines
what it means to be human. Humans are distinct from other beings because they are
conscious of themselves and can reflect on their reality. Based on this recognition, both
writers embrace tortured but self-aware consciousness over a cow’s or a flower’s
unconscious happiness. Mortality wakes man from his habitual living and gives him a taste
of absurdity. Consciousness enables man to go further and experience absurdity in depth.
Fundamentally, absurdity is a feeling of an unmet existential need that comes from the
frustration of a failed search for meaning.
Being conscious means having the ability and need to carry out reflective thinking.
Thinking depends on reason, and the basic operation of reason is premised on logical
consistency. Once confronted with objects beyond the scope of logic, reason becomes
impotent. Death and all the consequential questions are precisely such objects. This is when
the absurd fully emerges. Regarding the rule of reason, the Danish philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard argues that its crucial function lies in bringing one to the very limits, where
reverence for God begins. However, I will not delve into Kierkegaard’s view on reason here,
as it falls under what Camus calls “philosophical suicide”23 and is therefore dismissed.
Moreover, because Dostoevsky already represents the stance of philosophical suicide in this
thesis and is a primary focus of this discussion, I will not include Kierkegaard in further
analysis along similar lines.
From Camus’ perspective, Kierkegaard, through his leap of faith, deifies the irrational,
thus making “the absurd [into] god.”24 Camus critiques Kierkegaard’s leap, stating that
Kierkegaard “gives the irrational the appearance and God the attributes of the absurd: unjust,
in-coherent, and incomprehensible.”25 Such a leap signifies an escape of the confrontation
with the absurd by making the “inability to understand becomes the existence that illuminates
everything.”26 To Camus, the absurd is “the metaphysical stage of the conscious man, does

23

The concept of “philosophical suicide” as well as “the leap of faith” will be discussed in
detail in later chapters.
24

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 33.

25

Camus, 39.

26

Camus, 33.

10
not lead to God.”27 In this stage, man persistently confronts the absurd without embellishing
the desolation of the world with meanings that are beyond the finite logic.
Thus, in acknowledge the absurd without resorting to illusory meanings, man finds
himself in a state where merely existing is insufficient. Life must strive for something
beyond itself. Life needs an explanation. When such an explanation is lacking, life seems
unnatural and unbearable. Bread keeps man alive, but meaning instigates him to want to live
and know how to live. “[E]ating, sleeping, despoiling the earth, sitting on a soft chair,”
Dostoevsky explains, “these things will long attract people to the earth, but cannot attract the
higher types of people.”28 The higher types of people, in this context, are people who have a
glimpse of the absurd and can no longer consent to live like animals. “To live in order to
exist”29 is no longer enough for them; they crave more.
In his play, “State of Siege,” Camus writes, “My life is nothing. What count[s] for me are
my reasons for living. I’m not a dog.”30 When reasons are absent, life becomes intolerable.
Knowing that there is no reason for existing is more frightening than losing one’s life. Given
this, the punishment that Sisyphus is condemned to is the most dreadful because he is forced
to repeat a useless and meaningless task. The endless repetition of futile actions can
annihilate a man entirely. Dostoevsky holds the same conviction as he believes that living
without any meaning is “the most terrible punishment”31 in the world. He goes further:
“Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy
himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him.”32
In anguish, man finds no explanations for his existence. The world does not explain
anything. It just is. The universe gazes at man with silence. Man has to live consciously

27

Camus, 40.

28

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 284.

29

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (New York: Vintage Classics, 2021), 572.

30

Camus, Caligula and Three Other Plays, 220.

31

Dostoevsky, Notes From A Dead House (New York: Vintage Classics, 2016), 22.

32

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 254.

11
under this indifferent sky without his consent. In his encounter with the unresponsive
universe man feels insulted. He feels insulted by the force that his reason is unable to
comprehend. The pain is real, but as Dostoevsky’s Underground Man puts it, there is “no
enemy to punish.”33 Finding no one to blame is more unbearable than the suffering itself.
Irritated but defenceless, man begins to complain to the unknown power. In Dostoevsky’s
A Writer’s Diary, the Ridiculous Man asks with frustration: “[W]hat right did [this Nature]
have to produce me, a conscious being, without my willing it? A conscious being, and thus a
suffering one; but I do not want to suffer, for why would I have agreed to that?”34 No one
responds to his interrogation. And Dostoevsky’s Ridiculous Man is convinced that the reason
that Nature refuses to answer him is “not because she does not want to answer, but because
she cannot answer.”35
The question remains unsolved. Man continues to suffer from the aimlessness of his
existence and the unresponsiveness of the universe. All these, eventually, lead him “to the
inevitable conviction of the utter absurdity of human existence on earth.”36 It is in this
particular tension that the absurd comes into existence. The absurd, Camus clarifies in his
essay, is neither within man nor in the world; it is “born of this confrontation between the
human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”37 It is the consequence of a fruitless
existential search. It is the child of an unmet metaphysical need.
v Symptoms of the Absurd: Existential Anguish
In his novel The Plague, Camus uses the epidemic to illustrate human experience of the
absurd. It is indeed a fitting metaphor. The feeling of absurdity is as destructive as the plague
in a way that it replaces ordinary life with something foreign and hostile. Familiarity and
certainty are no longer to be found. Man is suddenly placed in a frightful new world where he
33

Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground (Bulgaria: Digibooks OOD/Demetra Publishing,

1899), 17.
34

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 228-229.

35

Dostoevsky, 230-231.

36

Dostoevsky, 284.

37

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 28.

12
must acquire new understanding and skills to survive. He is overwhelmed by insecurity and
perplexity. Yet, he finds neither help nor clues. Nothing makes sense to him anymore. Under
the immense and silent universe, man cannot locate himself and feels intensely forlorn. It
seems convincing that his existence is inconsequential and unjustifiable, and his struggles are
for nothing. However, it is not “nothingness that the absurd man encounters through the
collapse of his ideas but the world itself.”38 Deprived of meaning and illusion, the world
appears to man in its original form. Confronting this naked object, the feeling of absurdity
arises.
Under such a circumstance, man develops his first symptom of the absurd: the feeling of
exile. He feels he is being exiled to a foreign kingdom where he lives as an alien. The sense
of absurdity makes human beings become “metaphysical refugees, aliens in a world not of
our choosing.”39 He no longer knows where he comes from and where he is heading. He is
forlorn in the sense that he has neither history nor future. In addition, not only does he feel
exiled in the universe, but he also feels exiled from mankind. He becomes a total stranger
among the majority who have not encountered the absurd because absurdity “sets himself
apart from other men, he can no longer in any way share their illusion.”40 He exists, floating
in the air for he finds no connections to anything. Camus writes, “His exile is without remedy
since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This
divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of
absurdity.”41 Man, in short, becomes an outsider in his own life. He dissociates from life in
anguish like a puzzle piece that could not find its right place.
The subsequent symptom of absurdity is the metaphysical paralysis of man, which leads
to physical alienation and inertia. The lack of a logical explanation for his existence prevents
man from committing to life. He refuses to play the game because “living among men
38

Ronald D. Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity (Dissertation, McMaster
University, 2008), 84.
39

David Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press,1988), 54.
40

Camus, The First Man (New York: Vintage International, 1996), 295.

41

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 6.

13
without sharing their interests, [he] could not manage to believe in the commitments [he]
made.”42 He is tortured by a sense of futility that inevitably detaches him from engaging in
life. Worse still, he can neither overcome the challenge of absurdity nor find an alternative
way of living. As a result, man is trapped in a world of which he did not ask to be a part. He
does not know what he is looking for. The only certainty man has is that he does not like
what has been given.
Dostoevsky’s Underground Man’s self-analysis demonstrates this circumstance very
well. In Notes From the Underground, the Underground Man admits that he has been lying
about his preference for the underground. He confesses that “it is not underground that is
better, but something quite different, quite different, for which I am thirsting but which I
cannot find! Damn underground!”43 He craves something he cannot discern and his love for
the underground is merely a compromise. In other words, it is not that he favours the
underground, but he cannot stand the world above. Preferring the underground is essentially
an escape from the real world. As the Underground Man admits, he longs for something quite
different.
Likewise, Camus describes this undiscernible thirst in his essays: “I do not know what I
am looking for, cautiously I give it a name, I withdraw what I said, I repeat myself, I go
backward and forward.”44 His soul is restless because his mind is confused. Ronald D.
Srigley points out, “The absurd man’s speech is confused because he is confused; and he is
confused because he has lost touch with the things about which he speaks.”45 And the reason
he has lost touch with these things, to use Camus’ expression, is because the feeling of
absurdity leads to a divorce between his consciousness and the reality he perceives.
The absurd man is incapable of understanding the world and consequently cannot exist
with others in harmony. The existential anguish, therefore, is fundamentally a failure of
logical comprehension. He suffers from exile, alienation, confusion, and restlessness because
life lacks a coherent explanation, namely, unity. In the eyes of the absurd man, life is a
42

Camus, The Fall, 88.

43

Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground, 34.

44

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 155.

45

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 89.

14
strange series of disconnected events. He does not want to, and cannot, participate in this
game, because he cannot be persuaded by the logic of this game’s instructions. However,
critics have questioned the logical soundness and authenticity of Camus’ sense of the absurd,
along with the profound isolation and incoherence it imposes on human experience.
The following paragraphs present objections and critiques of Camus’ reasoning on the
feeling of the absurd, drawing on perspectives from Jean-Paul Sartre, other critics, and a
juxtaposition I establish between Dostoevsky’s character Father Paissy in The Brothers
Karamazov and Camus’ ideas. A defense of Camus follows, demonstrating that his discovery
of the absurd is reasonably justified. Although Sartre also discusses absurdity and the
consequent nausea because of the unintelligibility of the overwhelming naked reality; he
argues that the absurd experienced by Camus is not a logical necessity. In Camus’ The
Stranger, absurdity is concretized through the life of Meursault. In Meursault’s world,
nothing matters. One way or another does not make any difference because absurdity
eliminates all value judgments. In other words, his indifference to life is the conclusion of his
logical analysis of the absurd. Sartre does not endorse this conclusion and criticizes Camus’
process of deduction as dishonest. “I have summed up what I saw; but I have deliberately
omitted its meaning,” Sartre writes, “[Camus] lies—like every artist—because he is claiming
to render raw experience and yet he is slyly filtering out all the meaningful connections,
which are also part of the experience.”46
Camus’ metaphor of a man talking on the telephone behind a glass partition can
exemplify Sartre’s argument. Camus writes, “[Y]ou cannot hear him, but you see his
incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive.”47 The glass partition, in this
context, is the filter that blocks all the meaningful connections. The man’s action is
meaningful, or at least, purposeful, when the glass partition is removed. Camus questions the
meaning of the caller’s life because he is observing him from a distance. He cannot hear the
man talking, which prevents him from understanding the whole experience and therefore
regards the man’s action as absurd.

46

Jean-Paul Sartre, On Camus (New York: Seagull Books, 2021), 70.

47

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus,15.

15
Like Sartre, Micheline Tisson-Braun discovers the same issue in Camus’ analysis. He
argues: “What Husserl calls the ‘meaning endowing faculty’ was skillfully removed from
[Meursault].”48 That is to say, the author of The Stranger purposefully registers only facts
and presents them as individual islands in order to emphasize the absence of meaning. As a
result, Meursault’s life becomes a series of unrelated fragments that successfully allude to the
contingency and absurdity of life. However, “the succession of movements” is not “identical
with the act conceived as a totality.”49 According to Sartre, the fallacy in Camus’ reasoning
is that “all reality is reduced to a sum of total elements.”50 Sartre comments on this very
vividly in his critique of Camus: “[T]he sentence in [The Stranger] has become
frozen…Instead of projecting itself between past and future, like a bridge, it is merely a little,
isolated, self-sufficient substance.”51 Human synthetic faculties are eliminated with intention
so that pure facts become the entire experience.
Rachel Bespaloff stresses that pure facts are nothing because they have “neither past nor
future” to become memories.52 Thus, they cannot give human existence “a meaning which
would establish its unity.”53 This is why the absurd man cannot understand life and must
withdraw from the world. After all, intelligibility is only possible “with the tools of
comprehension: relations, patterns, frames.”54 These tools are not intelligible in themselves
because they are human constructs used to project coherence onto reality; they do not exist
independently but are applied to make sense of an otherwise incoherent and indifferent

48

Micheline Tisson-Braun, “Silence and the Desert: The Flickering Vision,” Critical Essays
on Camus (New York: GK Hall & Company, 1988), 49.
49

Sartre, On Camus, 69.

50

Sartre, 69.

51

Sartre, 71-72.

52

Rachel Bespaloff, “The World of the Man Condemned to Death,” Camus: A Collection of
Critical Essays (United States of America: Prentice-Hall, INC, 1964), 93.
53

54

Bespaloff, 93.

Robert Champigny, “Ethics and Aesthetics in The Stranger,” Camus: A Collection of
Critical Essays, 123.

16
world. This trick enables Camus to create a protagonist whose “consciousness is purely
instantaneous [and] lacks the principle of unity and continuity that characterizes man.”55
Meursault’s life, therefore, is no longer “fashioned by events, but as identical with them.”56
Human existence, then, naturally becomes absurd. From this point of view, Camus’ absurdity
is the child of a deliberately designed world of pure analysis.
In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Father Paissy expresses a similar viewpoint
but from a different angle. From a religious standpoint, Father Paissy criticizes the absolute
disenchantment of people and the world by those who adhere to scientistic beliefs. By
artificially eliminating all heavenly revelations and interpretations, this planet, and the
humans who inhabit it, are reduced to a purely physical level. Father Paissy refers to this as
“hard analysis,” in which people “examined parts and missed the whole.”57 And purely
physical existence has no past and no future. Faith-based thinking, after all, is convinced that
meaning transcends material existence. Therefore, when a person deliberately ignores
existence beyond the physical plane, he is inevitably confused.
Father Paissy’s argument echoes Dostoevsky’s view of the absurd, at least in the later
stages of Dostoevsky’s thinking. Unlike Camus’ poignant exploration and discovery of the
absurd, in his late stages of writing, Dostoevsky’s absurdity is more of a warning, showing
people their predicament after abandoning faith. Camus’ absurdity has always been the result
of his logical reasoning, while Dostoevsky’s absurdity in his later writing is rather
pedagogical, designed to demonstrate the consequence of choosing the wrong path. By
depicting people trapped in absurdity and unable to find their way out, Dostoevsky warns his
reader that the road without God is a dead end. Considering the above, it is quite possible that
the late Dostoevsky would have criticized Camus’ philosophy of the absurd for focusing only
on the part and ignoring the larger whole because Camus’ study is limited to the physical
level.

55

Tisson-Braun, Critical Essays on Camus, 49.

56

Champigny, “Ethics and Aesthetics in The Stranger,” Camus: A Collection of Critical
Essays, 129.
57

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 171.

17
Whether from a secular or religious perspective, these comments question the logical
necessity of the absurd as described by Camus, especially the accuracy and soundness of his
reasoning. In short, Camus’ absurd has been criticized as a conclusion of a sophisticated
contrivance. This design deliberately eliminates existing meanings and value judgments in
order to elicit and emphasize the absurd.
These critiques, though sharp, overlook that Camus is not distorting experience but
isolating an essential dimension of it—one that challenges the human tendency to obscure the
absurd with self-imposed narratives. After all, Camus’ intention was not to offer an
exhaustive portrayal of all aspects of experience but rather to emphasize a particular insight:
the stark reality of the absurd. He purposefully distills experience to reveal existence as
something unembellished by traditional notions of meaning or coherence. While critics
accuse Camus of omitting meaningful connections, it is precisely these imposed connections
that, in his view, prevent individuals from confronting the void of existence itself.
Camus does not induce people to experience the anguish of existence but strips away the
veneer of illusion, inviting readers to face the absurd rather than retreat into comforting
frameworks. Far from being dishonest, his approach aims to reveal reality as he perceives it:
fundamentally indifferent and devoid of intrinsic meaning, He is, in fact, authentic in his
philosophical reasoning. Sartre acknowledges this mindset, suggesting that Camus’
authenticity lies in his tendency to “like things for what they are in themselves; [he does] not
wish to dilute them into the flow of time.”58 The flow of time, comprising past, present, and
future, connects fragments and imbues human activities with meaning.
When this temporal flow is eliminated, life becomes foreign, fragmented, and devoid of
familiar meaning. This, Camus argues, is the essence of things as they truly are. Seeing the
raw reality leads to feelings of exile, alienation, and metaphysical paralysis, as individuals
find themselves unable to connect with the world or others in the absence of meaning. While
critics contend that Camus deliberately removes meaning in his depiction of the absurd to
emphasize the futility of life, his understanding of the absurd represents an honest encounter
with a world stripped of illusions, revealing its raw and indifferent reality.

58

Sartre, On Camus, 74.

18
v Consequence of Absurdity: suicide or nihilism
The absurd stems from the unfilled gap between man and his life. David Sprintzen
defines this gap as “a cosmic object-loss” that “[threatens] us with cultural depression.”59
When reason reaches its limit, man is trapped by absurdity and unable to help himself escape.
Absurdity produces a sense of futility, which in turn brings despair. Imprisoned in this
desperate situation, man will eventually be unable to bear the weight of the meaninglessness
of life. A solution is urgently needed because humans cannot live without any sort of hope.
Dostoevsky writes in Notes From A Dead House, “Having lost both goal and hope, a man
often turns into a monster from anguish.”60 Therefore, metaphysical despair “is not the spice
of life.”61 As Georg Lukacs stresses in his critical essay on Dostoevsky, it is “an actual
banging at closed doors, an embittered, futile struggle for the meaning of life which is lost or
in danger of being lost.”62 The end of this struggle, Camus points out, “is where suicide and
the reply stand.”63
Despair points out two ways for man: to end one’s life voluntarily or to indulge one’s will
since life is meaningless, and nothing matters. Both are devastating. Suicide and nihilism are
fundamentally two forms of extreme reaction to despair. Along these lines, the experience of
the absurd is indeed a severe metaphysical depression that inhibits man’s willingness to
participate in life and precludes him from experiencing true happiness. It kills a man from the
inside.
Highly self-aware people are sometimes captured by this metaphysical depression. Their
consciousness unfortunately becomes a source of their distress. If they refuse to end their
lives voluntarily, the only way out seems to be to have to endure the affliction of not being
able to reconcile with their own existence. That is, to live in anguish. Worse still, no
59

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 17.

60

Dostoevsky, Notes From A Dead House, 252.

Georg Lukacs, “Dostoevsky,” Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays (United States of
America: Prentice-Hall, INC, 1962), 156.
61

62

Lukacs, 156.

63

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 27.

19
prescription is available because no pill would restore hope. This is the ultimate reality that
man confronts when he pushes his reason to its limit. Therefore, Camus claims at the
beginning of his essay The Myth of Sisyphus that suicide is the only serious philosophical
problem because “[j]udging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the
fundamental question of philosophy.”64 Philosophy, after all, is a discipline that attempts to
reveal the mysteries of humanity through a reasoned search for truth. And figuring out what
man lives for is its most significant component.
Suicide is the highest form of renunciation, which comes from a recognition of “the
ridiculous character of that habit [of daily life], the absence of any profound reason for
living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering”65 In his
play, “The Misunderstanding,” Camus expresses this viewpoint once again: “But then this
world we live in doesn’t make sense, and I have a right to judge it, since I’ve tested all it has
to offer, from creation to destruction.”66 Likewise, in Dostoevsky’s A Writer’s Diary, the
Ridiculous Man discovers this: “The more I studied, the more I came to realize that I was a
Ridiculous Man.”67 Eventually, he will be defeated by “his own aimless existence and his
hatred for the unresponsiveness of the stagnant life around him” because he cannot find a
higher idea to convince him to continue living. In the end, the only idea he will see is “the
utter absurdity of human existence on earth.”68
Anyone who “pushes the absurd to its logical conclusion”69 will realize that living
happily is simply impossible. Dying voluntarily, according to both writers, is tempting
because, after a logical analysis, one concludes that “human existence is unnatural,
unthinkable, and unbearable”70 and that life is not worth striving for. The consequent
64

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 3.

65

Camus, 5-6.

66

Camus, Caligula and Three Other Plays, 122.

67

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 379.

68

Dostoevsky, 284.

69

Camus, Caligula and Three Other Plays, 51.

70

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 284.

20
deduction is straightforward: if one is convinced of his despair, one will end his life
voluntarily because to live is to despair.
For this reason, Kirillov, a character in Dostoevsky’s Demons, cannot understand why
people would still choose to remain alive after knowing that life is not only a pain but a
purposeless pain.71 Suicide seems to be the only logical conclusion one can draw from this
examination. Dostoevsky uses the term “logical suicide”72 to describe the voluntary death of
the higher types of people.73 Logical suicides end their lives because self-annihilation “is the
necessity of the immediate conclusion.”74 Their intelligence is unable to offer any
alternatives; the only way that they can end their existential anguish is to end their own lives.
“I’ll shoot myself and the world will exist no longer,” Dostoevsky’s Ridiculous Man says,
“as soon as my consciousness was extinguished, the whole world would be extinguished with
it.”75 The logical suicides kill themselves in order to discontinue suffering. Therefore, their
suicide is not based on a choice of free will, but on logical despair due to a lack of choice. All
he can do is “very simply plant a bullet in his head so as to quench at one stroke his
tormented mind and all its questions” since he is incapable “of drawing [the facts of life] out
into a straight line and so setting his mind at rest.”76 As mentioned earlier, when he cannot
solve the problem, he can only solve himself. With his death, all the enigmas and torments
vanish.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Dostoevsky does not view logical suicide as a purely
passive renunciation, as Camus does, but he also recognizes that in this extreme surrender,
there is a sense of defiance and pride because it involves the assertion of will. Although

71

Dostoevsky, Demons, 617.

72

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 284.

73

Dostoevsky uses “higher types of people” to refer to people who cannot be truly satisfied
through regular human enjoyment, such as eating, sleeping, playing, etc.
74

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 284.

75

Dostoevsky, 384.

76

Dostoevsky, 226.

21
logical suicide is a manifestation of despair, it is undeniable that in the case of a man
choosing to die by logical suicide, he still takes the initiative to kill the absurd by killing
himself. In The Idiot, Ippolit claims, “It’s impossible to remain in a life that takes such
strange forms, which offend me. That apparition had humiliated me. I am not able to submit
to a dark force that takes the form of a tarantula.”77 Moreover, not only does he refuse to
accept a life that consists of absurdity, but he also refuses to obey the law of Nature, which is
to wait for a natural death. Ippolit argues resentfully, “Just who requires me not only to be
condemned to death, but also to wait on my best behaviour for my sentence to be carried
out?”78
To end his life of his own free will, thus, becomes a performance that he utilizes to
exhibit his protest. Since he had not been given the power not to be born, the power to die is
all he is left with. He cannot destroy Nature, but he can exterminate himself to end “the
weariness of enduring a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.”79 Therefore, from this
lens, logical suicide is the most extreme form of human resistance to absurdity. By
committing suicide, man “[condemns] this Nature, which has so brazenly and
unceremoniously inflicted this suffering, to annihilation along with [himself].”80 In suicide,
human dignity is tragically preserved.
Suicide is one extreme way of dealing with absurdity; living nihilistically is another one.
Although they are devastating reactions, both extremes possess their own logic. The logic of
nihilism comes from the absence of meaning: since nothing has meaning, nothing matters
and everything is permitted. When Dostoevsky’s Ridiculous Man is convinced that
“everywhere on earth nothing mattered,” he confesses, “I’d stop thinking altogether; it didn’t
matter to me. It would have been very well if I’d answered my questions; oh, but I hadn’t
answered a single one, and yet how many of them were there! But I began to feel that

77

Dostoevsky, The Idiot, 479.

78

Dostoevsky, 481.

79

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 231.

80

Dostoevsky, 231.

22
nothing mattered, and all the questions vanished.”81 Since human existence is an
unintelligible enigma, why, then, continue this afflicting and futile search? It seems wiser to
abandon the search because all efforts are in vain. That is to say, this learned helplessness
leads man to a state of indifference, in which nothing matters and all is permitted. This is
where the Man-God makes his appearance on the stage.
Once man encounters absurdity, he can no longer return to the ordinary life he had.
Existential examination is a one-way quest. Once on the road, there is no turning back. The
flows of ordinary daily life that satisfy most people no longer appeal to people who have
experienced the absurd, because the awareness of the lack of meaning empowers them with
greater freedom. “He is alone, enclosed in this liberty,” Camus writes, “His condition is
absurd. He will go no further, and the miracles of those mornings when life begins anew have
lost all meaning for him.”82 Indeed, the concept that all is permitted signifies an unrestrained
freedom in which indulgence and killing find their logical foundation.
In Camus’ play, “State of Siege,” Officer Nada says, “So let’s annihilate everything, I
say. That’s my philosophy. God denies the world, and I deny God. Long live nothing, for it’s
the only thing that exists.”83 In Dostoevsky’s Demons, Kirillov pushes this celebration of
nothingness even further. He does not only deny God but wants to be a god. He explains, “To
recognize that there is no God, and not to recognize at the same time that you have become
god, is an absurdity, otherwise you must necessarily kill yourself.”84 To be a god means to
“live in the chiefest glory”85 because Man-God is someone who conducts a boundless selfwill. The idea of man denying God and then become a god consistent with the German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch, which is translated as

81

Dostoevsky, 380.

82

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 205.

83

Camus, “State of Siege,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 179.

84

Dostoevsky, Demons, 619.

85

Dostoevsky, 619.

23
overman or superman, in Thus Spoken Zarathustra.86 This concept signifies an individual
who transcends conventional values and human boundaries to create his own values and
meaning in order to obtain a higher state of being.
Both Camus and Dostoevsky confront this Nietzschean vision, exploring the implications
of extreme existential freedom and self-deification in a godless universe. They reflect on the
complexities and moral ambiguities associated with the pursuit of becoming a Man-God,
acknowledging that this concept carries significant dangers. Such extreme freedom will not
lead to the liberation of mankind, but only to more disasters. When a person believes that
absurdity is the ultimate truth of human existence and yet refuses to commit suicide, nihilism
dominates. Man cannot control freedom with no limits and will eventually be consumed by
it. Camus recognizes this danger, and he writes, “It is normal for such beings, deprived of
human recreations…to regress to an inhuman world where they will this time forge their own
chains: madness, sexual mania, or crime.”87 After all, there is no value judgment, meaning, or
morality. Whether evil or good, indulgence or moderation, it is all the same in the end—all
will return to nothingness.
Dostoevsky foresees nihilism and its dreadful consequences before it becomes a reality.
For this reason, Camus appraises Dostoevsky as “above all writers who, well before
Nietzsche, managed to discern contemporary nihilism, define it, predict its monstrous
consequences, and seek to indicate the paths of salvation.”88 Dostoevsky is indeed a true
prophet of his time. In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan is preoccupied with the idea that
everything is permitted since there is no God or future life. As long as he accepts this belief
as true, he will have to agree with its fundamental teaching: one can do anything. Therefore,
he acquiesces in the murder of his father, refusing to intervene when he knew the tragedy was
going to happen. Ivan’s opinion on this potential murder is aloof: “Viper will eat viper, and it

86

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (New York: Random House, INC), 2006,
translated by Thomas Common, “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” “I teach you the Superman. Man is
something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass him?” Zarathustra’s Prologue, 6.
87

88

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 205.

Camus, “For Dostoevsky,” Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches 1937-1958 (New York:
Vintage International, 2022), 189.

24
would serve them both right.”89 Seeing Ivan’s indifference, Alyosha could not help but ask
his brother: “[C]an it be that any man has the right to decide about the rest of mankind, who
is worthy to live and who is more unworthy?”90 Ivan responds that everyone has the right to
wish, even for another’s death.
Once killing someone, whether by suicide or homicide, is logically permissible, human
life becomes insignificant. This will bring enormous disaster to mankind because reverence
for life is the last line of defence to preserve humanity. David Sprintzen points out that
everything is permitted “means the law of force, power, and efficiency.”91 In this law, human
life is not taken into consideration; hence there are no limitations. All is allowed as long as
one can satisfy his ambition. Therefore, Sprintzen articulates, “From nihilism to Nazism the
path is direct.”92 Besides, “it’s so much more elegant to kill for the delight of being
logical.”93 People who commit logical suicide enjoy a sense of superiority because they defy
Nature; people who kill or allow killing to happen in order to be consistent with their logic
can easily justify, even glorify their atrocities. When values and morals are absent,
indulgence and killing take their place. Once people have completely crossed the line, that is,
they have acquired the power to decide the life and death of others, there is no longer
anything to stop their demonization. The path from Man-God to a monster is also direct.

89

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 141.

90

Dostoevsky, 143.

91

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 15.

92

Sprintzen, 15.

93

Camus, “State of Siege,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 172.

25
Chapter II
Dostoevsky’s Solution: Faith in Immortality
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his
commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into
judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
Ecclesiastes 12: 13-14, NIV.
v Faith or Philosophical Suicide
Absurdity is unbearable and the consequences of the absurd to human beings are
devastating. Once aware of the absurd, how to resist absurdity becomes a top priority for
humans. Camus writes, “The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a
beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point.”94 The
discovery of the absurd per se, Camus argues, is not interesting. What is interesting and
worth the attention are “the consequences and rules for action that can be drawn from it.”95
After carefully examining the absurd, Dostoevsky diagnoses that the core of the problem is
“an absolute lack of faith in one’s soul and its immortality.”96
The logic behind this is straightforward: “If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”97 If death is the ultimate end, one cannot help but wonder “[w]hat is
the point of arranging one’s life and expending so much effort to arrange social life correctly,
rationally, and in a morally righteous manner?”98 This lack of faith in eternity opens the door
to indifference, causing “some strange, universal indifference to this most sublime idea of
human existence; an indifference at times even derisive.”99 It is an indifference to

94

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 201.

95

Camus, 202.

96

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 285.

97

1 Corinthians 15: 32. NIV.

98

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 229.

99

Dostoevsky, 285.

26
“everything that is vital and expresses the truth of life, toward everything that generates and
nourishes life, gives it health, and does away with corruption and putrefaction.”100
The only cure to this indifference, according to Dostoevsky, is the recovery of “the idea
of the immortality of the human soul, for all other ‘higher’ ideas of life by which humans
might live derive from that idea alone.”101 Linking the fleeting to the eternal gives meaning
to this life and sets moral constraints on it. For this reason, Kirillov affirms that “God is
necessary, and therefore must exist.”102 And even if God did not exist, it would be necessary
to invent a God so that man could live, and humanity could persist.
However, Camus strongly disagrees with Dostoevsky’s solution, criticizing it as an
escape from reality. In fact, any religious solution, according to Camus’ criteria, belongs to
the category of philosophical suicide. Different from physical suicide, philosophical suicide
aims to conceal the truth of life, namely, absurdity, with an illusory meaning, to escape the
emptiness of life. Religious belief is a prominent example of Camus’ philosophical suicide.
In The Rebel, Camus argues, “Christianity believes that it is fighting against nihilism because
it gives the world a sense of direction, while it is really nihilist itself in so far as, by imposing
an imaginary meaning on life, it prevents the discovery of its real meaning.”103 The authentic
meaning of life, Camus believes, comes from something raw, from the direct confrontation
with the absurd. Belief in God amounts to renouncing this confrontation.
In Camus’ opinion, people believe that the concept of God is necessary because “for
anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.”104
At the heart of religion is an attempt to deliver people from the weight of their own lives by
finding them a master who can help them carry their cross of lucid consciousness. For
Camus, however, bearing the weight of the meaninglessness of life is exactly the key to
generating real meaning out of the absurd. He explains his rejection of faith in The Myth of
100

Dostoevsky, 285.

101

Dostoevsky, 285.

102

Dostoevsky, Demons, 619.

103

Camus, The Rebel, 69.

104

Camus, The Fall, 133.

27
Sisyphus, “I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate
me at the same time. They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I must carry it
alone.”105 The weight of one’s own life is all humans have. It is their only anchor in the sea of
absurdity. To feel this weight and to carry it is the only tangible meaning he can find on this
planet.
Likewise, to take ephemeral human affairs as the ultimate meaning of life and to devote
oneself to them is also, for Camus, philosophical suicide. Based on Camus’ perspective, these
affairs disguise the absurd with a veneer of meaning, preventing people from seeing the harsh
truth of life. As a result, individuals spend their lives in delusion. Thus, Camus writes,
“Everything that exalts life at the same time increases its absurdity.”106 Philosophical suicide,
in this sense, “[opens] up an artificial emptiness below or beyond the natural emptiness of the
world.”107
Dostoevsky discusses this artificial emptiness in his works as well. According to
Dostoevsky, people choose to occupy their minds with trivial or fleeting activities because
otherwise, life is unbearable. In Notes From the Underground, Dostoevsky’s Underground
Man analyzes the reasons why people choose temporary goals as ultimate meaning: “[In]
consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones,
and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they
have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you
know that is the chief thing.”108 Although deceptive, philosophical suicide soothes man’s
existential anxiety and saves him from existential anguish. It is an easier path that eliminates
all the burdensome existential questions by occupying man with mundane endeavours.
In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Ippolit suffers from a terminal illness and only has six months
to live. He finds that “reality has been trying to catch [him] on its hook these past six months,
and has sometimes distracted [him] to the point where [he] forgot about [his] death sentence

105

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 55.

106

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 91.

107

Srigley, Albert Camus’s Critique of Modernity, 318.

108

Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground, 19.

28
or, rather, was unwilling to think about it, and even engaged in practical activities.”109
Ippolit’s self-observation illustrates the operation of philosophical suicide: by engaging in
practical activities, man becomes short-sighted and ceases to think metaphysically. He agrees
to go on living because life seems to be purposeful when the broader existential questions are
neglected. The restlessness of his soul is replaced by the immediate and continuous demands
of daily life.
Philosophical suicide seems to be the only way to alleviate the feeling of the absurd. In
The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus explains that absurdity comes from the “disproportion between
[one’s] intention and the reality he will encounter, of the contradiction…between his true
strength and the aim he has in view.”110 When unity of experience is disrupted, David
Sprintzen argues, “The intention and the reality meet across a now unbridgeable abyss, united
only by nostalgia.”111 Moreover, unlike physical suicide or the practice of nihilism,
philosophical suicide might be the only solution that has the potential to solve the problem
without abolishing man. Nevertheless, all these solutions, according to Camus, are
fundamentally renunciatory. Physical suicide is surrender to absurdity by giving up one’s life;
philosophical suicide is the admission of one’s incompetence by giving up the confrontation.
Nihilism, on the other hand, abandons the external pursuit of meaning and deifies self-will in
the process of self-indulgence. All of these, in essence, are an avoidance of the absurd.
Camus believes that the only dignified response to absurdity is to confront it directly,
enduring the affliction of being torn apart and fighting to the bitter end. Although this is a
difficult path, it is one of fidelity to the truth of life and the preservation of human dignity.
The question arises: “[W]hich is better—cheap happiness or exalted suffering?”112
Dostoevsky’s Underground Man chooses the latter, stating, “Though I have said that I envy
the normal man to the last drop of my bile, yet I should not care to be in his place such as he

109

Dostoevsky, The Idiot, 461.

110

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 29.

111

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 54.

112

Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground, 108.

29
is now (though I shall not cease envying him). No, no; anyway the underground life is more
advantageous.”113
In contrast to the lives of normal people, the Underground Man derives a sense of
metaphysical superiority from the torture of his consciousness. However, he does not love the
underground; rather, it is simply that, until now, he has not found a better place than the
underground. Before he finds his ideal place—which he does not even know—he would
rather stay underground and endure the torment of consciousness than return to the world of
ordinary people, as the cheap yet rather peaceful life they live comes at the cost of losing
their higher thinking abilities. Camus also advocates for choosing superior anguish over
cheap happiness rooted in deception. He argues that when individuals “deify what crushes
them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them,”114 they avoid confronting the
absurd by submitting to it. Thus, philosophical suicide, in any form, is a disguise for the truth
of life and an affront to human dignity.
Dostoevsky and many of his characters suffer from the disease of hyperactive
consciousness. Like Camus, Dostoevsky also prefers to consciously endure suffering rather
than live in cheap happiness, “like animals.”115 However much Dostoevsky agrees with
Camus on the preference for exalted suffering, he would never agree with Camus’
classification of faith as philosophical suicide. For Dostoevsky, faith is not an escape from
reality, but the right way to fight against the absurd. Faith is the real cure for absurdity
because it gives man the foundation and purpose of existence. The answer provided by faith
is not an illusory meaning, Dostoevsky would argue, but the Truth of life.
According to Dostoevsky, the absence of consciousness and the excess of consciousness
are only two extremes, “but between them lies the entire range of human intellect.”116
Dostoevsky is acutely aware of human limitations, knowing that humans will never fully
comprehend the whole mystery of man. Man only knows what he sees and “this is only the
113

Dostoevsky, 34.

114

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 32.

115

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 229.

116

Dostoevsky, 226.

30
surface.”117 Dostoevsky continues, “[B]ut the ends and the beginnings are things that, for
human beings, still lie in the realm of the fantastic.”118 Camus also recognizes the limitations
of man, but the difference between the two writers is that Camus strives to live his life with
what he knows alone. Although Camus acknowledges the existence of the realm of the
fantastic, he ignores it because the unknown is beyond the reach of his reason and, therefore,
is out of his consideration. Camus’ principal concern is that his “intelligence can remain
clear.”119
Dostoevsky, on the other hand, can never settle in the realm of human intellect alone. He
spent his entire life contemplating the existence of God and was intensely tortured by the
ambiguity of the concept of God. He cannot, like Camus, abandon the search for a realm
beyond the human intellect because “it was emotionally impossible for [Dostoevsky] to
accept a world that had no relation to a God of any kind.”120 Yet, intellectually, the existence
of God cannot be positively confirmed. Dostoevsky never obtains the certainty that he
desperately seeks. The only certainty he attains is that faith is indispensable for human
survival and that the leap to faith121 is the only path left to man. Therefore, for Dostoevsky,
faith is a conviction that one must have, not an optional philosophical suicide that one might
choose.
v Reason and Irrationality
The problem facing those who choose faith as a cure for absurdity is reconciling faith and
reason; in other words, how to leap to faith soberly and firmly, without abandoning reason.
Camus explores the incompatibility of faith and reason in his play Caligula. One of the
117

Dostoevsky, 226.

118

Dostoevsky, 226.

119

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 40.

120

Joseph Frank, A Writer in His Time (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010), 24.

By leap to faith, what I mean here is that a person acknowledges that God is a being that
beyond the full comprehension of their limited, three-dimensional mind, and chooses to take a leap—
to believe in something they cannot fully understand. In short, the leap to faith here refers to believing
in an existence that cannot be completely understood or verified by reason alone.
121

31
characters Cherea says: “I like, and need, to feel secure. So do most men…I refuse to live in
a topsy-turvy world. I want to know where I stand, and to stand secure.” Caligula replies,
“Security and logic don’t go together.”122 They do not go together because reason is
considerably limited in understanding humans. “Human nature cannot be brought within the
operations of reason,” the Russian philosopher and theologian Nicholas Berdyaev points out,
“there is always ‘something over,’ an irrational something which is the very well-spring of
life.”123 Camus writes something similar: “And the reason is impotent when it hears this cry
from the heart.”124
Likewise, Dostoevsky also devotes a great deal of energy to exploring the confrontations
between the limitations of reason and the irrational nature of man. Many of his impressive
characters, like Ivan Karamazov, the Ridiculous Man, and the Underground Man, effectively
demonstrate the impotence of reason in understanding human nature. In fact, the sickness of
one’s consciousness is “the inevitable shadow of modern rationalism,” which threatens “to
obliterate altogether the integrity of the human being.”125
In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan is a believer in reason. His reason leads
him to conclude that there is no virtue if there is no God and that all is permitted. However,
when Smerdyakov, a servant of the Karamazov family and an admirer of Ivan’s theory,
applies Ivan’s theory, namely, all is permitted, to real life and kills Ivan’s father, Ivan’s
reason cannot explain his panic and haunting guilt. Smerdyakov forces Ivan to realize that
Ivan is “the most lawful murderer”126 in this killing because Smerdyakov only puts Ivan’s
theory into practice. Ivan for the first time sees the flaw of his theory when Smerdyakov
makes it concrete. His tortured heart proves that not everything is permissible. Smerdyakov
witnesses the collapse of Ivan’s theory and mocks Ivan as a “former brave man.”127 For a
122

Camus, Caligula and Three Other Plays, 51.

123

Nicholas Berdyaev, Dostoevsky (New York: Meridian Books, 2011), 54.

124

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 27.

125

George Pattison, “Freedom’s Dangerous Dialogue: Reading Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky
Together,” Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 241.
126

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 627.

127

Dostoevsky, 633.

32
logical person like Ivan, realizing that the complexity of human nature exceeds theoretical
explanation is fatal for this realization signifies a destabilization of the very foundation of his
world. He cannot bear the violent conflict between reason and irrationality, ultimately
leading him to insanity.
Like Ivan, Dostoevsky’s Ridiculous Man in A Writer’s Diary is also bothered by
irrational feelings that his reason cannot explain. He has decided to commit suicide one night.
On the same night, he encounters a little girl who begs him for help. The Ridiculous Man
rejects the little girl, but deep down he feels uncontrollably guilty for his inaction. Painfully,
he realizes that he cares about this little girl’s suffering when nothing on earth should matter
to him anymore since he has decided to turn himself into an absolute nonentity. This pity
does not make any sense and it infuriates the Ridiculous Man. The logical reaction in this
case should have been indifference to absolutely everything. He is angry because his reason
is impotent towards his irrationality.
Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, on the other hand, obtains a much more advanced
understanding of reason as he is fully aware of the power and indispensability of irrationality
in mankind. He discerns both the excellence and the limitations of reason, arguing that reason
“satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature” but “the whole human life [includes] reason
and all the impulses.”128 Life, for instance, “is often worthless,”129 still, man naturally wants
to live “in order to satisfy all [his] capacities for life, and not simply [his] capacity for
reasoning,”130 which is only a small portion. After all, life is not “simply extracting square
roots.”131 Ivan feels the same, although he is obsessed with reason. He has to admit that he
wants to live “even if it be against logic.”132 In his lyrical expression, he expresses his
impulsive love for “the sticky little leaves” and “the blue sky.”133 Ivan says, “I love them,

128

Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground, 27.

129

Dostoevsky, 27.

130

Dostoevsky, 27.

131

Dostoevsky, 27.

132

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 230.

133

Dostoevsky, 230.

33
that’s all!”134 “That’s all” indicates the existence of irrationality. Ivan continues, “Such things
you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your
first young strength.”135
In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Ippolit also demonstrates that man’s attachment to life is
greater than logic. He knows clearly that he has incurable consumption and that “it [is] not
worth living for a few weeks.”136 Nevertheless, this clear understanding does not extinguish
his enthusiasm and desire for life. He confesses, “I clung to life and wanted to live at
whatever cost.”137 Man naturally wants to live regardless of what his intellect may conclude.
After discovering all the desolation and despair of the earth, man still wants to “affirm his
solidarity with the world at its worst, to declare himself life’s accomplice even in its
thanklessness and its filth,” as the narrator of Camus’ A Happy Death declares.138
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus concludes, “In a man’s attachment to life there is
something stronger than all the ills in the world.”139 This “something” is one’s will, passion,
and love for life that is beyond the realm of reason. For this reason, Dostoevsky’s character
Alyosha suggests that “everyone should love life before everything else in the world.”140 Or
like Ervin C. Brody puts it, “pure love of life should come before any logic.”141 Camus
agrees with Dostoevsky on this as he comments on Dostoevsky’s perspective in his
Notebooks, “One must love life before loving its meaning, Dostoevsky says. Yes, and when

134

Dostoevsky, 230.

135

Dostoevsky, 230.

136

Dostoevsky, The Idiot, 457.

137

Dostoevsky, 457.

138

Camus, A Happy Death, 75.

139

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 8.

140

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 231.

141

Ervin C. Brody, “Dostoevsky’s Presence in Camus’ Early Works,” The Modern Language
Review (2006), 102.

34
the love of life disappears, no meaning consoles us for it.”142 It is true: reason leads man to a
dead end whereas love gives him a living beginning.
Love life more than its meaning and love it before logic—this is the only possible way to
grasp the meaning of life; not through thinking, but through living it out. The Underground
Man observes that the only meaning on earth that man may obtain does not lie in the formula
“twice two makes four.”143 Rather, it lies “in life itself,”144 which is not to be expressed by
any positive formula. The Underground Man considers “mathematical certainty” as “the
beginning of death” because once a person has obtained such certainty, “there is nothing left
[for him] to do or to understand.”145 With this in mind, reason alone will always lead man to
existential frustration and perplexity.
Camus proposes a balanced view of reason and irrationality. He writes in The Rebel:
“The real is not entirely rational, nor is the rational entirely real…the desire for unity not
only demands that everything should be rational. It also wishes that the irrational should not
be sacrificed.”146 Nevertheless, Camus does not expend his energy delving into the irrational,
as he recognizes his own limitation in understanding it. He distances himself from
irrationality, explaining that a notion “loses its meaning as soon as it goes beyond the frame
of reference of [his] individual experience.”147
Like Camus, Dostoevsky also admits that many things are hidden from man. However,
Dostoevsky cannot ignore the enigma of irrationality and be content with his reason alone.
Dostoevsky uses the term “Euclidean mind” to refer to the limitation of reason in The
Brothers Karamazov. Ivan confesses that it is not for him, a man who is “created with a
concept of only three dimensions,”148 to understand questions regarding God. His earthly
142

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 218.

143

Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground, 31.

144

Dostoevsky, 31.

145

Dostoevsky, 32.

146

Camus, The Rebel, 295-296.

147

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 56.

148

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 235.

35
mind is not equipped “to resolve things that are not of this world.”149 This is a humble
confession as Ivan admits that he cannot figure out everything based on his reasoning.
Although Ivan urges his little brother Alyosha not to be bothered with whether God exists or
not, neither of them is able to do so. Ivan goes insane and Alyosha turns into a devout and
active believer.
Collapse or conversion seems to be the only two possible outcomes of the confrontation
between reason and irrationality in Dostoevsky’s world. Ivan’s insanity is a result of the
failure of his reason. Precisely speaking, his insanity is a result of the apotheosis of his
reason. Eliseo Vivas rightly points out that in Dostoevsky’s world, “vice is connected with
[men’s] repudiation of their condition as creatures and with their consequent effort to set
themselves up wittingly or unwittingly as gods.”150 In other words, if men would remember
that they are finite and dependent creatures, they would not be misguided by the illusion of
their omnipotence and end up in destruction. Indeed, human beings are not self-sufficient
entities. Neglecting one’s limitations and the need for others—whether this dependency is on
the divine or on fellow human beings—can lead one into an abyss of arrogance, isolation,
and, ultimately, alienation.
Like Ivan, many of Dostoevsky’s characters demonstrate the consequence of the misuse
of reason by believing in “self-sufficiency and the intellect.”151 The endings of those
characters indicate that Dostoevsky cannot imagine a world without God. However, the
inability to live without God is not a failure; rather, it reflects a profound human need for
mystery. In Ivan’s voice, Dostoevsky writes, “And the strange thing, the wonder would not
be that God really exists, the wonder is that such a notion—the notion of the necessity of
God—could creep into the head of such a wild and wicked animal as man.”152 This notion is
rooted in Dostoevsky’s head and he must endure the coexistence of reason and irrationality

149

Dostoevsky, 235.

150

Eliseo Vivas, “The Two Dimensions of Reality,” Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical

Essays, 83.
151

Vivas, 83.

152

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 234.

36
and be continually torn apart by their incompatibility. This need for a sense of the sacred
nurtures reverence for the unknown, helping individuals respect human limits and avoid
overstepping human boundaries. Nevertheless, this reverence does not necessarily require
belief in a specific deity, such as the biblical God; instead, it may be a broader recognition
and respect for the mysteries that lie beyond human understanding.
Camus also acknowledges the limitations of reason, but he believes that reason “has its
order in which it is efficacious”153 and therefore should not be negated. Reason is not
omnipotent, but it has its relative power. It is precisely because the efficacious but limited
reason cannot meet the irrational demands of human beings that the absurd is born. Camus
and Dostoevsky have reached a consensus on this understanding of reason, but their attitudes
towards irrationality are quite different. Unlike Dostoevsky, who is tormented by his
unwillingness to abandon his inquiry to irrationality, Camus chooses to live with the
limitation of reason. Camus explains, “To an absurd mind reason is useless and there is
nothing beyond reason.”154 Reason is the only certainty man can be sure of. It is the same as
the earth and all the transient things on it: “[T]he world is nothing and the world is
everything.”155 The reason and the earth, despite their limitations and transience, are at least
certain and tangible to some extent. What is certain and tangible forms the foundation of
Camus’ exploration of humanity and the world.
Dostoevsky, however, cannot securely cling to reason like Camus and therefore must
suffer from the turmoil between reason and faith. Worse still, even when irrationality
prevails, that is, when Dostoevsky chooses to take the leap of faith, he does not obtain inner
peace because he cannot neglect reason completely. His reason remains a thorn in his side.
What lies behind the leap of faith, no one can know for sure. There are no guarantees for
anything. However, Dostoevsky chooses the leap of faith regardless. And this—believing in
something that one cannot be certain of—by definition is faith. Faith, after all, “is confidence
in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”156 For this reason, Jesus tells
153

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 36.

154

Camus, 35.

155

Camus, Create Dangerously (New York: Vintage International, 2019), 34.

156

Hebrews, 11:1, NIV.

37
Thomas, who believed that Jesus had risen only when he saw the nail marks on Jesus’ hands,
that “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”157
v Leap of Faith: Submission to Irrationality
“Stop doubting and believe,”158 thus spoke Jesus. To believe is to leap from as far as
reason can take one into the arms of grace—this is the essence of the leap of faith. However,
ceasing to doubt does not amount to irrationality. Although reason and faith are not entirely
mutually exclusive, their incompatible aspects remain irreconcilable. As a result, no matter
which one a person chooses, inner tension is inevitable. Humans are endowed with the
capacity to reason, but they find themselves in a world where reason cannot answer all their
questions. Their minds cannot grasp the transcendent, yet they are driven to seek it because it
is crucial to understanding their existence. Confined within the limits of reason, people
cannot find a certain answer and are left unsettled by the vagueness of existence and the
universe. The sense of absurd and existential anxiety stems from such circumstances.
Given that reason is highly limited and human existence is irrational, Dostoevsky
rationally chooses to embrace irrationality. Taking the risk and making the leap, according to
Dostoevsky, is a logical necessity. Dostoyevsky writes, “[W]hen the idea of immortality is
lost, suicide becomes an absolute and inescapable necessity for any person who has even
developed slightly above the animal level.”159 From Dostoyevsky’s perspective, there is no
alternative other than having faith in immortality. “Without the conviction of his
immortality,” Dostoyevsky explains, “the links between the person and the earth are
broken.”160 When there is no future, the present becomes trivial and senseless. The logical
conclusion man draws from this perspective is that life is not worth the trouble of living.
Dostoevsky’s characters “who reach this level of self-awareness inevitably destroy

157

John 20:29, NIV.

158

John 20:27, NIV.

159

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 287.

160

Dostoevsky, 287.

38
themselves because, refusing to endure the torment of living without hope, they have become
monsters in their misery.”161
Believing in God and the promised immortality defeats nihilism because “only with faith
in his immortality does a person comprehend his whole wise purpose on earth.”162 In other
words, man finds his why and how to live in this life in the promise of eternal life. In
Dostoyevsky’s A Writer’s Dairy, the Ridiculous Man’s suicide proves that the belief in
immortality can dissuade people from killing themselves. In the Ridiculous Man’s dream, he
commits suicide to end the anguish of his existence. Unfortunately, he discovers that death is
not the end—he is still conscious of himself. He is frustrated because he was expecting there
to be nothing after death. In his words, “I had been expecting complete nonexistence, and
with that in mind had shot myself in the heart.”163 In other words, had he known that the
human soul is immortal and that death is only a temporary end, he would not have committed
suicide, because suicide could not end his painful and superfluous consciousness. He was
able to make up his mind to choose self-annihilation because he had no faith in immortality.
Thus, believing in God is the only cure for desperately afflicted humans.
This solution, however, offers a subjective truth that lacks objective evidence. It is
supported by passion alone as it lies beyond the scope of reason’s operation. Just believe. It
should be pointed out, however, that the leap of faith is chosen not because faith eliminates
absurdity. Rather, faith is enabled and enhanced by absurdity: it is precisely because the
world we inhabit cannot be fully understood that belief becomes necessary. There are too
many things that are “inaccessible to human beings through the natural exercise of their
capacity for intelligence or reason.”164 Therefore, a leap is necessary. Believing in something
that makes perfect sense is not faith, but a Euclidean fact. Faith requires constant risk; it does
not provide absolute rational certainty, only emotional security. Thus, the leap of faith is the
experience of acting without a rationally compelling basis.

161

Frank, A Writer in His Time, 119-120.

162

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 287.

163

Dostoevsky, 387.

164

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 93.

39
Dostoevsky’s solution to the absurd is not to conquer the unknowable—since human
understanding is limited—but to have faith in it. As Jesus demands, “Stop doubting and
believe;” the faith that Christianity requires is “to believe without understanding and without
judging.”165 “The sacrifice of the intellect”166 is the best sacrifice a man can offer God and
the ultimate sacrifice God commands. Only after experiencing the “golgotha of the
intellect”167 can one come close to God and please God. For “without faith it is impossible to
please God”168 and faith requires a willingness to go beyond the limits of reason. It is
therefore not surprising that Camus states that “god is maintained only through the negation
of human reason.”169
Reason is what the finite mind can confidently grasp. It is “our sole resource for working
out our natural destiny.”170 While human experience encompasses emotions like love and
passion, it is rationality that provides the only certainty within the realm of understanding.
Surrendering to what reason cannot fully comprehend is challenging, as it requires navigating
the uncertainties inherent in those experience. This sole resource is given by God who now
commands man to abandon it. This command sounds like the story of Abraham in the Old
Testament. God promised Abraham a son and his wife gave birth to Isaac. This is his beloved
and only son. Then the God who had given Abraham his son asked Abraham to sacrifice his
only son. Indeed, as Job said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.”171 It appears
that the will of man is not a factor to be considered with God, but an object to be tested.
Abraham might have firmly believed in God’s power to resurrect Isaac, but God’s
command only stated Isaac was to be offered as a burnt offering, without mentioning any
165

Andrea Lešić-Thomas, “The Answer Job Did Not Give: Dostoevsky’s ‘Brat’ia
Karamazovy’ and Camus’s ‘La Peste,’” The Modern Language Review 101, no. 3 (2006), 782.
166

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 37.

167

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 54.

168

Hebrew, 11:6, NIV.

169

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 41.

170

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 9.

171

Job 1: 21, NIV.

40
plan afterward. While God could resurrect Isaac, whether he would do so is another matter
entirely. Abraham had no knowledge of this. With confusion, anguish, and struggle, Abraham
took Isaac to the place that God had directed him. Between reason and irrationality, Abraham
experienced horrible agony. Lastly, he took the knife to slay Isaac. The angel of the Lord
appeared just in time to stop the grotesque murder and provide a ram for the burnt offering.
The test was completed, and Abraham successfully passed it. Abraham’s story is absurd
because what God asked him to do was far beyond the ethics and morality of any given time
period or culture. Moreover, it is particularly absurd that Abraham was commanded to kill his
only son without a reason.
Abraham’s struggle is not only a test of belief but also of how far one can go when reason
cannot provide certainty. When Abraham, under such circumstances, chose to abandon his
reason and listen to the voice of irrationality, he passed the test and became the father of
faith. It follows that what God ultimately demands of man is never to sacrifice the individual
but rationality. Faith alone answers all. All the problems that haunt man and cause pain and
restlessness, after the sacrifice of reason, bathe “in the water of a transcendent and
mysterious grace.”172 The limitation of reason has legitimized the abandonment of reason.
After all, reason offers no solution to the tragedy of human destiny. “Stop doubting and
believe,”173 thus spoke Jesus.
The struggle between reason and irrationality is really a wrestling between man and God.
The renunciation of reason is fundamentally the surrender of one’s ego to the divine will.
This is a recurring theme in Dostoyevsky’s work. Berdyaev concludes in his study of this
Russian writer, “The whole of Dostoevsky’s work is a plea for man, a plea which goes to the
length of strife with God, which antinomy is resolved by referring human destiny to Jesus
Christ, the God-Man.”174 Likewise, Joseph Frank observes that the surrender of the ego is the
typical Dostoyevskian way of salvation. The prideful ego is required “to surrender to the free
self-sacrifice of love made on its behalf by Christ.”175 Although it is a surrender to love, this
172

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 9.

173

John 20:27, NIV.

174

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 39.

175

Frank, A Writer in His Time, 116.

41
love demands unconditional belief and submission without providing any Euclidean proof.
Even if one is asked to kill the one he loves the most, man must obey without questioning.
This kind of love can be seen as manipulative, as it forces people to surrender their
reason and will. In such dynamics, the ego is inevitably left feeling humiliated in the face of
the demands of faith. Sprintzen explains, “And the body, rooted in the present and
demanding dignity and happiness while lucidly facing death, is reduced to a humiliated
supplicant bowing down in prayer and hoping to see ‘as through a glass darkly’ an infinite
and unknowable God upon whose will our salvation depends.”176 God does not only want
humans to serve Him, but more importantly, God wants humans to serve him by their free
will. The paradox of this demand is that only by surrendering his will can a man show God to
the greatest extent that he is a faithful servant of God. Therefore, man's only freedom is the
freedom to surrender his will voluntarily.
God wants man to shatter his prideful ego and reason and let God’s will manifest in man
voluntarily. The ultimate state to be achieved is the total renunciation of the self: “I no longer
live, but Christ lives in me.”177 Christianity is all about transformation—from selfaffirmation to self-denial, ultimately surrendering oneself to the will of God. This is the socalled “to put off your old self” and “to put on the new self.”178 For a man “who is wedded to
self-will and rebellion,”179 there is no return to the previous life. In Berdyaev’s words,
“[T]here is no recovering a lost Eden, he must seek a new one.”180 The only possible return
Dostoevsky finds “is to a transfigured nature and a transfigured earth” through Christ.181
This, according to Dostoevsky, is man’s only hope.

176

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 9.

177

Galatians, 2:20, NIV.

178

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is
being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on
the new self, created to be like God in the true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians, 4: 22-24, NIV.
179

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 208.

180

Berdyaev, 208.

181

Berdyaev, 208.

42
Chapter III
Camus’s Solution: Rebellion
“This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom
of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The
struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus
happy.”
The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 123.
v Lucidity: Against All Forms of Suicide
According to Camus, Dostoevsky’s hope is tragic. Camus critiques Dostoevsky’s
solution, arguing that Dostoevsky attempts “to cure humiliation by humility and nihilism by
renunciation.”182 This renunciation, to Camus, entails a complete abandonment of human
dignity and intelligence. Dostoyevsky’s extreme renunciation is evident in one of his letters:
“If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did
exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.”183 This leap to
unverifiable faith and the renunciation of reason to such an extent may have been difficult for
Camus to comprehend, and certainly something he could not endorse. Instead, Camus
advocates for a more balanced approach, one that “recognizes the struggle, does not
absolutely scorn reason, and admits the irrational.”184 David Sprintzen rightly observes that if
Camus “rejected the often naive Greek rationalism, he similarly rejected a Christian
mysterious irrationalism.”185 Reason, though limited and circumscribed, remains the only
certainty humans possess. Those who embrace such an ideology are “little inclined to leap
before knowing.”186

182

Camus, “For Dostoyevsky,” Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches 1937-1958, 189.

183

Dostoevsky, “To Mme. N. D. Fonvisin,” Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to
His Family and Friends (London: Chatto & Windus, 1917), 67-68.
184

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 37.

185

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 8.

186

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 37.

43
Camus writes, “I have merely to draw the conclusions from what I can see and to risk
nothing that is hypothetical.”187 However, one cannot be certain whether transcendental
meaning exists, as it extends far beyond the scope of reason and requires a leap of faith. Even
if such meaning exists, it remains irrelevant to humans because it cannot be conceived in
human terms. As Matthew Sharpe puts it, “[E]ven if the world and human experience has
some absolute Meaning, we can never legitimately claim to know or command it.”188
Throughout his life, Camus seeks to maintain the clarity of his reason by prioritizing factual
judgments over value judgments. He aims to determine whether he can live based solely on
what he knows, or as he phrases it, “to live without appeal.”189
In The Stranger, Meursault judges the chaplain’s faith, claiming that “none of his
certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head”190 because the concept of God is a
hypothesis. Whereas Meursault himself, although he is not certain about life after death, is at
least sure of his own life and death. He acknowledges, “Yes, that was all I had. But at least I
had as much of a hold on it as it had on me.”191 Meursault believes he is more certain than
the chaplain because everything Meursault knows pertains solely to his own condition.
“What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me?”192 Camus asks. This suggests that
Camus is not strictly an atheist but rather an agnostic. Camus also states in his Notebooks, “I
am not an atheist and I do not believe in God.”193 He does not deny the possibility of
transcendence and even has “a sense of the sacred,”194 but he remains skeptical of any
meaning that goes beyond human experience, such as God or the future life. Sartre also has

187

Camus, 61.

188

Matthew Sharpe, “The Black Side of the Sun: Camus, Theology, and the Problem of Evil,”
Political Theology (vol 15, no. 2, 2014), 156.
189

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 53.

190

Camus, The Stranger, 120.

191

Camus, 120.

192

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 51.

193

Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, 81.

194

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 364.

44
keen insight into this matter. In his reply to Camus’ letter, Sartre remarks, “Even in you, who
tried not even to hate the Germans, there is a hatred of god that shows through in your books,
and it has been said that you are even more of an ‘anti-theist’ than an atheist.”195
The story of Job in the Bible serves as a concrete example of the human condition as
perceived by Camus, helping to understand his attitude towards the tension between
transcendence and human reason. According to the Book of Job, Job is a righteous man who
endures one affliction after another without apparent cause. Job’s reason cannot explain his
misery and his friends conclude that Job is being punished for some sin. When God finally
speaks to Job in the wind, the argument ceases. Interestingly, God does not answer Job’s
inquiry, but proclaims His omniscience and omnipotence, emphasizing Job’s unworthiness
and ignorance as a creature of the Lord. Job acknowledges God’s power and confesses that
he cannot “fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”196 Confronted with the vast
disparity in power and knowledge, Job abandons his rational questioning and submits to the
incomprehensible. He says, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”197
Job repents not because God provides a reasonable explanation for his suffering, but
because Job recognizes his inability to understand God’s apparent irrationality. Job’s intellect
cannot fathom God’s willingness to inflict suffering on him, just as Abraham could not
understand why he had to sacrifice his only son. Neither Job nor Abraham can understand
because God never explains Himself; instead, He wields His supreme power, compelling
them to abandon their inquiries and take a leap of faith. The answers given by the deity
demand a leap because both the existence of God and His actions are beyond finite
rationality to comprehend.
Camus, however, holds a different attitude towards this. He does not deny the absolute
power of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, but he also does not intend to sacrifice his
intellect to believe in something unintelligible or irrational. He insists on maintaining his
rational judgment. In the story of Job, God does not answer Job directly, perhaps because He
195

Sartre, On Camus, 36.

196

Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV.

197

Job 42: 5-4, NIV.

45
has no justifiable response to Job’s question. God cannot defend His decision to wager with
Satan and permit the suffering of a righteous man. In this sense, Job appears more righteous
than God. Andrea Lesic-Thomas presents a different interpretation of Job in her essay,
depicting a Job who does not accept God’s illogical answer. Thomas’ Job replies to God: “I
am capable of making sense of all this on my own, and all I can see from the noise you are
making is that your almightiness is worth less than my moral awareness.”198 Job’s questions
are rational, and his suffering is unjust, while God’s responses remain evasive. Thomas’
version of Job is a rebel who refuses to submit to irrationality, daring to challenge divine
authority and striving to interpret things in ways that human reason can understand. This is
the path Camus advocates—to be a rebel like Job against bowing to the notion of an
incomprehensible divine will.
The fundamental distinction between man and other creatures is his consciousness and
self-awareness. Camus writes, “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”199
The rebel declares that he is dissatisfied or disagrees not only with his condition but with the
whole of creation. This rebellion is metaphysical because “it contests the ends of man and of
creation,”200 thereby challenging God’s absolute will and authority in his actions. In doing so,
the rebel attempts to talk to God as equal. Indeed, the rebel is a blasphemer as he believes
that he possesses a better idea of human existence and creation than the Creator Himself. By
denying God’s creation, the rebel is trying to construct a “tabula rasa,”201 a blank slate upon
which he can build something that aligns with his vision of justice, meaning, and human
dignity. This rejection of divine authority is an assertion of human autonomy, a desire to
reshape existence according to human values and reason, rather than to accept the world as it
is. As for what foundation upon which the rebel intends to establish these values, it will be
elaborated in the next chapter.

198

Lešić -Thomas, “The Answer Job Did Not Give: Dostoevsky’s Brat’ia Karamazovy and
Camus’s La Peste,” 788.
199

Camus, The Rebel, 11.

200

Camus, 23.

201

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 356.

46
The rebel is in a situation where he dislikes the world he is part of and the condition of
his existence, yet he is also uncertain about how to resolve this dissatisfaction. Ivan in The
Brothers Karamazov asks, “Man was made a rebel; can rebels be happy?”202 As Hope
Keeton observes, “None of Dostoyevsky’s characters ever find happiness until they cease to
rebel”203 against God’s creation and surrender to God’s will. In contrast, Camus’ heroes can
only obtain happiness through perpetual rebellion. They must die unreconciled to remain
loyal to the soil in which the absurdity arises.
In contrast to Dostoevsky’s belief in the choice of suicide or transformation, Camus states
in The Myth of Sisyphus that confronting the absurd results in “suicide or recovery.”204
However, recovery does not imply healing, as Camus asserts it is impossible for a man who
rejects hope. “A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so,” Camus writes, “has ceased
to belong to the future.”205 Such a man will never witness “a new heaven and a new earth.”206
Instead, all he sees is “a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing
is possible and everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness.”207
There is no metaphysical meaning or hope in this world. Those afflicted by the plague of
absurdity must accept that there is no cure for their sickness. Their only choice is to endure
this affliction without hope.
In Camus’ short story, “The Adulterous Wife,” the heroine Janine endures a passionless
life and lives with her equally passionless husband.208 However, after an intense encounter
with the mysterious night, her inner desire for something more is temporarily satisfied.

202

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 251.

203

Hope Keeton, In Pursuit of a Justification of Living: A Comparative Study of Dostoyevsky
and Camus, Dissertation, (Unites States: The University of North Carolina, 1967), 22.
204

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus,13.

205

Camus, 31-32.

206

Revelation 21: 1, NIV.

207

Camus, 60.

208

Camus, “The Adulterous Wife,” Exile and the Kingdom (New York: Vintage International,
2007), 3-26.

47
Following this metaphorical “affair,” Janine returns to her husband and resumes her mundane
life. Nothing has changed—her husband and her dull existence remain the same. Yet,
internally, her heart is nourished by a moment of passion. With this change of heart, she
willingly and soberly accepts her tedious life. She re-engages with life in a state of “revolt
and lucidity,” having “forgotten how to hope.”209 In this way, Janine becomes a warrior of
life, possessing the courage to confront the bleakness of existence that is not glorified or
decorated with any illusory hope.
Compared to Janine, Dostoevsky’s solution appears as an escape from reality. Christian
faith demands hope for a better future, asserting that this bleak, earthly reality is not the
ultimate reality, but merely “a shadow of the things that were to come.”210 The true reality, in
the words of the apostle Paul, “is found in Christ.”211 This faith urges individuals to discern,
in the words of Camus’ The Stranger, “a divine face [emerging]” from the darkness of the
suffering world, in which every stone “sweats with suffering.”212
Because of the belief in the divine mercy behind the curtain of this world, Simone Weil
advocates an approach of reconciliation between sorrow and joy, believing that ultimately all
will be well.213 By focusing on this distant future, the present life is not only bearable but
more importantly, it is given meaning and purpose through beliefs that cannot be verified by
reason. Adhering to this doctrine leads to resignation from the tyranny of absurdity and
surrender to the capriciousness of fate. This is how religion, or any ideology, works: it
engages people “in short-term projects, lit by distant hopes,”214 thereby diverting them from
discovering the true nature of existence. These hopes, while comforting and occasionally
offering moments of pleasure, deceive people, making life more bearable but distancing them
from the fundamental truths of existence.
209

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 52.

210

Colossians 2: 17, NIV.

211

Colossians 2: 17, NIV.

212

Camus, The Stranger, 118-119.

213

Rik Van Nieuwenhove, “Albert Camus, Simone Weil and the Absurd,” Irish Theological
Quarterly (2005), 354.
214

Sartre, On Camus, 40.

48
Meursault’s response aligns more closely with the reality as perceived by Camus. When
the chaplain urges Meursault to see divine redemption in his desperate situation, Meursault
dismisses the notion by saying, “I have been looking at the stones in these walls for
months…And in any case, I’d never seen anything emerge from any sweating stones.”215 For
the absurd man, only lived experience holds any truth. Meursault’s experience confirms that
there is nothing beyond the bleak reality that he suffers. Any doctrine promising a cure for
the human condition by invoking a future beyond this life is, for Camus, an act of
philosophical suicide. These doctrines are fundamentally deceptions—attempts to evade the
naked and hollow reality of existence.
In The Stranger, the chaplain incredulously asks Meursault, “Have you no hope at all?
And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?” To
this, Meursault simply replies, “Yes.”216 The chaplain pities Meursault, believing that living
without hope makes life unbearable. The chaplain is not entirely wrong. It is indeed terrifying
to confront the absurdity of life and the emptiness of human existence. Upon reflection, one
might conclude that suicide appears a more consistent response than continuing to live. This
is where the necessity of God’s existence is often invoked: as a protection against the
temptation of suicide. Yet, this countermeasure comes at a cost—the sacrifice of intellectual
lucidity; replacing it with philosophical suicide in an attempt to avoid physical selfdestruction.
Dostoevsky’s character Kirillov insists, “Man has done nothing but invent God, so as to
live without killing himself; in that lies the whole of world history up to now.”217 The
concept of the “immortality of the soul…engrosses many noble minds”218 because it allows
them to avoid confronting the unanswerable questions they fear to face directly. Kirillov
positions himself as a precursor God-Man, declaring that he “alone for the first time in world

215

Camus, The Stranger, 119.

216

Camus, 117.

217

Dostoevsky, Demons, 617.

218

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 95.

49
history did not want to invent God.” He sees it as his “duty to proclaim unbelief”219 in order
to enlighten others and liberate them from this profound deception. Similarly, Camus
criticizes hope “as the most terrible” evil of all, arguing that it contradicts the principle of
being alive, which is “not to be resigned.”220 True living involves maintaining lucidity—
recognizing the absence of a future while still choosing to embrace life fully and fight
relentlessly against a life that is not worth living.
Camus writes in Notebooks, “Thought is always out in front. It sees too far, farther than
the body, which lives in the present.”221 The decaying body is the only undeniable truth of
humanity, revealing that it will eventually perish and that there is nothing beyond death.
While human thoughts can wander into abstract realms ad imagine possibilities beyond the
present, the decaying body anchors us to the unavoidable truth of our mortality. This physical
decline challenges the notion of an afterlife or continued existence beyond death, as it starkly
contrasts with the aspirations of thought, which often yearns for transcendence or
immortality. In confronting the decaying body, one is confronted with the reality that all
living beings share the same fate, thereby reinforcing the idea that death is not merely a
transition but the ultimate conclusion of existence. Thus, the decay of the body becomes a
profound revelation: it strips away illusions of an eternal self.
Death is the fate of humankind. This concept unveils a relative freedom for individuals:
death is the only fatality; all the rest is liberty. By accepting death, individuals “at the same
time accept its consequences—that is to say, the abolition of all life’s traditional values.”222
This recognition brings thought back to the body destined to perish, thereby eradicating hope.
It is a painful form of freedom, where humans finally discover that they have always been
orphans of the universe, growing up alone as “there is no more father, no more rule.”223 As
Malan says to Jacques, who seeks to know his deceased father, “You no longer need a father.
219

Dostoevsky, Demons, 617.

220

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 91-92.

221

Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942, 105.

222

Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942, 95.

223

Camus, The Fall, 134.

50
You brought yourself up alone.”224 In such a universe, “man is the sole master,” with his
kingdom existing solely on earth. Aside from the single fatality of death, humanity is
fundamentally free because “[w]hat bound him was the illusion of another world.”225 This
realization is crucial, as it allows individuals to truly grasp their existential condition, which
is a necessary precondition for Camus’ concept of rebellion.
Camus passionately embraces a life that lacks reference, likening it to “the high seas.” He
is thrilled to live dangerously in the seas without a predetermined direction, believing that the
absence of direction—namely, meaning and purpose—enhances life. This void grants
individuals inner freedom and expands their possibilities, allowing people to “give the void
its colour”226 based on their own will. It is within the uncertainty and void that individuals
can cultivate a sense of agency, transforming the void into a canvas upon which they can
authentically create their own visions of life.
In Dostoevsky’s Demons, the notion of “the high road” 227 parallels Camus’ “high seas.”
The narrator of Demons defines a high road as “something very, very long, which one sees
no end to—like human life, like the human dream. There is an idea in the high road.”228 This
high road, like the high seas, signifies life’s immense possibilities. The opposite of the high
road is “travelling by post,”229 which necessitates a precise destination and thus terminating
any potential for exploration. For this reason, Camus boldly asserts that life “will be lived all
the better if it has no meaning.”230 Likewise, the narrator of Demons claims that it is “better
simply [to go down] the high road” and explore whatever is ahead.231 However, after

224

Camus, The First Man, 36.

225

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 53, 58, 117.

226

Camus, 53, 58, 114.

227

Dostoevsky, Demons, 631.

228

Dostoevsky, 631.

229

Dostoevsky, 631.

230

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 53.

231

Dostoevsky, Demons, 631.

51
exclaiming “Vive la grande route,” the narrator of Dostoevsky’s Demons adds, “and then it’s
whatever God sends.”232 In contrast to the narrator, Camus extends the freedom of the high
road by rejecting the notion of divine providence. Camus writes enthusiastically, “Once
again, without respite, let us race to our destruction.”233 Here, the full essence of the tragic
hero is vividly revealed.
Given that neither philosophical suicide nor transcendental meaning is plausible for
Camus, his world is bare and completely unadorned. To cover up absurdity with man-made
meaning for Camus amounts to covering up one absurdity with another. Physical suicide is
even more repulsive because it is a result of human frailty. While philosophical suicide is
avoidance, that is, “mind’s retreat before what the mind itself has brought to light,”234
physical suicide is the most extreme form of renunciation, or in Camus’ words, “a
repudiation.”235 When one kills himself voluntarily due to his logical conclusion that life is
not worth the struggle, he is defeated by the absurdity of life. Suicide is a surrender in which
the person confesses that he can no longer bear life.
Camus explains, “Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively,
the ridiculous character of [the habit of living], the absence of any profound reason for living,
the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.”236 The person
gives up playing the game of living by voluntarily closing his account in advance. However,
killing oneself does not solve anything other than eliminating one’s consciousness. Suicide is
unable to “[engulf] the absurd in the same death” because the absurd “escapes suicide to the
extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death.”237 Davison explains that
for Camus, the fallacy of suicide is that it “betrays the logic of the absurd by destroying the
lucid awareness that gives rise to it. Suicide is thus akin to the Christian existentialist leap
232

Dostoevsky, 631. “Vive la grande route” means Long live the high road.

233

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 181.

234

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 50.

235

Camus, 55.

236

Camus, 5-6.

237

Camus, 54.

52
into faith: it runs away from the truth.”238 As a result, the only thing one can kill through
suicide is oneself.
Camus therefore points out, “To abolish conscious revolt is to elude the problem.”239 In
this sense, philosophical suicide and physical suicide are the same. They are just different
forms of resignation. Philosophical suicide offers temporary or illusory hope that allows
individuals to escape from directly confronting reality, while physical suicide opens the door
to the permanent exit and offers an escape from life itself. Despite one being hope and the
other being despair, both are “grounded in the inarticulate sense of life’s intrinsic
meaninglessness.”240 Both philosophical suicide and physical suicide, therefore, are strictly
rejected by Camus as flawed solutions.
“The important thing,” Camus emphasizes, “is not to be cured, but to live with one’s
ailments.”241 Camus believes that the right way to fight nihilism is to bravely face the
meaninglessness of life and coexist with the absurd. When finding a cure is impossible and
all forms of renunciation are denied, the only option left for humanity is rebellion—
embracing life in its most authentic form and living it passionately and fully.
The absurd is like an incurable plague, the only thing people can do is fight against the
plague to the bitter end. Camus believes that this should be evident to everyone with the
capacity for rational thought. Camus writes in The Plague, “[W]hen you see the misery it
brings, you’d need to be a madman, or a coward, or stone blind, to give in tamely to the
plague.”242 Weil also claims that “it would be necessary to become blind, deaf, and without
pity in order to believe” that there is mercy in absurdity.243 Nevertheless, Weil does not
advocate for revolt. Instead, she believes in the mercy of God, which lies “behind the curtain
238

Ray Davison, Camus: The Challenge of Dostoevsky (Devon: The University of Exeter
Press, 1997), 28.
239

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 53-54.

240

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 54.

241

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 38.

242

Camus, The Plague (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 125-126.

243

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (Manitoba: Bison Books, 1997), 100.

53
of this world.”244 The rebel, on the other hand, claims that “this life has no other aspect than
that of the absurd” and that “its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition
between [his] conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles.”245 In this perpetual
opposition, the rebel seeks that all explanations of humans be “formulated in reasonable
terms.”246 In other words, all responses to questions about the human condition must be
grounded in rationality.
Rebels are individuals who, upon acknowledging the absence of hope, consciously
choose to persist in a state devoid of hope and strive to live a full life—one in which they
embrace the richness of existence by experiencing all that life has to offer with courage and
resilience. They are true warriors of life. Camus writes in his Notebooks, “Through the years,
what I have always found at the heart of my sensibility is the refusal to disappear from this
world, from its joy, its pleasures, its sufferings.”247 Rebellion is generated through this
perpetual refusal. Camus therefore characterizes this rebellion as “a total absence of hope, a
continual rejection, and a conscious dissatisfaction.”248 Any solution that does not comply
with these characteristics, “ruins the absurd and devaluates the attitude that may then be
proposed.”249 Living, fundamentally, entails “keeping the absurd alive”250 and confronting it
directly.
Camus writes, “The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.”251 Not to
agree with the absurd is to rebel against it. Through a lifelong struggle with absurdity, people
live out the true meaning of life— consciously struggling towards the limits of human

244

Weil, 100.

245

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 60.

246

Camus, The Rebel, 21.

247

Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, 123.

248

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 31.

249

Camus, 31.

250

Camus, 54.

251

Camus, 31.

54
existence. This struggle, Camus believes, “is enough to fill a man’s heart.”252 Because the
rebel’s heart is “fully satisfied every hour of the day by the sunshine and the hills,” he has
ceased to hope.253 Camus’ absurd man, thus, accepts the ambiguous universe as it is and
“draw[s] from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life
without consolation.”254
Given that the rebel lives a life characterized by “a death without hope” and “a wealth
that has no future,”255 whether the rebellion will yield any desirable outcomes is not within
the rebel’s scope of consideration. “Assured…of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal
consciousness,” Camus writes, the rebel “lives out his adventure within the span of his
lifetime.”256 In Camus’ The Plague, Rieux, the doctor who tries his best to save people from
the plague, asks Tarrou “since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better
for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without
raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?” Tarrou replies: “Yes. But your
victories will never be lasting; that’s all.” Rieux answers: “Yes, I know that. But it’s no
reason for giving up the struggle” even if it is a “never ending defeat.”257
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes, “The sole thought that is not mendacious is
therefore a sterile thought. In the absurd world the value of a notion or of a life is measured
by its sterility.”258 The sterility mentioned by Camus here should be understood in the context
of eternity. In the absurd world, lasting victories that Tarrou speaks of can only be obtained
through philosophical suicide. In such a world, where transcendental and traditional
meanings are stripped away, everything perishes with death. Therefore, only thoughts and

252

Camus, 123.

253

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 327.

254

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 60.

255

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 76, 89.

256

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 66.

257

Camus, The Plague, 128.

258

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 69.

55
values that cannot produce lasting results—those that do not engage in any form of
philosophical suicide—are authentic and valuable. Once faith in immortality is lost, results
cannot define the meaning of actions, for in an absurd world, no outcome is eternal.
Conversely, while actions themselves may lack lasting meaning, they have the possibility to
temporarily improve the human condition. Moreover, the attitudes these actions embody
demonstrate humanity’s refusal to submit to the dominion of absurdity, thus upholding
human dignity.
After all, the philosophy of the absurd asserts that there is no place for hope in rebellion.
Defeat is the fate of rebellion. Be that as it may, man revolts regardless because rebellion is
the “[tribute] that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in
advance.”259 In Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground Man, the Underground Man
insists on futile resistance only to show his attitude to the unknown power that he is a man
and “not the keys of a piano.”260 In other words, the rebel revolts to prove that he has the
freedom to rebel. He is not a puppet. The result of the rebellion is not important anymore,
what is important is that in the rebellion the rebel preserves his dignity—the dignity of saying
no. In despair, the rebel composes his dignity and will.
Dostoevsky employs a metaphor involving a man who, having been buried alive,
awakens in his coffin. This imagery may be used to illustrate the nature of Camus’ concept of
rebellion. This unfortunate man “bangs on the lid and tries to throw it off, though of course
reason could convince him that all his efforts will be in vain. But the point is that he is no
longer reasoning: it’s convulsions.”261 For Dostoevsky, any resistance that rejects faith is a
convulsion of despair. In this sense, Camus’ solution is also tragic. It seems that, in the
analysis of Eliseo Vivas, “the tragic alternative is ineluctable: either accept [the stone wall of
the absurd] or smash your head against it.”262

259

Camus, 93.

260

Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground, 29.

261

Dostoevsky, Notes From A Dead House, 80.

262

Eliseo Vivas, “The Two Dimensions of Reality in the Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoevsky:
A Collection of Critical Essays, 89.

56
Dostoevsky’s Underground Man demonstrates this mentality well. When the
Underground Man perceives that his entire life is being coercively governed by an unknown
force he refers to as the laws of nature, he begins to protest. The Underground Man says, “Of
course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the
strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a
stone wall and I have not the strength.” This echoes what Doctor Rieux said: the absence of
hope for victory is not a reason to give up the struggle. Regardless, the rebel knows that “a
fight must be put up, and there must be no bowing down.”263 This is precisely the attitude
Camus aims to convey through rebellion—persistence despite the total absence of hope and
resolute in the face of defeat.
v Man-Centered Philosophy: Correcting Divine Creation
Restoring Human Dignity
In Lyrical and Critical Essays, Camus urges people to take action to repair and rectify a
world created by God. He writes, “Our task as men is to find the few principles that will calm
the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice
imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to
peoples poisoned by the misery of the century.”264 Hope Keeton observes, “When one refuses
to affirm a belief in nothingness one automatically affirms a belief in ‘something.’”265 In fact,
absolute nihilism does not exist. People always believe in something, whether it is in
themselves, the supernatural, or Superman. Camus argues, “The moment you say that
everything is nonsense you express something meaningful.”266 Although Camus rejects belief
in anything beyond the grasp of human reason and resists absolute value judgments, he
recognizes that “life has at least a relative value,” because humans possess an inherent
263

Camus, The Plague, 133.

264

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 135.

265

Keeton, In Pursuit of a Justification of Living: A Comparative Study of Dostoyevsky and
Camus, 28.
266

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 159-160.

57
tendency to preserve life and avoid death.267 This intrinsic drive reflects an acknowledgment
of life’s worth. Rebellion is thus justified—it “gives life its value” and “restores its majesty to
that life” by defending human existence and increasing human happiness.268
Camus’ rebellion is fundamentally “a struggle between a world that is still interpreted in
a sacred context and men who are already committed to their individuality, that is to say,
armed with the power to question.”269 Camus highly praises this struggle for he believes that
“there is no finer sight than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it.
The sight of human pride is unequaled.”270 For Camus, happiness lies in the dignity of living
without yielding to anything that despises humans. Dostoevsky also remarks, “Every man,
whoever he may be and however humiliated, still requires, even if instinctively, even if
unconsciously, respect for his human dignity.”271 Thus, the preservation of human dignity is
one of humanity’s intrinsic needs. When human dignity is trampled, the individual is
fundamentally despised and undermined.
Camus believes that affirmation of humanity can make human beings better; Dostoevsky
similarly writes, “Humane treatment may make a human being even of someone in whom the
image of God has faded long ago.”272 It is important to note that, while both thinkers agree
on the significance of preserving human dignity, the paths they choose are fundamentally
different. Dostoevsky argues that only within Christ can morality and love become possible.
Therefore, for mutual respect and even love, humanity must surrender to God. In contrast,
Camus maintains that Christianity must be rejected because it for two thousand years had
offered man “a humiliating image of himself.”273 It degrades humanity by imposing notions
of sin and dependence that undermine human strength.
267

Camus, 159-160.

268

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 55.

269

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 305.

270

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 55.

271

Dostoevsky, Notes From A Dead House, 111.

272

Dostoevsky, 111.

273

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 8.

58
Camus disagrees with the Christian version of man as he believes that “man is capable of
great deeds.”274 In his lecture at the Latour-Maubourg Monastery, Camus clearly articulates
the difference between his view of man and that of Christianity: “If Christianity is pessimistic
about man, it is optimistic about human destiny. Well, I shall say that being pessimistic about
human destiny, I am optimistic about man.”275 Unlike Christianity, which often devalues
human nature by viewing humankind as inherently weak and prone to sin, Camus argues that
“[t]here are more things in men to admire than to despise.”276 In The Fall, Camus’ character
the “judge-penitent” Jean-Baptiste Clamence says, “What, in your opinion, keeps them from
becoming converted? Respect perhaps, respect for men; yes, human respect.”277 Only by
rejecting the Christian distortion of human nature can individuals potentially rise from
humiliation and restore their dignity through rebellion.
Camus believes that by living in the face of death and without consolation, individuals
derive from the preservation of their dignity and rationality both a “delicious anguish of
being” and “a royal happiness.”278 In Camus’ portrayal, Sisyphus obtains this bitter happiness
by consciously embracing “his wretched condition.”279 Although fully aware of his
powerlessness, Sisyphus consciously pushes the rock which will inevitably roll back to its
original position. By acknowledging the boundlessness of his suffering, yet consciously
embracing his fate, Sisyphus is therefore “superior to his fate [and] stronger than his rock.”280
In this kingdom, where defeat is assured, he becomes his own king.

274

Camus, The Plague, 162.

275

Camus, Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches 1937-1958, 56.

276

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 67.

277

Camus, The Fall, 133.

278

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 181.

279

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 121.

280

Camus, 121.

59
Camus declares in The Myth of Sisyphus that “man is his own end. And he is his only
end.”281 In a world devoid of ultimate meaning, man is the only source of meaning because
“he is the only creature to insist on having one.”282 “This world has at least the truth of man,”
Camus continues, “And it has no justification but man.”283 From this perspective, a person’s
life exists solely for itself. It should never be used merely as a means to achieve some grand
vision, for nothing is more sacred on the earth than human life.
Dostoevsky also believes “an absolute value” is inherent even in the most insignificant
human being.284 However, Dostoevsky would not agree with Camus’ view that individuals
are their ultimate meaning, as Dostoevsky holds that the ultimate meaning and human dignity
exist solely within the redemption offered by Christ. For Dostoevsky, it is the Creator who
bestows meaning upon life and restores human dignity. Dostoevsky thus writes that he “could
never look indifferently at madmen” for all humans are equal before God. 285 In contrast,
Camus argues that only by persistently rebelling against such an arbitrary deity can one
achieve existential meaning and restore human dignity. Regardless, both thinkers, despite
their differing paths, emphasize the absolute value of human beings.
Fight for Earthly Happiness
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus begins his preface with the Greek lyrical poet Pindar’s
odes, “Oh my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.”286
Because man is his own end and the only end, Camus advocates for individuals to fight for
their happiness in this world, rather than neglecting the experience of the present for the sake
of a distant and unverifiable afterlife. Camus claims, “Real generosity toward the future lies
281

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 88.

282

Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (New York: Vintage International, 1960), 28.

283

Camus, 28.

284

V. V. Zenkousky, “Dostoevsky’s Religious and Philosophical Views,” Dostoevsky: A
Collection of Critical Essays, 133.
285

Dostoevsky, Notes From A Dead House, 202.

286

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 2.

60
in giving all to the present.”287 “Not that nostalgia is foreign to [the rebel],” Camus explains,
“But he prefers his courage and reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to
get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits.”288 With an awareness of
his limitations, the rebel focuses solely on what he can control and strives to live life to the
best of his capability.
However, the refusal of the eternal does not amount to a renunciation of it. The rebel does
not negate the eternal, he just “does nothing for the eternal.”289 The rebel distances himself
from the eternal, deliberately choosing to gaze on the present. “If I,” Camus elucidates,
“obstinately refuse all the ‘later on’s’ of this world, it is because I have no desire to give up
my present wealth.”290 Camus also writes in his Notebooks, “I am happy in this world for my
kingdom is of this world.”291 The truth of his world, according to Camus, “lay only in its
beauty, and the delights it offered.”292
Of course, this is fleeting—everything this world offers “will satisfy only the moment of
life.”293 Nevertheless, the rebel also knows from experience that “there is no superhuman
happiness, no eternity outside the curve of the days.”294 Happiness is a human experience and
eternity is found in the ordinary.295 Since fleeting earthly joy is the only happiness humans
can attain, “the very awareness of its momentariness” only intensifies the fire of love for this
world.296 Thus, those deprived of a future are far from despair, because “[t]he flames of earth
287

Camus, The Rebel, 304.

288

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 66.

289

Camus, 66.

290

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 76.

291

Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942, 9.

292

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 326.

293

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 648-649.

294

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 90.

295

“Beyond the curve of the days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity—
happiness was human, eternity ordinary.” Albert Camus, A Happy Death, 120.
296

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 648-649.

61
are surely worth celestial perfumes.”297 Indeed, the beauty of the world is dependable, as it
never abandons people. It is this profound beauty that “in the end save[s] [humans] from
despair.”298 Therefore, individuals shall live “on sensations, on the surface of the world,
among colors, waves, and the good smell of the soil.”299 In this transient kingdom, the rebel
devotes his “whole effort to examine, to enlarge, and to enrich the ephemeral island,”300
consuming “the most gorgeous of this world’s offerings.”301 The experiences and sensations
that individuals have in this world constitute the sole truth pertinent to their existence, even
though this truth is ephemeral, culminating in death.
Doctor Rieux in The Plague is a concrete manifestation of Camus’ philosophy that
emphasizes the importance of happiness in this life. Doctor Rieux says to Father Paneloux,
who is concerned with the ultimate salvation of the human soul, “Salvation’s much too big a
word for me. I don’t aim so high. I am concerned with man’s health, and for me his health
comes first.”302 Camus does not set his sights so high either, as he states, “I have too much
youth in me to be able to speak of death.”303 The possibility of saving the human soul
remains an uncertain mystery, and the implications of death are also enigmatic. However, one
thing is certain: an individual can do his utmost to alleviate the suffering in this world and
increase tangible happiness, and strive to experience that happiness while still alive.
Striving to make a better world with less suffering is not equivalent to “wanting to be a
god on earth.”304 The rebel has no interest in becoming a god or a God-Man; his sole interest

297

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 91.

298

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 168.

299

Camus, 326.

300

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 94.

301

Camus, The First Man, 51.

302

Camus, The Plague, 219.

303

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 76.

304

Camus, Caligula and Three Other Plays, 16.

62
is to be a man who is to remain forever committed to the fight for human happiness. He
wishes to create tangible happiness in this world through his own efforts, establishing a “just
Kingdom of Man in opposition to the unjust Kingdom of God.”305 He is fully aware that he is
not a deity, as he has a clear understanding of his own limitations. Camus’ rebel knows that
even though he “rectif[ies] in creation everything that can be rectified,” a perfect society will
never be realized and all he can do is “to diminish arithmetically the sufferings of the
world.”306 In the recognition of their finitude, people’s desires are grounded in reality and
focused on the attainable—seeking the greatest happiness within the scope of their abilities.
Individuals shift from gazing at the silent sky to living a grounded and practical life. They
have no ambition to become gods because the appreciation for the present life and pursuit of
practical wisdom has already filled their hearts.
In The First Man, when Jacques mentions his neglect in seeking more information about
his deceased father, Malan notes that “it’s wisdom in this case.”307 Malan suggests that even
if Jacques were to persist in his inquiry, he would likely find only disappointing and limited
information. This is because people often fail to fully know those with whom they live, let
alone a person they have never met who has been deceased for forty years. Similarly, if
humans struggle to comprehend life on earth fully, how can they possibly understand the
divine beings in the heavens? Thus, it is prudent to “restrain [oneself] from trying to learn
more than life has taught [him].”308 One should disregard the metaphysical aspects of life and
concentrate on the tangible realities, which are already inexhaustible.
This is exactly the kind of life that young Jacques lived during his childhood: “[God] was
a word Jacques never heard spoken throughout his childhood, nor did he trouble himself
about it. Life, so vivid and mysterious, was enough to occupy his entire being.”309 In this
context, Ronald D. Srigley justifiably argues that “The First Man is his attempt to create an
305

Davison, Camus: The Challenge of Dostoevsky, 124.

306

Camus, The Rebel, 303.

307

Camus, The First Man, 30.

308

Camus, 30.

309

Camus, 165.

63
image of life before the fall, that is to say, before the advent and influence of the Christian
historiography and its modem successors.”310
Camus wants to encourage individuals to equate “I see” with “I believe” and devote their
lives to what their “hands can touch” and their “lips caress.”311 Life, for Camus, is a
commitment to the earth. Human beings live better without transcendental meaning, as life,
in essence, is “the nuptials of man and earth.”312 In this tangible existence, the individual
“accept[s] the unintelligibility of the world” and begins “to pay attention to man.”313 Life on
the earth now becomes “his whole passion.”314 What Camus urges people to do is simply
return to the direct experience and love for life that people had in childhood. Childhood,
Ronald D. Srigley explains, is a time “in our own lives when we experienced life without the
mediating influence of [any ideologies].”315 Loving life in its concrete form is not a foreign
concept for people. In fact, they are merely reviving the natural and fervent passion for life
they experienced as children. Indeed, no one begins his life with the feeling of existential
anguish or metaphysical torment. As Camus writes, “The world was not hostile to me at first.
I had a happy childhood.”316
In Camus’ play “The Just Assassins,” when someone defends God by arguing that
although life is filled with the agony of separation, God reunites, Camus responds: “Not on
this earth. And the only meetings that mean anything to me take place on earth.”317 Sartre,
therefore, comments on Camus’ absurd man, pointing out that the rebel is a humanist and “he

310

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 196.

311

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 70.

312

Camus, 92.

313

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 86.

314

Camus, A Happy Death, 83.

315

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 315.

316

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 349-350.

317

Camus, “The Just Assassins,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 290.

64
knows only the blessings of this world.”318 Since distancing himself from the intangible, man
has come to recognize that “suffering exhausts hope and faith and then is left alone and
unexplained.”319 The only conclusion one can draw is that God is indifferent to the plight of
human beings. Camus, therefore, expects nothing from heaven, which, being “indifferent to
[people’s] horrible victories,” will be equally indifferent to [their] just defeat.”320
“The toiling masses, worn out with suffering and death, are masses without God.”321
According to Nicholas Berdyaev, in his study of Dostoevsky, this recognition leads to “the
logical development of the campaign against god in the name of the love of good.”322
Individuals must fight against the indifferent universe and the wickedness of the world.
While on this earth, pestilences and victims are inevitable, at least “it’s up to us, so far as
possible, not to join the forces with the pestilences.”323 Thus, Camus proclaims, “We must
serve justice because our condition is unjust, increase happiness and joy because this
universe is unhappy.”324 Camus pushes this belief further by stating that because this world is
absurd, “we must give it all these reasons.”325 It is with this mentality that Doctor Rieux
states, “I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t
really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.”326 Being a man means
doing what one can to fight “against creation as he found it.”327 After all, “no one ever threw

318

Sartre, On Camus, 66.

319

Camus, The Rebel, 303.

320

Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 32.

321

Camus, The Rebel, 303.

322

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 85.

323

Camus, The Plague, 253-254.

324

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 98.

325

Camus, Speaking Out, 32.

326

Camus, The Plague, 255.

327

Camus, 127.

65
himself on Providence completely.”328 By aligning with the defeated, people attempt to bring
that distant paradise down to earth and strive to achieve secular happiness.
However, Camus’ philosophy is not, as Berdyaev suggests, a naïve idealism that seeks to
create a world “wherein evil and misery and the tears of the innocent shall have no part.”329
On the contrary, Camus is fully aware that realizing universal happiness and satisfaction on
earth is impossible, but it is “possible to diminish the pain of men.”330 At the very least,
individuals must refrain from increasing suffering. Camus suggests in The Plague that this is
the only way we can hope to regain some of the peace lost amidst the universal plague—the
absurd.
Nicholas Berdyaev foresees the emergence of this “purely human universe,” arguing that
this concept relegates the eternal “to the regions of the unknowable.” 331 Consequently, “Man
himself became a flat creature in two dimensions—he had lost that of depth; his soul was left
to him but his spirit had gone.”332 Worse still, eventually “man began to feel that the earth
was not so solid under his feet as he had thought…In man himself an abyss opened and
therein God and Heaven, the Devil and Hell were revealed anew.”333 Camus, however, finds
a solid human image in this purely human universe. Although there is no absolute truth
verified by reason between “this sky and the faces turned toward it,” individuals have not lost
their depth for their hearts are filled with “stones, flesh, stars, and those truths the hand can
touch.”334 By consenting to the earth, man can “consecrate the harmony of love and
revolt.”335 Rebels not only evade becoming flat creatures; rather, they attain a heightened
dimensionality and richness by being immersed in these concrete realities.
328

Camus, 127.

329

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 85.

330

Camus, Speaking Out, 32.

331

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 48.

332

Berdyaev, 48.

333

Berdyaev, 49.

334

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 90.

335

Camus, 105.

66
Concerning Berdyaev’s assertion that people will ultimately discover the earth beneath
their feet to be unstable and will be plagued once again by questions about God, Camus
responds: “These people, wholly engaged in the present, live with neither myths nor
consolation. Investing all their assets on this earth, they are left defenseless against death.”336
In other words, Berdyaev’s prediction is not true for Camus’ rebels because rebels show no
concern for the future. Despite Camus’ compelling response to these criticisms, Berdyaev
may argue that Camus’ focus on finding meaning solely within the confines of secular
existence constitutes an evasion of existential questions. Berdyaev contends that because man
is frightened by the infinite empty sky, “he turned inward to himself, entering the psychic
realm, and took refuge more and more in the earth.”337 What Camus regards as wisdom and
courage is, in Berdyaev’s view, merely an avoidance of unresolved existential difficulties.
Conversely, Berdyaev’s notion of true courage—believing in an almighty God—is, according
to Camus, a form of philosophical suicide, which Camus rightly condemns as a renunciation
of the struggle with the absurd.
Whether one chooses to turn to God or to persist in resisting the absurd, he will be
accused of taking the easier path as a form of cowardly avoidance of the harsh truth of life.
Both sides hold firmly to their perspectives and cannot persuade one another, because the
search for life’s purpose and meaning inherently lacks an uncontroversial objective answer.
Since such inquiries cannot be definitively validated like mathematical proofs, all answers
remain somewhat subjective. Recognizing the subjectivity inherent in the truth of existence
can help individuals reduce unnecessary arguments and obsessions. What people can do,
perhaps, is to choose the answers that are most convincing to them based on their limited
understanding and experiences, while maintaining an open attitude toward the unknown
aspects of life and not becoming overly attached to any particular theory. After all, life cannot
be fully explained or encapsulated by any single theory.
Although from the perspective of those who choose faith, Camus’ philosophy of
returning to the earth may be criticized as an evasion of the quest for the infinite, Camus’

336

Camus, 89.

337

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 47.

67
advocacy for the union between humanity and the earth, as well as his focus on man himself,
demonstrates that his philosophy of life is not one of avoidance. Camus urges people to
understand that “we can despair of the meaning of life in general, but not of the particular
forms that it takes.”338 The general condition of human existence is beyond human control,
but particular events in life allow room for human efforts and intervention. Camus writes in
The Plague, “What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest—health, integrity, purity (if you
like)—is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter.”339 This assertion
of the will against the absurd is exemplified by Doctor Rieux, who, although unable to
prevent the plague from occurring, “decided to take, in every predicament, the victims’ side,
so as to reduce the damage done.”340 While humans cannot transcend the realities of life and
death, they can, at the very least, strive for earthly happiness. The best weapon people can
have to fight for earthly happiness—and should never put away, Camus indicates—is “the
memory of a happy sea, of a remembered hill, the smile of a beloved face.”341
Doctor Rieux represents those who are determined never to accept a world that allows the
suffering of innocent people. When Father Paneloux attempts to reconcile the contradiction
of the existence of God alongside suffering by suggesting that “perhaps we should love what
we cannot understand,” Doctor Rieux replies determinedly, “No, Father. I’ve a very different
idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which
children are put to torture.”342 In short, “dead children signal the monstrousness of any
theodicy.”343 Similarly, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, another quintessential representative
of this position, declares, “The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little

338

Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942, 151.

339

Camus, The Plague, 253.

340
341

Camus, 254.
Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 29.

342

Camus, The Plague, 218.

343

Judaken, Jonathan, and Robert Bernasconi, eds, Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in
Context (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 42.

68
child to God.”344 Witnessing the suffering of the innocent, how can one possibly seek
happiness in sorrow?
The core idea of Doctor Rieux and Ivan’s rejection of God’s world is that suffering
should never be treated as a means to an end. The notion expressed by Father Paissy, a
character in The Brothers Karamazov—that happiness can be derived from the misfortunes
life brings345—cannot be accepted by people like Ivan and Doctor Rieux. Suffering is simply
suffering—it has no reference point and cannot be fully compensated. Any attempt to justify
suffering is an inadequate theodicy, as the narrator of Camus’ The Plague asks, “For who
would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment’s human
suffering?”346 Who would dare to guarantee that “the old grief, by a great mystery of human
life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy?”347 Thus, the rebel rejects Christianity,
particularly its longing for a new heaven and earth, because “apocalyptic thinkers exacerbate
the nature of human suffering in order to justify their utopian aims as well as the less than
utopian means they claim to be necessary in order to achieve them.”348
Ivan explains to his devout brother Alyosha, “It’s not God that I do not accept, you
understand, it is this world of God’s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to
accept.”349 Evil is “an unjustifiable rupture [and] an inexpiable injustice” that tears Ivan
apart .350 Camus likewise states, “If evil is essential to divine creation, then creation is
unacceptable.”351 The reasoning is clear: events beyond human control must be accepted due

344

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 242.

345

Dostoevsky, 285.

346

Camus, The Plague, 224.

347

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 292.

348

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 320.

349

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 235.

350

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 7.

351

Camus, The Rebel, 55.

69
to our inability to influence them. However, when it comes to matters within our power to
intervene, there is no justification for allowing them to proceed unchecked.
Christianity, while also advocating efforts to combat evil within human capacity, often
attributes insurmountable evil to sin, the devil, or necessary preparation or trial for some
distant good. For the rebel, this explanation is unacceptable, as evil cannot be seen as a
means to an end. Out of love for mankind, Ivan rejects this creation that allows children
suffer to death and respectfully returns his ticket to the harmonious world promised by God.
Camus remarks, “There is no possible salvation for the man who feels real compassion,” as
such a person holds to the stubborn belief that salvation must be for everyone or no one.352 In
this context, rejecting faith becomes synonymous with rejecting injustice and privilege.
However, it is significant to note that while Ivan and Doctor Rieux both categorically
reject a world that allows human suffering, Ivan, as portrayed by Dostoevsky, serves as a
counterexample illustrating the futility of this path. Ivan intellectually sympathizes with
suffering humanity, but compassion without action is not true compassion. He remains
inactive in the face of earthly suffering, even in acquiescence to the murder of his father. All
he does is torture himself “with the horrors of the sufferings of the innocent to nourish the
pride of his own rejection of God’s world and its inhabitants.”353 Thus, Ivan’s indignation is
theoretical, passive, and ultimately sterile and can only lead him to an impasse, whereas
Doctor Rieux translates his rejection of suffering into action, doing everything within his
power to save lives amidst the ravages of the plague. Doctor Rieux’s indignation is practical,
active, and fruitful. This is because his creator, Camus, genuinely seeks to make a tangible
contribution to human happiness on earth.
Camus claims that “the person who places hope in the human condition is a madman, but
that the one who despairs of events is a coward.”354 Berdyaev responds by arguing that
earthly happiness has nothing in common with divine bliss, as the human kingdom “is closed
[and] shut up in three-dimensional space.”355 What Berdyaev sees as the shortcomings of the
352

Camus, 57.

353

Frank, A Writer in His Time, 864-865.

354

Camus, Speaking Out, 80.

355

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 86.

70
closed and finite nature of the so-called earthly kingdom, Camus regards as the collective
expression of human wisdom and will. In this finite, three-dimensional world, people do their
best within their limited capacities to live a full life in the present. The issue of how to
prevent collective human wisdom and will descending into tyranny and slaughter will be
discussed in the next chapter. As for the existence beyond the physical world, no matter how
sublime or perfect they may seem, remain beyond human comprehension and experience in
this life, and thus, irrelevant to human concerns.
Camus’ philosophy can be described as a pessimistic optimism. If someone is puzzled
about why Camus has “a sad philosophy and a happy face,” Camus’ answer would be: “Then
conclude that my philosophy is not sad.”356 Camus claims, “At the center of my work there is
an invincible sun.”357 His philosophy is built on the two most beautiful things in this world—
the strength of human beings and the beauty of nature. These two elements offer humanity
concrete solace and a source of hope in the course of their earthly existence. Bolstered by the
resilience they provide, Camus is able to proclaim, “In the depths of winter, I finally learned
that within me there lay an invincible summer.”358

356

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 93.

357

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 352.

358

Camus, 169.

71
Chapter IV
Morality Without God
“Secret of my universe: imagining God without human immortality.”
Albert Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, p. 12
v Collective Existence: A Shared Human Communion
Dostoevsky’s character Mitya asks a core question in The Brothers Karamazov, “So then,
if [God] doesn’t exist, man is chief of the earth, of the universe. Splendid! Only how is he
going to be virtuous without God?”359 This question strikes at the heart of any thought
intending to abolish God. Is God an indispensable factor for human happiness? Can humanity
establish a moral system without divine guidance? If the idea of immortality is removed,
where will the foundation of all that is virtuous come from? These challenges are inevitably
faced by those who wish to distance themselves from the divine and focus solely on
constructing an earthly kingdom. Camus writes, “Can one alone create his own values? That
is the whole problem.”360 In The Plague, Camus explores this question throughout the novel,
attempting to demonstrate that one can “be a saint without God.”361
Dostoevsky, on the other hand, is inclined to believe that man cannot be virtuous without
God. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky utilizes an argument between Rakitin and
Mitya to raise the question of the indispensability of God to morality. Rakitin mocks Mitya’s
concern about the relationship between God and virtue by saying that it would be more
useful “to worry about extending man’s civil rights” or “at least about not letting the price of
beef go up,” because caring about these matters is simpler and more direct to show love for
people than any philosophy.362 Mitya sharply retorts, “you’ll hike up the price of beef
yourself, if the chance comes your way, and make a rouble on every kopeck.”363

359

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 592.

360

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 94. The original text is in italics.

361

Camus, The Plague, 255.

362

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 592-593.

363

Dostoevsky, 593.

72
Mitya recognizes that Rakitin is duplicitous and his practical love for mankind is based
on immediate benefits, and ultimately, it is highly unreliable because it lacks a “basis in a
fundamental, great, moral idea.”364 According to Dostoevsky, the only way to unite “people
into the surest union” is one that “is directed toward the future, toward eternal ends and
absolute joy.”365 This suggests that a just human order can only be established when it is
recognized as penultimate rather than ultimate. The ultimate order is found in Christ, who is
the source of eternal good. The human order, therefore, should rely on Christ for ultimate
fulfillment.366
Mitya’s rebuttal aligns with Ivan Karamazov’s idea that if God does not exist, then
everything is permitted. The consequence of this idea is devastating, as Srigley summarizes
the position: “the murder of God led logically to the murder of man.”367 When God and the
concept of immortality are rejected, Dostoevsky asserts, individuals “will end by drenching
the earth with blood”368 due to the lack of any restrictions. Not only would people be unable
to establish “a just order for themselves,” but they would also “annihilate one another” for
they cannot overcome the inherent evil in human nature.369 Dostoevsky’s characters, such as
Ivan, Kirillov, and Raskolnikov, are all meant to demonstrate that Dostoevsky’s prediction is
correct by failing to live with their rebellious theories. To avoid this, God seems necessary to
preserve the world's order, even if the concept of God may only be a hypothesis. That is to
say, “[I]f there were no God, he would have to be invented.”370

364

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 513.

365

Dostoevsky, 513.

366

“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest
by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” John 18: 36, NIV.
367

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 138.

368

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 318.

369

Dostoevsky, 318.

370

Dostoevsky, 553.

73
However, Dostoevsky’s argument is biased, and all his absurd heroes are “undeservedly
defeated”371 because he deliberately shapes his characters to serve his thought experiment.
There is a line in Camus’ play “Caligula” that aptly describes Dostoevsky’s technique for
defeating his characters: “You can only urge it on to follow its bent, and bide your time until
its logic founders in sheer lunacy.”372 After allowing, or even subtly encouraging, these
characters to reach the end of their ideas, Dostoevsky, “makes his choice against his
character.”373 The reason these blasphemous or rebellious characters are unable to coexist
with their own theories, and why their rebellion invariably ends in failure, is because they are
creations of Dostoevsky “who saw no possibility of justifying values outside of divine
authority.”374 Thus, Ray Davison criticizes, “Dostoevsky’s rebels display more intellectual
authenticity than their creator.”375
Camus, on the contrary, believes that people have the ability to construct a purely earthly
moral system without God. In this religion without a divine presence, “the only possible
salvation opens to humans [is] participation in a lived community.”376 Nevertheless, it is
important to note that Camus’ philosophy is not anti-Christian; he simply does not accept
Christ and refuses to become a believer. Thomas L. Hanna astutely points out that Camus
“stands in a relation of tension to Christianity, directing his criticism to the moral effects of
this faith without condemning its ultimate sources, even though he does not accept them.”377
In this human-centered framework, community becomes the sole foundation for the
potential formation of meaning that is relevant to humans. Unlike Dostoevsky’s conviction

371

Brody, “Dostoevsky’s Presence in Camus’ Early Works,” The Modern Language Review,

372

Camus, “Caligula,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 22.

373

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 112.

374

Davison, Camus: The Challenge of Dostoevsky, 124.

375

Davison, 21.

376

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 241.

116.

377

Thomas L. Hanna, “Albert Camus and the Christian Faith,” Camus: A Collection of
Critical Essays, 49.

74
that morality cannot exist without the existence of God, Camus argues that the universal
order human society needs “cannot be built above,” that is, through a metaphysical idea, “but
rather from below,” through the common foundation shared by all humanity.378 This common
foundation, according to Camus, is “the community of suffering, struggle, and death”379 that
all humans endure. This “shared conceptual frame” enables people to “come together
communally” and form a concrete unity where humanistic morality becomes possible.380
When order is established from above, abstract thinking emerges. This focus on
abstraction is evil as it causes a detachment from concrete life. In Dostoevsky’s works,
characters like Ivan and Kirillov are victims of abstraction. Dominated by ideas, they overintellectualize and adhere to an absolute rationalism, becoming slaves to their thoughts. An
excessive love for ideas can make a person arrogant and force him to detach from concrete
life and his fellow men. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians that “knowledge puffs up
while love builds up.”381 Camus shares a similar perspective, pointing out that excessive love
for ideas can elevate people’s “heads high [and] their eyes unswerving.”382 He adds, “What
part could love play in this proud heart? Love gently bows heads.”383 People like Ivan and
Kirillov are no longer living, loving humans, but are reduced to mere vessels of ideas. Irving
Howe refers to them as ideological men, whose only reality is “the reality of [their]
doctrine.”384 Eventually, they are swallowed by their realities.
Ivan is a perfect example of the curse of living with abstraction: he rejects God’s
salvation because of his overwhelming love for mankind in general, yet he is incapable of
loving any concrete individual. As a “man of supreme intelligence,” Ivan is “consumed with
378

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 147.

379

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 287.

380

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 133.

381

1 Corinthians, 8: 1, NIV.

382

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 161.

383

Camus, 161.

384

Irving Howe, “Dostoevsky: The Politics of Salvation”, Dostoevsky: A Collection of
Critical Essays, 68.

75
pity and incapable of love” and eventually is “killed by contradiction.”385 Ivan says, “If we
were to come to love a man, the man himself should stay hidden, because as soon as he
shows his face—love vanishes.”386 Ivan can only love someone abstractly because “the idea
of man hides the living man for him.”387
Dostoevsky deliberately portrays extreme characters who push intellect to its limits to
demonstrate that abstraction or pure rationalism can only lead to madness and death. He
places his characters in what George Pattison calls “boundary-situations” where “normal
rules, normal ways of thinking and judging and acting, break down and where [human beings
are unable] to stand in the presence of God.”388 By doing so, Dostoevsky shows that human
beings are “profoundly resistant to incorporation in any rational system or any universal
framework of understanding.”389 Irving Howe also observes, “In all of his novels Dostoevsky
shows how ideology can cripple human impulses, blind men to simple facts, make them
monsters by tempting them into that fatal habit which anthropologists call ‘reifying’
ideas.”390
Camus also opposes serving abstract ideas and encourages people to “[r]emain close to
the reality of beings and things” as much as possible.391 What men should be focusing on are
not “reasoning and abstractions,” Camus argues, but “physical life—the courtyards, the
cypresses, the stings of pimientos.”392 By doing so, people can avoid turning people “into

385

Camus, The Rebel, 59.

386

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 237.

387

Dmitri Chizhevsky, “The Theme of the Doubles in Dostoevsky,” Dostoevsky: A Collection
of Critical Essays, 126.
388

Pattison, “Freedom’s Dangerous Dialogue: Reading Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky
Together,” Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition, 238.
389

Pattison, 238.

390

Howe, “Dostoevsky: The Politics of Salvation”, Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical

Essays, 68.
391

Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, 141.

392

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 194.

76
shadows, [who] exist only subsumed under the ‘idea.’”393 Nevertheless, the abstraction that
Camus rejects includes not only over-intellectualization and absolute rationalism, but also the
veneration of metaphysical ideas—whether in the form of an ideology or religious belief.
The truth that Camus refers to as tangible and comprehensible is “knowledge and
memories”—the only thing that “a man could win in the conflict between plague and life.”394
For Camus, “no metaphysical power could ameliorate the human condition or save mankind
from dolor and tears.”395 In the absence of any higher support, humans must rely on their
own strength to rebel against the absurd. The defining feature of rebellion is the affirmation
of solidarity at its core.396 Thus, Camus advocates for building an order from below,
grounded in the shared suffering of humanity, from which concrete actions emerge. Whatever
they do, they do it “in the concerns of [all mankind].”397 This establishes a boundary for
human actions: “The freedom he claims, he claims for all; the freedom he refuses, he forbids
everyone to enjoy.”398 Without the influence of transcendence, people strive to establish their
own moral framework based on the collective well-being of all individuals.
Eliseo Vivas argues, “The man who loves his fellows has neither time nor energy for
rebellion. He realizes that he himself is guilty, for even if his own hands are not stained with
blood, he is responsible for the blood shed by his fellows. And instinct with love and active
about the misery of others he no longer hugs with bravado his little dossier against God.”399
Vivas’ critique may apply to Ivan’s rebellion but not to Camus’. The rebellion Vivas

393

Georg Lukacs, “Dostoevsky,” Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays,151.

394

Camus, The Plague, 291.

395

Nadine Nadezhda Popluiko-Natov, Camus and Dostoevsky: A Comparative Study,
Dissertation, (Michigan: University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, 1969), 106.
396

John Foley, Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Rebel (London and New York: Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), 81.
397

Keeton, In Pursuit of a Justification of Living: A Comparative Study of Dostoyevsky and

Camus, 45
398

399

Camus, The Rebel, 284.

Vivas, “The Two Dimensions of Reality in The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoevsky: A
Collection of Critical Essays, 86.

77
describes is abstract as it is rooted in resentment and detached ideas. In contrast, Camus’
rebellion is active and grounded in the recognition that the rebel bears responsibility for the
suffering of all men. It is precisely what Vivas refers as the instinctive love and the
commitment to alleviating the suffering of others that motivates Camus’ rebel to fight against
the indifferent God, aiming to reduce human suffering and increase the happiness that
humanity can experience on earth. Thus, the rebellion Camus advocates is about paying
attention to living men rather than “contemplating the unchanging sky.”400 In other words,
the essence of Camus’ rebellion is to engage in concrete acts of revolt to achieve tangible
happiness for humanity.
When people begin to strive for human happiness on earth, they no longer remain
confined to heroism, that is, the belief that one should “die for an idea.”401 Rather, they seek
only to “liv[e] and [die] for what one loves.”402 This is also elder Zosima’s teaching on active
love—unlike the abstract love in dreams, active love inevitably follows with concrete action.
It is a “harsh and fearful” love because it requires “labor and perseverance”403 to serve real,
tangible beings. In contrast, love in dreams is essentially a form of performance, driven by
self-directed sentimentalism and narcissistic emotional gratification that demands no actual
effort.
Communal misery can replace divine revelation and commandments as the foundation of
secular morality. Camus reveals his intellectual journey, noting that from The Stranger to The
Plague, there is a “transition from an attitude of solitary revolt to the recognition of a
community whose struggles must be shared.”404 This transition indicates “the direction of
solidarity and participation.”405 This shift is also inevitable, as humans cannot deny their
inherent need for others “in the face of the metaphysical solitude that is our natural
400

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 78.

401

Camus, The Plague, 162.

402

Camus, 162.

403

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 58.

404

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 339.

405

Camus, 339.

78
condition.”406 When people recognize they share the same tragic fate, suffering shifts from
individual anguish to a collective experience.
Before this shared basis is discovered, suffering is individual. Each individual is a
solitary Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his own boulder. Under the force of the absurd, the only
resistance he can muster is to scorn fate with lucid awareness, which fails to bring any
substantial meaning to life. However, once people realize that everyone is suffering from the
absurd in the same way they are, suffering transitions from being individual to collective. At
this point, resistance to absurdity becomes a fight not for oneself only but for the happiness
and dignity of all men.
As depicted in Camus’ The Plague, everyone believes it is someone else’s problem when
the plague first emerges and assumes they can remain unaffected. However, when the plague
reaches a certain scale, people finally understand that “[n]o longer were there individual
destinies; only collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.”407 Because
the “malady experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague,”408 any resistance against
the plague thus becomes a fight for oneself as well as for all of humanity. This shared
suffering transforms individuals from solitary Sisyphus-like figures into a united collective
fighting against the plague.
Sorrow is people’s only meeting place and the only link between men; men are bound
together “in life no less than in death.”409 This shared sorrow is also the condition that
enables humans to love one another. Camus writes, “We resemble each other through what
we see together, the things we suffer through together.”410 This communal misery teaches
humans how to act “in the most absolute moral destitution”411: they must defend and
maintain “a common dignity [and] a shared human communion” that is threatened by the
406

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 126-127.

407

Camus, The Rebel, 167.

408

Camus, 22.

409

Camus, “The Just Assassins,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 290.

410

Camus, Create Dangerously, 20.

411

Camus, Speaking Out, 28.

79
absurd.412 This teaching is what Nadine Nadezhda Popluiko-Natov refers to as “some inner
godlike ideal,”413 which Camus hopes will guide humanity that has rejected transcendence.
By following this teaching, mankind may attain happiness without God. Through this shared
experience of hardship, individuals develop a bond of complicity, uniting in solidarity and
fraternity, making joy and reconciliation possible.
When people begin to fight for each other, a manmade moral system is established. Every
action, affirmation, or denial is made in the interest of humanity’s well-being. Doctor Rieux
in The Plague exemplifies how collective existence alone lays the foundation for morality
independent of metaphysics or religion. Rieux chooses to fight the pandemic not because of
metaphysical or religious teachings, but because, as a doctor, he cannot stand by, and watch
people suffer and die without intervening. This decision does not require divine
commandments or metaphysical abstractions; rather, it arises from the simple, human
experience of living in a community. As Sean Illing puts it, this is “an experiential injunction
arising naturally out of life with others.”414 It is a morality rooted in shared human
experience, where the imperative to act is born from empathy and solidarity rather than any
transcendental source.
Rebels fight for the happiness of all humanity. By fighting for the happiness and dignity
of all men, humanity is able “to preserve a sense of the sacred without belief in human
immortality.”415 This is precisely what The Plague illustrates. It concretely demonstrates how
humans, without reliance on God, can build an order brimming with human strength from
below. Through the collective struggle against the plague, a secular version of the “three
theological virtues”—faith, hope, and love—emerges.416

412

Camus, 28.

413

Popluiko-Natov, Camus and Dostoevsky: A Comparative Study, 104.

414

Sean Illing, Between Nihilism and transcendence: Camus’s dialogue with Dostoevsky, The
Review of Politics 77, no. 2 (2015), 236.
415

416

Sharpe, “The Black Side of the Sun: Camus, Theology, and the Problem of Evil,” 151.

Bespaloff, “The World of the Man Condemned to Death,” Camus: A Collection of Critical
Essays, 100.

80
People place their faith in human capability, believing that with collective effort, they can
ultimately defeat the plague. Moreover, those who, like Doctor Rieux, fight tirelessly against
the plague are sustained by the faith that human life is the only ultimate value, enabling them
to fight until death. They hold hope for a better human community, trusting that in solidarity
and mutual support, reconciliation will be achieved through a shared goal. Differing from the
infinite hope in God, Camus’ hope is “a finite hope, a mundane hope in an unsponsored
universe.”417 John Foley calls this hope “absurd hope” as it is lucid and “tempered by an
awareness of the limits to human comprehension and by a stubborn refusal to transgress the
limits discerned through conscious awareness.”418 Living under the same mute sky, they
understand that human love can diminish the absurd, nurturing the isolated rebel, and binding
individuals together in alliance.
In this sense, The Plague can be seen as gospel without God, centred on the human
virtues of faith, hope, and love. This is exactly what Camus pursues—imagining God without
human immortality. It is in this context that Camus proclaims that “rebellion defined a
primary value” for human society by placing in “the first rank of its frame of reference an
obvious complicity among men, a common texture, the solidarity of chains, a communication
between human being and human being which makes men both similar and united.”419 With
this understanding, one can grasp the significance of Camus’ declaration: “I rebel—therefore
we exist.”420
v Human Love: The Importance of Dialogue
In her thesis, In Pursuit of a Justification of Living, Hope Keeton criticizes Camus for
being too idealistic, arguing that the godless morality Camus advocates for requires “a rare
‘secular saint’ to start from ‘scratch,’ somehow sense his responsibility toward his fellow

417

John Foley, Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Rebel, 27.

418

Foley, 27.

419

Camus, The Rebel, 281.

420

Camus, 22.

81
men, and conduct himself accordingly.”421 Keeton’s judgment of Camus is inaccurate.
Firstly, Camus’ godless morality does not require a secular saint to create something from
nothing; it simply requires ordinary people to take their humanity seriously. Secondly, these
ordinary people understand their responsibility and act accordingly because they live among
others and come to realize, through shared suffering, the deep connection between
individuals and the collective.
They clearly see that in the face of absurdity, symbolized by the plague, no one can
remain unaffected. Thus, rebellion for oneself alone is not feasible. Every act of rebellion is
simultaneously for both oneself and others, aiming to improve the collective condition.
Rebellion, therefore, is born from brotherly love, as people “who find no rest in God or in
history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live: in fact, for the
humiliated.”422 This indivisible bond of shared human complicity forms the concrete
foundation for their responsibility to fight for the happiness of all humankind, not, as Keeton
suggests, without any reason.
Dostoevsky is convinced that love can only come from God, stemming from a belief in
the immortality of the human soul. According to Dostoevsky, love is “one of the most
difficult ideas for the human mind to comprehend.”423 He continues, “[L]ove for humanity is
even entirely unthinkable, incomprehensible, and utterly impossible without faith in the
immortality of the human soul to go along with it.”424 The consequence of rejecting belief in
immortality is that human love cannot survive and may even turn into hatred. When a man is
aware of human suffering and simultaneously realizes his “own utter inability to assist or
bring any aid or relief at all to suffering humanity,” his “original love for humanity is
destroyed” by “virtue of the law of reflection of ideas.”425 Ultimately, it will turn his love for

421

Keeton, In Pursuit of a Justification of Living: A Comparative Study of Dostoyevsky and
Camus, 41.
422

Camus, The Rebel, 304.

423

Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 287.

424

Dostoevsky, 287.

425

Dostoevsky, 286.

82
humanity into hatred of humanity. Ivan Karamazov’s intense hatred and contempt for his
father, as well as his indifference to the possibility of his father being murdered, validate
Dostoevsky’s argument. As Ivan bitterly remarks, “Viper will eat viper,”426 signifying that
mutual hatred is the inevitable fate of humanity corrupted by sin.
Camus argues that love does not necessarily have to come from God. In his play “The
Just Assassins,” the grand duchess asserts, “There is no love where God is not.” Kallayev
refutes, “Yes, there is. Love for His creatures.”427 Similarly, in The Plague, when people
finally survive the epidemic, they realize that God remained indifferent throughout. During
the long and relentless days and nights of this catastrophe, nothing appeared in the dark sky
except the stars. The plague taught people that “if there is one thing one can always yearn for
and sometimes attain, it is human love.”428
Although Dostoevsky and Camus approach love from different perspectives—
Dostoevsky views it as originating from God and offers salvation through faith and divine
grace, while Camus believes love stems from human solidarity, arising in a world without
transcendence—they both agree that love acts as a powerful force that rescues humanity from
despair, offering hope and possibility of happiness. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers
Karamazov, after witnessing his brother Ivan’s inability to reconcile with the world due to
his intellectual entrapment and listening to Ivan’s rebellious “Grand Inquisitor,” Alyosha
responds to Ivan with a kiss, just as the silent Jesus in the story does— kissing the Grand
Inquisitor in response to all his censure.
Alyosha’s kiss, which Ivan calls an act of plagiarism, embodies Dostoevsky’s response to
intellectual worshippers and God’s rebels, represented by Ivan. Love may not explain
everything, but it at least reminds people that there are many precious things in this world,
beyond metaphysical exploration, such as the warmth between individuals. Val Vinokur
comments on Alyosha’s kiss, “The commonness of this plagiarized smooch is precisely what
disrupts both the Inquisitor and Ivan’s binary ‘Russianism.’ The gesture—gratuitous,

426

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 141.

427

Camus, “The Just Assassins,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 289.

428

Camus, The Plague, 300.

83
forgiving, silly—deflates the urgency of the problem of theodicy, making light of the
Inquisitor’s bloody earnestness and Ivan’s rebellion against God’s world. The kiss reminds
one that not everything must be resolved and decided today.”429
A longing to understand everything can sometimes result in a failure to see anything. In
The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis writes, “If you see through everything, then everything is
transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things
is the same as not to see.”430 This is because when a person becomes too obsessed with
understanding things themselves, the very things they seek to understand can become
obscured by that obsession. Ivan, for example, is so fixated on the inexplicable suffering and
injustice of the world that he fails to see what he can concretely do to improve it. He is
trapped in his desire to see everything rationally and consequently is unable to recognize that
sometimes a kiss is far more important to humanity than grasping all these issues. Ultimately,
the main purpose of looking through something is to understand what’s on the other side.
In Notes From A Dead House, Dostoevsky writes, “Humanity, kindness, brotherly
compassion for a sick man are sometimes more necessary to him than any medicine.”431 At
the end of Crime and Punishment, when Sonya and Raskolnikov finally confess their love for
one another, Dostoevsky writes, “They were resurrected by love; the heart of each held
infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.”432 This moment underscores Dostoevsky’s
belief in the redemptive power of human love, where even the most alienated souls can find
salvation through deep human connection.
Camus agrees with Dostoevsky that love saves, though the love that Camus refers to is
the love for humanity, independent of any connection to God. Camus argues that mankind
can only flourish in “the dialogue from man to man and not in the Gospel” because the latter
is “a monologue and dictated from the top of a solitary mountain.”433 Although the Gospel
429

Val Vinokur, “Russian Existentialism, or Existential Russianism,” Situating Existentialism:
Key Texts in Context (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 40.
430

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (Quebec: Samizdat University Press, 2014), 40.

431

Dostoevsky, Notes From A Dead House, 182.

432

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, 578.

433

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 126.

84
promises Emmanuel, this divine presence is not a dialogue that can be concretely
establishment through sensory experience; rather, it requires a leap of faith. As Jesus says,
“No one comes to the Father except through me.”434 Furthermore, both the Ten
Commandments of the Old Testament and the Sermon on the Mount of the New Testament
are monologues, offering no possibility for human participation in dialogue. People merely
receive messages from above and are called to believe and obey based on faith. Camus
rejects this monologic form of connection and stresses that the primary virtue is friendship.435
He asserts that the only force capable of balancing the absurd is “the community of men
fighting against it.”436
In a godless world, the “orphaned people” come to understand that “they alone [are] now
everything for each other.”437 They must “hasten to love, in order to extinguish the great
sadness in their hearts.”438 The realization that everything is fleeting does not diminish the
love for humanity and the world. On the contrary, it is precisely because life is short that
people must “hasten to kiss each other [and hurry] to love” while they can.439 The hope for
human happiness and the values that must be upheld will emerge from this community of
love. Therefore, if people wish to preserve this community, it becomes essential to defend
dialogue. The victories like mutual understanding and communication humanity achieve in
its struggle against the absurd, can survive only in “the free exchange of conversation.”440
As social beings, humans are highly relational and cannot survive without love. The
genuine connections people feel with others and with the world make life bearable. The links
with other human beings “help us to carry on because they always suppose developments, a

434

John 14: 6, NIV.

435

Camus, 115.

436

Camus, 126.

437

Dostoevsky, The Adolescent (New York: Vintage Classics, 2004), 489-490.

438

Dostoevsky, 489-490.

439

Dostoevsky, 489-490.

440

Camus, The Rebel, 283.

85
future—and also because we live as if our only purpose were to have relations with human
beings.”441 Camus then claims, “There is no life without dialogue.”442 Through dialogue, a
person is acknowledged by other men, which is essential for humans, as all consciousness
needs “to be recognized and proclaimed as such by other consciousnesses.”443 Only through
being seen by others can people come to understand themselves and the world.
Furthermore, connections with others provide inner support for humans, allowing them to
achieve emotional balance and strength through both loving and being loved. Dostoevsky
also specifies that “a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general
wholeness of humanity.”444 Excessive self-internalization, on the other hand, only blinds a
person to “objective reality,” leading him to mistakenly believe he is strong enough not to
need others.445 When individuals are entirely dependent on themselves, the result is that
“[i]solation, separation, loneliness reduce the relations among men to a struggle for
superiority or inferiority.”446 In such a diminished relationship, all that remains for humanity
is loneliness and an inner void for the “self which submerges itself in itself, cannot find any
more firm ground.”447 Thus, as Camus asserts, humans need to live with others since “[i]t is
others who beget us.”448
When a person looks to the heavens for existential answers but receives no response, he
experiences a profound sense of forlornness. This is because his search for meaning has
devolved into a monologue. Humans feel restlessness and existential anxiety stemming from
their outward quest for recognition that goes unreturned. Similarly, when people attempt to

441

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 57.

442

Camus, “Witness for Freedom,” Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches 1937-1958, 78.

443

Camus, The Rebel, 138.

444

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 303-304.

445

Lukacs, “Dostoevsky,” Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, 151.

446

Lukacs, 150-151.

447

Lukacs, 151.

448

Camus, The Rebel, 138.

86
connect with others but are met only with silence or hostility, they feel abandoned by their
fellow human beings. Camus is undoubtedly right: humans are indeed beings that require
dialogue. No one should live like an island, for there is no life in monologue. Dialogue
dispels loneliness and fosters companionship. Through dialogue, “pride dies from the heart,
one bows one’s head gently, almost shyly, and every barrier is down.”449
In The Plague, Camus suggests that the only path for men to follow to attain peace and
happiness is “[t]he path of sympathy.”450 Nicholas Berdyaev, in his analysis of Dostoevsky’s
thought, argues that love without God is a love “from a contempt of being” rather than an
affirmation of it.451 The reason is that such love disregards the fact of existence’ immortality,
focusing instead on merely “making-the-most of the passing hour of earthly existence.”452
Moreover, Berdyaev asserts that the love of humanity is just an illusion for it is
fundamentally “the final term of self-will and self-affirmation.”453 People sympathize and
love one another “so that they may not be so frightened of living” a life stripped of
meaning.454
The love that Camus advocates is indeed confined to the realm of earthly existence.
However, Camus asserts that this earthly existence, though fleeting, is the only certainty that
people can find. While immortality may seem appealing, it cannot be verified. Therefore,
focusing on everything earthly is not a contempt for existence; rather, it is an affirmation of
it. “If man is the image of God,” Camus explains, “then it does not matter that he is deprived
of human love; the day will come when he will be satiated with it.”455 Camus perceives man
as more like a “blind creature” who is “wandering in the darkness of a cruel and

449

Camus, “The Just Assassins,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 269-270.

450

Camus, The Plague, 254.

451

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 130-131.

452

Berdyaev, 130-131.

453

Berdyaev, 130-131.

454

Berdyaev, 130-131.

455

Camus, The Rebel, 155.

87
circumscribed condition.”456 In this case, he argues that yearning for love from God is
misguided and impractical. What man truly needs, and can attain, is the love from his fellow
humans, even if this love is fleeting.
Brotherly love is a reliable “secret solace” of all men as it “helps them to endure, and
they turn to it when life has wearied them beyond enduring.”457 A “loved face, the warmth
and wonder of a loving heart”458 often can comfort a weary soul, rescuing it from the desert
of meaninglessness. Thus, people “ought to love, faithful and fleeting.”459 Without love,
there can be no dialogue, and without dialogue, this world becomes “a dead world.”460
However, a world where people “give up struggling and tearing each other apart, willing at
last to like each other for what they are” is the vision of heaven.461 For this reason, the elder
Zosima understands hell as “[t]he suffering of being no longer able to love.”462 Likewise,
Camus declares that “there is only misfortune in not being loved; there is misery in not
loving.”463
Hatred brings no happiness, but dialogue supported by love overcomes hatred. For many,
the recognition of the shared human condition often triggers acts of rebellion. In this
collective struggle against the absurd, the instinctive love and solidarity that arise between
people become humanity’s most powerful weapon. “The long fraternity of men struggling
against their fate,” Camus affirms, “[is] the one value that might save them from this

456

Camus, 155.

457

Camus, Caligula and Three Other Plays, 38.

458

Camus, The Plague, 261.

459

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 175.

460

Camus, The Plague, 261.

461

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 253.

462

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 322.

463

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 168.

88
despairing world.”464 This value, rooted in dialogue and solidarity, grants humanity a
morality of its own.
David Sprintzen agrees with Camus on the importance of dialogue in establishing an
earthly morality. Sprintzen believes that morality without God can only be possible and
justified if it is built through means of “an invitation to a dialogue” or “collective inquiry”
between persons.465 Sean Illing holds a similar perspective as he also believes that values
“are self-constituted products” of a community and “to be binding they must emerge from
and be guided by dialogue and experience.”466 Without any higher references or
metaphysical certainty, values can only be rooted in “the experiential soil fertilized by a lucid
consciousness.”467 Sprintzen explains, “Values emerge from human experience, and
intellectual formulations should be taken as claims whose justification must be sought by
appeal to such intersubjectively grounded experiences.”468 This lays the foundation for a
morality without God—one that derives limitations and guidelines from human co-existence.
The dual support of experience and intellect ensures that this foundation is both emotionally
resonant and practically sound.
People come to understand that “in a world where everything can be denied, there are
forces undeniable; and on this earth where nothing’s sure we have our certainties”—namely,
the love shared among humankind.469 Many of Camus’ writings emphasize this central theme
of human love, arguing that in an absurd world, “Absurdity is the king, but love saves us
from it.”470 This love is not easy, as it is “a long and painful struggle in the darkness for the
realization of definitive recognition and reconciliation.”471 It is precisely this arduous love
464

Camus, Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches, 1937-1958, 29.

465

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 129.

466

Illing, “Between Nihilism and transcendence: Camus’s dialogue with Dostoevsky,” 242.

467

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 63.

468

Sprintzen, 131.

469

Camus, “The Misunderstanding,” Caligula and Three Other Plays, 120.

470

Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942, 93.

471

Camus, The Rebel, 161.

89
that makes the establishment of a moral system without any reference to transcendence
possible.
v The Middle Way: Philosophy of Limit
Camus views the happiness of the human community as the ultimate goal of all struggles,
advocating that people commit themselves fully to this cause and strive relentlessly for it.
Nevertheless, despite his passion and tireless efforts in this battle against the absurd, Camus
admits that he has “only moderate illusions on the outcome.”472 Camus is not pessimistic
about his philosophy; rather, he simply recognizes and openly acknowledges the limitations
of human intellect and strength. Although Camus affirms human potential and is committed
to improving the human condition, he never envisions the emergence of a perfect humanity
or society. Rather, it is a human being who is “naturally, with all his glories and failings” that
Camus describes.473 After all, Camus just affirms humanity without deifying it. The real
“stuff of all life for all human beings,” as Roland D. Srigley says, is a mixture of the “noble
and the beautiful, the ugly and the tragic nobility and beauty.”474
Due to the limitations of human intellect and capability, the process of the quest for truth
is inevitably fraught with constraints and uncertainty. Humans cannot grasp absolute truth or
ultimate answers once and for all. Because of the impossibility of fully grasping the truth, the
presumption is in fact “regression of progress.”475 For this reason, Camus says in an
interview that he can never confidently “claim to be in possession of any truth.”476 Camus’
rejection of excess and absolutism allows him to avoid what David Sprintzen refers to as “the
snare of Absolute Truth.”477
472

Camus, “The Unbeliever and Christians: Lecture at the Latour-Maubourg Monastery,
1946,” Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches, 1937-1958, 57.
473

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 286.

474

Srigley, 331-332.

475

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 149.

476

Camus, 356.

477

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 52.

90
However, this does not mean that people should abandon the search for truth. Instead, it
calls for a humble attitude in facing human limitations and an acceptance of “the continual
lessons life offers.”478 This humility is reflected in acknowledging one’s ignorance, being
willing to admit mistakes, and remaining open to continuous revision. In A Happy Death,
Camus writes, “Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must
be left as it is, the painting untouched—just as a determination not to know serves the maker
more than all the resources of clairvoyance—so there must be a minimum of ignorance in
order to perfect a life in happiness.”479
For those who believe in God, a humble self-awareness comes naturally, as God’s
omniscience and omnipotence highlight human frailty and ignorance. However, for someone
who rejects the transcendent and claims mastery over himself, recognizing and admitting his
limitations and ignorance are far more challenging. Many of Dostoevsky’s characters meet
their demise in the boundless expansion of the self, demonstrating the profound temptation to
become a God-Man. In this light, Camus’ philosophy of moderation is indeed a rare
achievement. Camus is courageous and humble enough to say he is “far from having solved”
the various problems of existence.480 Camus’ admission of his uncertainty does not weaken
the insights in his thought; rather, it reflects his reverence for truth and the unknown, as well
as a clear awareness of human limitations. This is the mindset that the pursuit of truth
demands—not to “presume to know what [one does] not know.”481
While Dostoevsky, like Camus, rejects excess, his repudiation is limited to the
absolutization of human intellect and will. Despite being deeply tormented throughout his
life by the idea of God, Dostoevsky ultimately believed he had chosen Absolute Truth. He
cannot imagine a world without God because “religion is such a part of him that he cannot
remain unreconciled.”482 The struggles depicted in his works can be summarized as a “split
478

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 356.

479

Camus, A Happy Death, 121.

480

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 352.

481

Camus, 150.

482

Keeton, In Pursuit of a Justification of Living: A Comparative Study of Dostoyevsky and
Camus, 43.

91
between God-seeking and God-denying.”483 Nicholas Berdyaev comments on this that
Russians “are not comfortable in a temperate psychical climate, their constitution driving
them irresistibly towards extremes.”484 In Berdyaev’s reading, Dostoevsky clearly exhibits a
tendency towards excess, as he feels compelled to arrive at a certainty—either “the revelation
of a new heaven and earth [or] nihilism.”485 It is no wonder that Val Vinokur calls him “the
bipolar Russian soul.”486
Because Dostoevsky adheres to Absolute Truth, his works condemn the extreme pursuit
of human intellect and will. He often deliberately allows his characters to fall into the traps of
excess or extremism, using their failures—suicide or madness—to warn against the
deification of human intellect and will. Dostoevsky views this deification as an unnatural
pretension that ultimately leads to self-destruction. His anti-hero’s tragic fate indicates the
writer’s belief in “the absolute incompatibility between reason and faith.”487 In the end,
Dostoevsky aims to demonstrate that “there is an unbridgeable chasm between human truth
and human need”488, whereas accepting and submitting to God can bridge this gap and bring
salvation to humankind.
Kirillov in Demons proclaims, “If there is a God, then the will is all his, and I cannot get
out of his will. If not, the will is all mine, and it is my duty to proclaim self-will.”489 Kirillov
equates total freedom with absolute self-will and self-affirmation. His declaration essentially
states this: if there is no God, then I am God. However, Kirillov discovers that the endpoint

483

Howe, “Dostoevsky: The Politics of Salvation”, Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical

Essays, 59.
484

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 16-17.

485

Berdyaev, 16-17.

486

Vinokur, “Russian Existentialism, or Existential Russianism,” Situating Existentialism:
Key Texts in Context, 38.
487

Frank, A Writer in His Time, 128.

488

Vinokur, “Russian Existentialism, or Existential Russianism,” Situating Existentialism:
Key Texts in Context, 45.
489

Dostoevsky, Demons, 617.

92
of this freedom is, in fact, suicide. He realizes that he must kill himself in order to become
God. Kirillov explains, “It is my duty to shoot myself because the fullest point of my selfwill is—for me to kill myself.”490
Kirillov’s logical fallacy lies in reducing freedom “into self-will and a defiant selfaffirmation,” which ultimately renders freedom “ineffectual, worthless, and a drain on the
individual.”491 This flawed understanding leads Kirillov to become utterly enslaved by his
notion of absolute freedom. As Pyotr Stepanovich accurately points out, “I also know that it
was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you.”492 He believes he has attained
complete freedom of will and action, yet in reality, he is compelled to follow this terrifying
path of freedom. In the end, Kirillov sees no other way but to declare his allegiance to
freedom through suicide.
Dostoevsky’s rebellion remains purely on the metaphysical level, confined to the
exploration of the concept of God. In Dostoevsky’s Demons, Kirillov confesses, “I cannot
think something else, I think one thing all my life. God has tormented me all my life.”493 Just
as Ivan’s excessive pursuit of rationality prevents him from loving concrete individuals,
Kirillov’s obsession with the absolute freedom of self-will blinds him to anything beyond
that notion of freedom. Both are imprisoned by their own thoughts, unable to see anything
beyond. Camus writes in The Plague, “Of course, a man should fight for the victims, but if
he ceases caring for anything outside that, what’s the use of his fighting.”494 Excessive
freedom leads people to “the limits of their selves.”495 Camus writes, “These beings, with no
attachments, no principles, no Ariadne’s thread, are so free they disintegrate, deaf to the call
of action or creation.”496
490

Dostoevsky, 617.

491

Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 75.

492

Dostoevsky, Demons, 558.

493

Dostoevsky, 116.

494

Camus, The Plague, 256.

495

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 204.

496

Camus, 204.

93
Van Vinokur also points out, “To think well is to keep in mind that pure thought tends
toward a limitlessness that is blind to any experience that would humiliate it.”497 People must
realize that “even though pure consciousness is the royal realm of human freedom, it can also
be a tyrant.”498 Boundless consciousness is a metaphysical sickness that paralyzes men from
actively engaging in life. After all, thought is ultimately meant to serve concrete life. The
extreme pursuit of any ideology inevitably leads to a reversal of priorities, causing
individuals to lose sight of the living people and events beyond their thoughts.
Camus seeks to demonstrate that “the mind need not be man’s enemy.”499 He is
committed to advocating a form of rebellion that can avoid the paralysis of excessive
thinking, which only results in metaphysical torment and suffering. Camus’ rebellion is
grounded in a philosophy of moderation. This philosophy reminds him to stay lucid and
helps him avoid falling into any form of excess, no matter how just or appealing it may
appear. Aware of the limits of his intellect, Camus chose not to be troubled by transcendent
matters he could never grasp. Similarly, he recognized the limitations of his ability to create a
perfect earthly kingdom, so he focused on doing what he could, striving to bring about
relative happiness for people. In short, Camus seeks to foster a community rooted in shared
experience, where joy and peace are attainable, without needing to solve ultimate existential
dilemmas.
There is always both shadow500 and light in Camus’ philosophy. He suggests that people
should live within the tension between these two forces rather than veering toward either side
exclusively for it is within this tension that the meaning of life is found.501 Ignoring this

497

Vinokur, “Russian Existentialism, or Existential Russianism,” Situating Existentialism:
Key Texts in Context, 48.
498

Vinokur, 48.

499

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 197-198.

500

The shadow in Camus’ philosophy represents the limitations and struggles inherent in
human existence. The light represents his optimistic perspective on his commitment to rebellion,
believing that while life may lack ultimate significance, it can still be meaningful and worth living
through the pursuit of earthly happiness. Between shadow and light lies the moderation we shall
follow to avoid falling into the abyss of excess and absolutism.
501

Srigley, Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity, 345.

94
balance and leaning towards either side is a dangerous form of extremism, leading those who
do so only towards catastrophe. Camus writes in Lyrical and Critical Essays that “to correct
a natural indifference, I was placed halfway between poverty and the sun. Poverty kept me
from thinking all was well under the sun and in history; the sun taught me that history was
not everything.”502 What Camus offers people is “a path that, while remaining true both to
the experiential givens and to reason as our only but limited guide, leads us into a life that,
though without ultimate significance, is found to be worth the effort.”503
Authentic revolt is always relative because “the rebellion itself is precisely a demand for
moderation.”504 When people truly understand the foundation of revolt, they will know that
rebellion “can become fruitful” even though it can only restore “a relative meaning of
existence.”505 The only thing that rebellion can promise is “an assured dignity coupled with
relative justice.”506 The kingdom that rebels strive to establish, therefore, is a kingdom of
relative values. Because the human community is established on the concept of limit, every
human freedom thus has its limits. Camus then suggests that individuals can only flourish in
a community in which no one ought to humiliate another.
Moreover, the limit of human freedom is “precisely that human being’s power to
rebel.”507 The purpose of rebellion is for humanity to live freely within certain limits,
ensuring that this freedom does not harm others who live alongside them. Authentic revolt
seeks to achieve this by promoting dialogue and pluralism, ultimately establishing what Ray
Davison calls “the socialism of freedom.”508 Therefore, if the rebel wishes to remain true to

502

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 6-7.

503

Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, 49.

504

Foley, Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt, 80.

505

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 346.

506

Camus, The Rebel, 290.

507

Camus, 284.

508

Davison, Camus: The Challenge of Dostoevsky, 131.

95
the original intent of his rebellion, he “must never abandon any of the terms of the
contradiction that sustains it.”509
Thus, Camus’ rebellion never demands total freedom, rather, it “puts total freedom up for
trial.”510 Everything the rebel does is based on the idea of limits, which gives “everything its
share, balancing light with shade.”511 In this way, “Nothing was carried to extremes, neither
religion nor reason.”512 For if “all is mystery,” there would be no tragedy as religion could
explain all problems. Similarly, if “all is reason, the same thing happens.”513 The reality of
human life, however, exists in the space between the two, which is precisely why there
remain various unresolved problems and conflicts.
John Foley summarizes, “This idea of a ‘philosophy of limits’ neatly evokes both the
limit beyond which the rebel insists the master not pass, and the sense that the values on
behalf of which the rebel rebels are not absolute values.”514 Moderation is the eternal and
only demand of the rebel. Anything that is taken to excess becomes problematic for even “the
sun has its black side.”515 Camus writes, “Isolated beauty ends in grimaces, solitary Justice in
oppression.”516 The exclusion of the other side inevitably breeds injustice and tyranny. This
explains why many revolutions, though starting with the noble intention to establish a better
regime, end up, without exception, merely perpetuating the old systems of power. Nothing
truly changes, or worse, the oppression intensifies. The people, instead of living a better life,
simply exchange one ruler for another, continuing to live under tyranny.

509

Camus, The Rebel, 285.

510

Camus, 284.

511

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 148-149.

512

Camus, 148-149.

513

Camus, 303.

514

Foley, Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt, 79.

515

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 357.

516

Camus, 165.

96
Rebellion is not a revolution as the rebel does not wish to exclude, deny, or replace
anything but aims for modification. He accepts “the mystery of existence [and] the
limitations of man,” reconciling with “the order where men know without knowing.”517 “Life
for Camus, therefore, is a matter of either “better and worse, not good and evil.”518 This
perspective accounts for Camus’ moderate expectations regarding the outcome of the
rebellion.
The recognition that humanity is a shared community with a common destiny leads
people to self-restraint and mutual love, giving rise to a philosophy of moderation. The
establishment of an earthly moral system then becomes possible—the moderation of
authentic rebellion replaces “[t]he Christian love and divine authority” with “the purely
human motion of love guaranteed by a philosophy of limits.”519 This is the core message that
Camus ultimately seeks to convey: conversion to Christianity is not the only path to
countering nihilism. “If,” Camus argues, “to outgrow nihilism, one must return to
Christianity, one may well follow the impulse and outgrow Christianity in Hellenism.”520
Hellenism teaches people to acknowledge their limits as well as the world’s “through the
faces of those we love, in short, by means of beauty.”521 In Greece, sunlight and shadow are
forever intertwined.
Perhaps this chapter can be closed with the passage from Jean-Paul Sartre’s tribute to
Camus’ death: “His stubborn humanism, narrow and pure, austere and sensual, fought an
uncertain battle against the massive, misshapen events of our times. But conversely, through
the unyielding nature of his refusals, in the heart of our age, against the Machiavellians and
the golden calf of realism, he re-asserted the existence of morality.”522 Camus’ humanism
transcends pure realism. In fact, he challenges the tenets of realism by asserting a moral

517

Camus, 305.

518

Srigley, Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity, 315.

519

Davison, Camus: The Challenge of Dostoevsky, 154.

520

Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951, 183.

521

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 153

522

Sartre, On Camus, 44.

97
framework in the fact of absurdity. While acknowledging the harsh realities of life, Camus
insists that this does not preclude the existence of moral values or ethical responsibilities. He
advocates for a humanistic approach that recognizes individual dignity and ethical concerns,
opposing the cold pragmatism associated with Machiavellianism and the idolization of a
purely realistic worldview. Ultimately, Camus’ work champions a moral vision that
embraces the complexities and nuances of human experience,

98
Chapter VI
Conclusion: The Unsolvable Human Predicament
“When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the labour that is done on
earth—people getting no sleep day or night—then I saw all that God has done. No one can
comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can
discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.”
Ecclesiastes 8: 16-17, NIV.
Dostoevsky chooses to believe in something beyond the full grasp of his intellect because
he realizes that relying solely on reason to understand life often leads to existential dead
ends. When reason is pushed to its limit, even suicide may appear as a compelling option. On
the other hand, faith offers an anchor for the restless souls, providing inner peace and
salvation for the tortured minds. For Dostoevsky, the only way to overcome logical suicide is
to connect the finite human experience with the infinite divinity, allowing the latter to bestow
eternal meaning upon transient human life. In Dostoevsky’s worldview, there is no middle
ground—either one is saved, or one is doomed to destruction. However, this does not imply
that Dostoevsky chooses faith solely for the sake of inner peace and consolation, as his belief
is indeed forged through profound doubt and struggle.
From Camus’ perspective, Dostoevsky’s turn to faith is nothing more than philosophical
suicide—a surrender to the struggle against the absurd. Dostoevsky’s encounter with the
absurd initiates a long and painful search, but he ultimately abandons this search by
converting to Christ. For Camus, Dostoevsky’s decision to accept faith as the final answer is
a betrayal of the very truth Dostoevsky had initially discovered. Camus sees faith as an
unverifiable hypothesis that obscures the absurd and offers humanity an illusory hope. By
choosing to believe in a hope that cannot be validated by finite reason, Dostoevsky forsakes
his agonizing confrontation with the absurd, which, in Camus’ view, betrays the absurd
nature of existence that Dostoevsky had once uncovered.
Camus, by contrast, is unafraid of remaining in a state of anxiety and uncertainty
indefinitely. He is determined to maintain lucidity at all costs. Finding a cure for existential
anguish is not Camus’ primary goal; rather, his aim is to remain absolutely loyal to reason,

99
exhaust human effort, defend human dignity and fight for worldly happiness. This is not
because Camus does not desire healing, but because he refuses to pay the price required for
the healing—the sacrifice of reason. Though reason is limited and incapable of answering all
ultimate questions, it is, for Camus, the only thing he can be certain of and possess. In this
dilemma, Camus stubbornly refuses to be healed and insists that living with existential
ailments is more important than seeking a cure.
Dostoevsky’s conversion to Christianity, which makes it possible for him to attain
spiritual peace, and Camus’ decision to live with the affliction in order to preserve his
lucidity, underscore a fundamental truth: no option can simultaneously satisfy both the
rational and irrational demands of humanity. It seems that people can only choose the lesser
of two evils—deciding between options that are either bad or less bad. This distinction
between good and bad is a highly subjective judgment because, ultimately, there are no
justifications for actions.
Dostoevsky is convinced that irrationality is just as real as reason, and often, irrationality
occupies a dominant position in one’s life. Once he became aware of the irrational, he could
not set it aside and merely let reason guide him though life. Instead, he was tormented
throughout his existence by the unresolved tension between the two. Ultimately, Dostoevsky
chose to let the irrational dominate reason, thereby ending the wrestling between God and
man. His decision may not persuade everyone and may even be criticized as an evasion of
the problem, but at least Dostoevsky himself found existential reconciliation and inner peace
in it, and this served as the ultimate meaning and justification for his exploration.
Camus’ philosophy is filled with humanity, passion, authenticity, and purity but it
ultimately fails to provide concrete answers to life’s ultimate questions. Beyond advocating
for a rebellious attitude in defense of earthly happiness, it offers no definitive solutions.
Camus is well aware of this. He acknowledges his limitations and never claims to be a master
with answers. He sees his works as “an absurd phenomenon” that does not “offer an escape
for the intellectual aliment,” but rather as “symptoms of that ailment.”523 Regarding the

523

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 95.

100
ultimate answer to life, Camus’ writings point in no particular direction but instead illuminate
“the blind path that all have entered upon.”524
Aware of the severe limitations of his understanding, Camus nevertheless limited himself
to the narrow world of human reason. Ronald D. Srigley aptly describes Camus as “a man
groping his way in the dark toward something he apprehends but does not yet fully
understand.”525 Camus, like a defiant child, is unable to overthrow the authority of his
metaphysical parents but foresees the challenges that would arise without their protection.
Yet, despite these challenges, Camus chooses to endure these hardships rather than submit to
an authority that lacks transparency and consistency. His blind, heavy obstinacy—to rebel in
a battle that is defeated in advance—is the romantic defiance of a tragic hero. Thus, while
Camus’ philosophy is compelling, it is “perhaps not quite enough to get you to work in the
morning.”526
Perhaps this is why reading these works about the search for life’s ultimate meaning often
leaves one unsatisfied, and at times, even disappointed. I had hoped to find, in the writings of
these thinkers, a logically convincing and firm answer—one that would serve as a guide to
life, inspiring me to engage willingly and actively in human affairs. Yet, I am disheartened to
find that no one provides such an answer. While their interpretations of life and their searches
for meaning are undoubtedly filled with deep insights, there is always something in their
conclusions that leaves me unconvinced. Perhaps the reality is that we will never find a
definitive, absolute answer—one that can be verified by human reason and accepted without
dispute by all. After all, humans are a mystery, and life and death themselves are enigmas
without objective interpretations.
Like Dostoevsky and Camus, I deeply believe that reason and irrationality are intricately
intertwined in human existence, interdependent yet conflicting. However, I cannot, like
Dostoevsky, ultimately commit to the redemptive embrace of Christ, nor can I, like Camus,
imagine Sisyphus being happy. I remain caught in an unresolved dilemma, still an unhappy

524

Camus, 95.

525

Srigley, Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity, 194.

526

Srigley, 172.

101
Sisyphus. I maintain a reverent yet distant attitude toward transcendence and the unknown,
while holding a moderate regard for reason. What sustains me in this dilemma, preventing
me from being torn apart, are the active love advocated by Elder Zosima in Dostoevsky’s The
Brothers Karamazov and the warmth of human love and the direct, fervent beauty of nature
so cherished by Camus. While I refuse to become a follower of Christ, I do not deny His
existence, nor do I reject the earthly faith, hope, and love. These serve as the anchors for my
restless soul and the continuing comfort and light amidst my struggles. The authentic human
connections and the beauty of nature are my remedies for metaphysical melancholy, granting
me the strength to wake each morning and embrace life anew.
I believe that life holds absolute value, even if the source of this value remains unclear.
Life is far from nihilistic, and we do not need transcendent revelation to understand that life
should not be discarded lightly. As Hope Keeton writes, “The mere fact that Dostoyevsky,
Camus, and we continue to endure life after we recognize its imperfections, is a testimony to
the fact that it is worth living.”527 Camus also notes that we process “an instinctive fidelity to
a light in which [we were] born, and “have learned to welcome life even in suffering.”528 Life
cannot be reduced to a mathematical equation. Regardless of what logical conclusions may
suggest, we instinctively cling to life. In fact, the mere fact of being alive constitutes a
default value enactment. We choose life “the moment [we] do not allow [ourselves] to die of
hunger.”529 This choice, in itself, affirms the value of life. Thus, Camus asserts, “To breathe
is to judge.”530 The instinct to live, to hope, and to strive is a direct affirmation of life’s
inherent value.
Camus is right: we do not begin our lives with the feeling of anguish. In childhood, we
simply immerse ourselves in life without questioning why it exists or whether it has any
meaning, yet we live happily and fully. In those early years, our experiences are untouched

527

Keeton, In Pursuit of a Justification of Living: A Comparative Study of Dostoyevsky and
Camus, 44.
528

Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 160.

529

Camus, 159-160.

530

Camus, The Rebel, 8.

102
by reason; we naturally embrace every leaf and every ray of sunshine, loving life before logic
comes into play. At that time, life is a verb, something we experience, enjoy, and explore.
That period, unburdened by reason, shows us that humans do not live by reason alone.
When reason intervenes, life takes on the nature of a noun, becoming static—an abstract
concept to be studied. Once understanding this concept becomes the central task, the
experience of life is neglected. The result is that people mistakenly believe that only by fully
grasping the concept of life can they know how to continue living. The inability to
comprehend this concept traps many people and leads them into metaphysical paralysis,
causing them to lose the joy of simply being alive. Indeed, Euclidean wisdom is
indispensable to human life, but it certainly cannot explain everything. Reason and
irrationality are equally essential, and an excessive emphasis on one while neglecting the
other leaves us unbalanced in our pursuit of truth. Only by allowing both to complement each
other can we avoid falling into the pitfalls of extremism.
Abstract thinking tells us: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done
again; there is nothing new under the sun.”531 This is true. However, we do not live solely
from this general perspective. If such a macro view were our only lens, the futility and
absurdity of life would inevitably consume us. Fortunately, life is composed of countless
microcosmic, concrete experiences. Though events may recur, their recurrence does not
diminish the unique value of each occurrence because every experience is singular for the
individual. The future is unknown, and life is inherently unpredictable. We cannot foresee the
next stage of life, nor can we predict what ultimately awaits us. Life may not be as
foreseeable as we subjectively imagine it. A more fitting attitude toward life, perhaps, is to
allow it to gradually unfold before us, approaching it with curiosity and embracing all that it
has to offer.
If we cannot theoretically prove that something in this world is worth striving for and
preserving, we can at least love one another. This is the first commandment of the human
world. In the warmth shared between individuals, there is a meaning that transcends reason.
It soothes the fractured and restless human soul, assuring us that in this vast world, we at
least have one another for support and solace. Our connections with others become the roots

531

Ecclesiastes 1: 9, The Bible, NIV.

103
of our anxious souls, giving us a sense of belonging in this absurd world and rescuing us
from the exile imposed by the absurd. Thus, what makes life bearable, and even desirable, is
never a theory or an explanation but love—the affection between people. Humans may be
able to live without a god, but they certainly cannot live without love. If absurdity strips life
of its meaning, turning it into a desert, love restores that meaning by providing comfort and
finite hope.
Nevertheless, despite our instinctive attachment to life, our curiosity about the unknown,
and the warmth of human love, the feeling of emptiness in life is inevitable. This void, much
like the technique of leaving blank space in traditional Chinese calligraphy, is not merely a
sign of deficiency or lack but possesses its intrinsic value. In calligraphy, the use of blank
space not only enhances the prominence of brushstrokes but also imbues the artwork with a
sense of tranquillity and expansiveness, inviting the viewer to engage with an unseen depth.
Similarly, the void we experience in life does not always need to be hastily filled, as if it were
an enemy that must be defeated. Instead, we might learn to embrace it as an integral part of
life.
The void, like the blank spaces left in the art of calligraphy, offers humans an opportunity
for reflection and pause. The void generates a profound sense of reverence in my heart,
evoking an awareness that there are greater forces beyond my immediate comprehension.
This vast void reminds me that my knowledge is limited, that I can only grasp what has been
revealed to me. It cultivates humility in the human spirit, preventing us from overstepping
boundaries in our pursuit of certainty. This void reminds us of our finiteness within the vast
universe, urging us to temper our ambitions and actions with moderation. In this way, it
teaches us to navigate life with a sense of balance—acknowledging that while we may strive
to understand, we must also accept the limits of what is knowable.
The void bridges the earth and the sky, linking the tangible world of material existence
with the intangible realm of possibility. The void exists in the space between the two, acting
as an invisible force mediating between the known and the unknown, the finite and the
infinite. Although the void is characterized by absence, it is not merely emptiness; it holds
the potential for discovery and insight. It represents an obscure light, one that illuminates our
path in subtle, indirect ways, guiding us in directions we may not have previously
considered. It balances earthly concerns with the pull of the transcendent, offering us a

104
pathway that may lead to deeper insight or profound mysteries. While this void may appear
daunting or disorienting, it is a necessary part of the human experience, urging us to engage
more deeply with the unknown while tempering our arrogance with humility. Ultimately, it is
through this space of uncertainty that we grow, explore, and connect with something beyond
ourselves.

105
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