The absurd, a clash that does not close
When the world gives no meaning, is that a freedom, so we make our own and move on, or a lasting clash with what we need, to be faced and never solved? Albert Camus called that clash the absurd.
What it is
Human beings want reasons. We ask why things happen, what our lives are for, and whether any of it adds up. The world, as far as we can tell, does not answer. Albert Camus called the meeting of these two things, our hunger for meaning and the silence of the world, the absurd. It is not a fact about the world alone, and not a fact about us alone. It lives in the gap between them.
The question this raises is what to do about the gap. Can it be closed? Or is it a permanent part of being human that we have to live with?
The main views
- The gap can be closed by making meaning. Existentialists such as Sartre say that life has no meaning to begin with, but that we can give it one through free choice and responsibility. The silence of the world is then a kind of freedom, and the task is to take it up.
- The gap stays open. Camus holds that the clash does not go away. The best response is neither to give up nor to pretend. It is to live fully, with passion, and with an attitude of revolt or defiance, while keeping the gap in view.
- Two exits Camus rejects. One is ending one's life. The other is a leap into religious faith or a promise of meaning that makes the silence stop being a problem.
An example
Imagine someone who loses a job they had built their sense of purpose around. One person responds by deciding what they will make of the next stage and getting on with it: the silence is room to build. Another recognises that no choice they make can answer the question of what it was all for, and decides to live well anyway, without waiting for an answer. The first closes the gap by choosing. The second keeps it open and lives inside it.
Why people still disagree
- Is making meaning enough? A critic of the first view can say that meaning one has made oneself is the very thing one was longing for something larger than. A critic of Camus can say that holding the gap open for ever is a strange way to live.
- Different temperaments. Some find the silence freeing. Others find it a constant ache. The same facts feel different to different people, and each response suits some lives better than others.
- It is not the same as nihilism. The absurd is the tension that keeps the question alive, and Camus did not conclude that nothing matters.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 8 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Philosophies that answer it
Where each philosophy leans on this question, from the same positions the walk uses.
No clash: we make meaning
A clash that never closes
Sources we used
- Albert Camus · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 7 October 2026
- Camus, Albert · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 7 October 2026
- Nihilism · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 8 October 2026