Suicide In Camus The Myth Of Sisyphus

Clearly, suicide poses a challenging problem for existential philosophers. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes that “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” (Camus, 1955: 1). Both Camus and Tillich come to the same conclusion, that suicide is unnecessary, but in very different ways. In this essay, I intend to explore some of their surrounding philosophy, and ultimately show that although Camus’ argument is more convincing - neither philosopher presents a compelling reason to avoid suicide in both an absurd world and a world of anxiety simultaneously.

Camus’ notion of absurdity can be simply understood as two basic premises. First, that as people - we typically want to attain meaning and reason in our

Here, Camus employs the Greek myth of Sisyphus, a Greek king who is condemned to push a boulder up a mountain. As punishment, the rock is determined to fall every time Sisyphus nears the summit, preventing him from ever achieving his goal - after which he would return to the boulder in order to start over again. Camus likens Sisyphus’ circumstances to our own, as we continually strive to find meaning in our lives, only to watch our answers fall back down. In the end however, just as the Gods predetermined Sisyphus’ failure, our own endeavours are similarly condemned to fail by the existence of a truth which is contradictory to our desires. (Camus, 1955:

For example, whereas most existential philosophers want to deal with the concrete empirical world, Tillich champions faith - which appears to focus on things which cannot be discerned. Indeed, religious faith seems exclusively concerned with things which evidence cannot be provided for or logically proven - and therefore seems somewhat ill-equipped to dismiss potential non-being, when it too could potentially ‘not be’. Camus on the other hand wants to rely solely on things that we know. According to him, our knowledge of existence starts with our senses. Where I feel something, I am capable of judging it’s existence - and where I can see something, I can judge it’s existence. But I can only judge the explicit existence of something so long as I am currently sensing it - everything else is a “construction” (Camus, 1955: 14). In what seems like a very important difference, Camus’ rejection of suicide is deeply embedded in reality and things which we presently know exist, whereas Tillich’s at best views potentially non-existent things as more important - and at worst, existing things as unimportant. The notion that we ought to have faith in things that cannot be sensed seems more peculiar still when he is so clearly capable of describing things which we can