How would Kierkegaard Respond to Camus?

Our generation has often spoken with reverence of Sisyphus, and I felt moved to respond just now, after recalling it. Many of us have talked as if Camus has put forth something we’ve known our whole lives, but without realizing it. I have to say that I, too, have stood with them, admiring the mastery with which the human condition is considered within these few pages. If this seems like the truest account of humanity, perhaps it is because it may be.

I know I would be the typical one to be speaking like this, but then again, you probably know already that I must have more to say than that. And I do. But inasmuch as Camus focuses on the human condition, Ned, I believe he is right, and yet, if my life indicates anything I hope it shows that there is more to life than just absurdity.

But going back to Camus, he believed what he wrote. And I think his work is so believable because he wrote about himself, and then he also wrote about all of us. He knew himself better than the best of us do, perhaps, even on our most insightful days. He looked at the same world, the same life, that we do, but I think his bravery – his ability to not let himself be diverted from considering the chaos around him – is admirable. He saw the fatal flaw of our life – the meaninglessness, and the eternity. And yet with his fist raised, he turned back to himself, to his life, never reasoning that perhaps the intention of life is for us to see its meaninglessness and look beyond it for answers.

I did say ‘eternity’, even though Camus said he did not believe in such a thing. But it is my opinion that he did, and this was the thing that he believed without articulating, just as you and I read his writing and felt we had believed it all along without articulating it. For in ‘shaking his fist’, he was looking out at the eternity of lives lived over all of time, boiling them all down to one generality – that they are all meaningless, going off into eternity with no end, and no purpose. And so, where he saw that reason is unable to surmount the chaos of Life, and chose his life anyway, that is where I leave him. I found faith instead, and in finding it, realized that it found me.

I write this to share my experience, and faith is my experience. It is how I understand the purpose of this life. Ah, purpose – something from which Camus was so far, and yet so near at the same time. In your own journey through life, I pray that you too will continue to ask these hard questions of life.