The Absurd Man
                          by: Albert Camus

"My field," said Goethe, "is time." That is indeed the absurd speech.
What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does
nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he
prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live
without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs
him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his
revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out
his adventure within the span of his lifetime. That is his field, that
is his action, which he shields from any judgment but his own. A
greater life for him cannot mean another life. That would be unfair. I
am not even speaking here of that paltry eternity that is called
posterity. Mme Roland relied on herself. That rashness was taught a
lesson. Posterity is glad to quote her remark, but forgets to judge
it. Mme Roland is indifferent to posterity.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen
people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that
integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the
absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one
that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As
for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing
in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out
here from the principle of his innocence.

That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims
Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that
it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has
been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or
of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact. The certainty of
a God giving a meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the
ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to
make. But there is no choice, and that is where the bitterness comes
in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all
actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is
forbidden..

The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those
actions. It does not recommend crime, for this would be childish, but
it restores to remorse its futility. Likewise, if all experiences are
indifferent, that of duty is as legitimate as any other. One can be
virtuous through a whim.

All systems of mortality are based on the idea that an action has
consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the
absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered
calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be
responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones, in its opinion. At
very most, such a mind will consent to use past experience as a basis
for its future actions.

Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that
is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself,
except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then,
could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might
seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in
men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of
its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.
The few following images are of this type. They prolong the absurd
reasoning by giving it a specific attitude and their warmth.

Do I need to develop the idea that an example is not necessarily an
example to be followed (even less so, if possible, in the absurd
world) and that these illustrations are not therefore models? Besides
the fact that a certain vocation is required for this, one becomes
ridiculous, with all due allowance, when drawing from Rousseau the
conclusion that one must walk on all fours and from Nietzsche that one
must maltreat one's mother. "It is essential to be absurd," writes a
modern author, "it is not essential to be a dupe." The attitudes of
which I shall treat can assume their whole meaning only through
consideration of their contraries.

A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if
consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in
this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice
to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has
no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances,
but of himself.

I am choosing solely men who aim only to expend themselves or whom I
see to be expending themselves. That has no further implications. For
the moment I want to speak only of a world in which thoughts, like
lives, are devoid of future. Everything that makes man work and get
excited utilizes hope. 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.

		-Albert Camus