Albert Camus: The Aim of Life
The right to be, to do, to think, to question and live freely
Camus, a French philosopher, author, and journalist, had a lot to say about absurdity, freedom, and the meaning of life. He grew up in poverty but that didn’t hold him back. Camus “spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper.”
Camus received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. He lived through the horrors of World War II. And witnessed the devastating effects of ideologies that sought to control and suppress human rights. It’s one of the many reasons he saw life as inherently absurd, lacking inherent meaning.
But in that absurdity is a significant aim of life — the freedom to be, to do or to choose our own meaning. “…The aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily,” he said.
