The Absurd Man

- Aadarsh Chunkath, History-III

Every human being, at one juncture or the other, comes to face the often unfathomable and mysterious visage of the universe. A simple gesture, a word or thought reveals that which defies all logic. A glance at a building while waiting at a street corner , brings to mind the irony of an inanimate object built by man’s hands, outliving generations of men. The sheer waste of human talent and potential in natural disasters often strike us while glancing through the morning newspaper. Fate or God often seems to be playing dice, thwarting all attempts to achieve happiness or destroying that which already exists. A hunger to achieve some physical or metaphysical goal haunts man even when he enjoys social and material success; yet the precise nature of this quest is not clear to him. Each new day is a chance to live happily; yet death just crept a little closer.

It is this enigma and how we choose to react, that makes the human condition absurd. And of all the people who have pondered on the absurdity that defines us all, the French writer-philosopher Albert Camus, takes the limelight. In his celebrated works, the characters are affected differently by the discovery of the absurd. Herein may lie a clue to unravel the puzzling human reactions when facing the absurd cosmos.

When a basically noble and sensitive individual is pitted against an invincible and inscrutable order, the result is often a metaphysical tragedy. It is in our own moral space, the inner sanctum, that this unsuspenceful but elegant struggle takes place. This battle is not turbulent but perfectly still, consisting of a certain mood, a certain gaze, a metaphysics. Le Mythe de Sisyphe(1940) opens with the line ‘ There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide’. In this highly original essay, Camus rejected the two conventional responses to the discovery of the absurd. (1) Physical suicide: term A (the self) is suppressed to ensure that term B (the universe-irrational, illogical) is maintained. In this unbearable relationship, the self capitulates to the absurd. (2)Philosophical suicide: term A takes the leap of faith, by seeking solace in religion rather than intelligently scrutinizing term B. So term B is negated and term A appears to be fleeing from it. Camus found both these two reactions unsatisfactory. He advocated a third possible reaction. It required both the terms to be maintained in equilibrium; ensuring that a thread of tension exists between them. The absurd is preserved and the self, by living moment to moment, finds fulfillment .The absurd man has courage and clarity of vision in the face of ultimate meaninglessness and the finality of death. He is free of all illusions and so can greatly enjoy the here and now.

A perfect example of someone not able to maintain the tension is Mersault, the protagonist in Camus’ L’Etranger(1940). When undergoing trial for the murder of an Arab, Mersault believes that he will be punished in society, primarily for not adequately mourning his mother’s death. He is asked by the judge, why he committed the murder. Mersault replies that the sun made him do it. As outrageous as it seems, there has to be an element of truth in this statement, for at the moment of the crime, the harsh African sun had dizzied him and distorted his vision.

A fourth and the most lethal reaction to the absurd was explored by Camus in the play Caligula (1940). The Roman emperor Caligula has a sudden revelation of the absurd after his sister’s death. Being intelligent, he is transfigured; his conventional sensibility shattered. He wants to posses the moon, hold it in his hands, share his bed with it. This is as impossible as it is for man to evade death. Caligula, deranged, rebels against this certainty and Camus makes him the first man in history to do so. He unleashes a reign of debauchery and decadence. He wants the whole world to discover the absurd and being the emperor, he has the power to do so. He does all this in the hope that it would confer freedom on him, but only later does he realize that one cannot be free against other people. Just after four years, Caligula is stabbed by those patricians who consider him a lunatic absolutist. The self in Caligula’s case, not only attacks the absurd cosmos but also allies with it to universalize the awareness of it. Such an attack would only leave a trail of chaos and destruction with the self finally committing suicide. Camus was well aware of how an abstract interpretation of the absurd, like the Nazi ideology, can cause human misery on such a grand scale. Alternatively Caligula is a dramatic symbol of the blinded dictators, who derived their political logic from the absurd and the unleashed violence and the suffering in the Europe between 1939 and 1945.

How can any human being revolt against this seemingly all powerful and incomprehensible cosmos? Does he have a weapon or an instrument? The revolt that Camus advocated was one of a genuine humanism. This idea of revolt emphasizes human nature, the warmth of human concern and understanding. Camus was clear when it came to distinguishing his moral revolt from a political or religious revolution. Such a revolution, he felt, purposely bend human nature to suit an existing intellectual or dogmatic framework.

What Camus did was to identify the major problems of his age and try to fashion what he called ‘an art of living in times of catastrophe’. He had personally felt the ravages of the two world wars and so throughout his brief adult life, he passionately defended the claims of justice and human solidarity. In L’Ete, Camus drew up the mission he set for himself: “We must put together what has been torn apart, make justice a possibility in an obviously unjust world, render happiness meaningful to peoples poisoned by the suffering of our age. This is of course a superhuman task, yet what we call ‘superhuman’ are simply those tasks which take a very long time to accomplish.” This is the calling of the absurd man; the mission that drives his life.