Is Life Worth It?

Albert Camus opens his work "The Myth of Sisyphus" with the famous statement, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Camus, at least, conceives that this reputedly unanswerable question-whether or not life is worth living-lies at the heart of all philosophy. More concretely, a certain "absurd" ensues from the clash between humanity's need for meaning and the apparent either indifference or meaninglessness of the universe. Is life, in such a world, worth living? Or is the logical response to the absurdity of existence to end it? Camus offers an alternative to both despair and suicide, arguing that the act of living itself, in full awareness of life's futility, is where human freedom and meaning may be found. This paper looks at the nature of this existential predicament and whether life is, indeed, worth living.

The philosophical examination which Camus conducts into the human condition commences with the stark confrontation of the apparent lack of inherent meaning in life. Humans, he says, are disposed naturally to seek order, purpose, and meaning in the world. Yet, confronted by the silence of the universe along with an absence of clear objective meaning in facing such, we are confronted by the "absurd." Not only does such absurdity follow from suffering, chaos, and confusion, but also from a perception that the universe has nothing to say to our most profound questions. On a divinely-disordered or meaning-less world, is life a ridiculous game? Where is the point in continuing to live if there is no greater good or purpose?

Some would see the only reasonable response to the absurd to be suicide. The fact of life not having any greater meaning might make ending it seem an escape from continued confrontation with meaninglessness. In this sense, suicide equates to a denial of the absurd condition through negation of desiring to be involved with the world that seems to offer only suffering and pointlessness.

However, Camus does indeed reject this path vehemently. For him, suicide is a recognition of defeat, a surrender to the absurd instead of a confrontation with it. The absurd does not demand death, but rather a reevaluation of what it means to live. Camus insists that full and even joyful life in the face of absurdity is possible. The absurd hero does not seek to escape life but to embrace it in all its contradictions. Here, Camus invokes the image of Sisyphus-the Greek condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity-to try to put across the idea. Sisyphus, though his work is so useless, Camus imagines happy in his fate and his rebellion against it: free. Sisyphus stands for one who refuses to give way to despair at the meaninglessness of life, embracing the absurd as inherent to the human condition.

What this suggests is that Camus regards life as worthwhile because of no specific intrinsic value but as a function of our capacity to provide meaning through what we experience and the choices we make, along with the relationships we have. It does not get its value from any purpose imposed upon it either from without or from any cosmic significance but from our freedom to engage with it on our own terms. The absurd makes us realize that we have to create meaning within a universe that offers none. In this way, the will to live is part of a rebellion against meaninglessness-an act of constant revolt against the absurd.

The existence of other existentialist philosophers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, is presented in quite the same vision on the worth of life, though through partially different reasoning. As Sartre himself said, quite dramatically, "existence precedes essence," a fancy philosophical way of saying that humans enter this world without any preordained meaning or purpose. It is through our choices and actions that we give form to ourselves and to life. By the same token, Sartre does not believe that since life has no inherent meaning, one automatically has to feel despairing. This is rather the radical freedom: the freedom to choose, create, to live authentically within a world that has no preordained value.
Life worth living, however, cannot be answered in abstraction. For many people, life is also worth living through relationships, personal projects, moments of beauty, and acts of creation. Life's meaning may be relative, but no less real for that. Even in an ultimately meaningless universe, the experiences of love and friendship, of achievement and enjoyment, can endow life with a very real worth. It is not the lack of cosmic meaning which makes life unendurable, but the loss of hope, or connection, or of agency, which makes it doubtful whether anything is worth doing, whether it is worth continuing to live. Where existentialism, a philosophy that only truly emerged in this historical period, instills and enforces an individual's freedom and responsibility, it indeed has a strong response to despair: life is worth living because we can make it worth living.

Of course, this is said; the absurd does pose an existential challenge that is not easily dismissed. In this way, life's pain and suffering, tragedy seemingly striking out of the blue, and death all conspire to make life just too much trouble to bear. Life is surely not worth the struggle in such a philosophy. But Camus's philosophy promises no comfort or certainty. Rather, it insists upon a kind of courageous engagement with life as it is-thoroughly chaotic and entirely uncertain. The absurd can never be overcome, but it certainly can be confronted decorously and even gayly.

The absurd can never be overcome, but it can indeed be confronted decorously and even gayly.

In conclusion, Camus's investigation of suicide and the absurd necessarily confronts us with one of the toughest questions in human existence: Is life worth living? His answer-that life is worth living precisely because of, and not in spite of, its absurdity-challenges us to reject both despair and easy answers. Life need not be meaningful, but it is a lot of possibilities to create meaning through what we do and experience. The living itself in full knowledge of life's futility is an act of rebellion and freedom. Thus, life, though filled with uncertainty and suffering, remains worth living because it is we who give it worth.