When Frederich Nietzsche wrote this statement in his 1883

novel, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ he questioned the foundations

of Western Philosophy. In his eyes, the Age of Enlightenment
had brought about the end of sacred ideas anf replaced
themwith science and rationality. Nietszche argued that if man
could no longer believe in a God, then man could no longer
believe in a divine moral order either, and ultimately this loss of
an ultimate moral base would only lead to nihilism.

Nietzsche brought an important idea into philosophy, life has

no intrinsic meaning, purpose, or value.

Then came Albert Camus, who in 1942 wrote his philosophical

essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus.’. In this essay, Camus explained
that in response to nihilism, man has three options to act. First
to depend on religion (Which, for many, wasn’t possible
following the Age of Enlgihtenment), the second eptio, end it
all completely and commit suicide, or finally to embrace the
paradox of human existance that he labelled ‘The Absurd’.

He begins by describing the following absurd condition: we

build our life on the hope for tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings
us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live their
lives as if they were not aware of the certainty of death. Once
stripped of its common romanticism, the world is a foreign,
strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible and
rationality and science cannot explain the world, but neither
can religion: it all ends in meaningless abstractions, in
metaphors. This is the absurd condition and "from the moment
absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most
harrowing of all."

It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the

absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the
unreasonableness of the world.

Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a

metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in
factories and offices. "

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who after angering Zeus

was condemned by the gods to the pointless task of rolling a large
rock up a mountain, only to watch the rock roll back down, and to
repeat the task for eternity.

Camus is interested in Sisyphus's thoughts when marching

down the mountain, to start anew. After the stone falls back
down the mountain Camus is interested in Sisyphus’ state of
mind because, just like the absurd man, he keeps pushing.
Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of
his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the
absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented
acceptance.," indeed, that "one must imagine Sisyphus happy."
Camus basically suggests to continue living, and even more, to
enjoy living, out of spite.

STRENGTHS
 1. As concicious beings we are plagued with the desire to
have a meaning. After the Age of Enlightenment, it is
harder than ever to have a concrete sense of purpose
within the world. Instead of substituting ideas that could
potentially collapse in and of themselves when they don’t
succeed, Camus completely dissects the argument to its
bones and allows us to have a concrete reason to persist-
simply because we don’t have concrete reason to persist.
We are making the choice every day to continue despite
ultimate futility and that has power.

External circumstance really doesn’t influence your will to live,

because in a way, your will to live exists regardless of a purpose
to live or not.

2. Consider Nietzsche’s approach. Like Camus, he thought that

life was devoid of intrinsic meaning. But he thought we could
give it a kind of meaning by embracing illusion. That's what
we have to learn from artists, according to Nietzsche. They
are always devising new “inventions and artifices” that give
things the appearance of being beautiful, when they’re not.
By applying this to our own lives, we can become “the poets
of our lives.” Could this be a possible solution?
The solution Camus arrives at is different from Nietzsche’s
and is perhaps a more honest approach. The absurd hero
takes no refuge in the illusions of art or religion. Yet neither
does he despair in the face of absurdity—he doesn't just pack
it all in. Instead, he openly embraces the absurdity of his
condition.
 1. Encourages a happy life. - For Camus, happiness includes
living intensely and sensuously in the present, there is no
reason not to. If there is no inherent meaning to life then it is
worth living hedonistically, as human pleasure ultimately
does provide happiness regardless of whether it fulfills some
greater motive or idea.

WEAKNESSES:

Mainlly critiqued by Thomas Nagel in 1971 essay ‘The Absurd’

Camus says something like, "No - don't embrace hope, stupid,

that's what got you into this problem in the first place," Nagel says,
"No - don't embrace making a big deal about it, stupid, that's what
got you into this problem in the first place."

Nagel's solution - irony - is to keep investing yourself in

valuations, but do so in a way that doesn't require you to take
them seriously. I take it that Nagel is channeling a bit of his
Neo-Kantianism here - when we do anything we commit
ourselves to the idea that we are aiming at some good, and
yet we know that it is us which makes that thing good, not
some further fact.
On this reading, what Nagel is objecting to in Camus is his
apparent seriousness - the impassioned parts of his project.
When you read Camus, it's hard not to feel like what's
happening is a big deal. (His exemplar is, after all, a dead man
rolling a rock up a hill with all his might for eternity to thwart
the tyrannical will of the king of gods himself!) Nagel thinks
 this affective position is fraught, even self-defeating or, at
least, contradictory.

Nagel’s advice is instead to simply laugh in the face of the absurd,

provides a more satisfying response to the unknown than Camus’
grim solution of living a tragically unfulfilled life out of spite, in
order to rise above an unavoidable fate.

Camus had since moved beyond these early works. Though the
books had been critically acclaimed when they were published in
1942, Camus saw that events had outstripped the meaning of
Sisyphus’s solitary and singular rebellions. There’s something
depressing about revolting on your own to some unknown fate.
The time had come to reassess the limits of absurdity.

Absurdity, he saw, “teaches nothing.” Instead of taking this

diagnosis as a fatality — instead of looking only at ourselves, as do
Sisyphus— we must look to others. We are, in the end, condemned
to live together in a precarious, unsettling world.

They reject not just metaphysical but also political absurdity:

namely, a state’s insistence on giving meaning to the unjustifiable
suffering it inflicts on its citizens. These rebels not only say “no” to
an unspeaking universe but also “no” to an unjust ruler. They do
not try to conquer but simply to confront a meaningless world and
those who deny their humanity.

Importantly, however, the rebel imposes a limit on her own self.

Just as the absurd never authorizes despair, much less nihilism, a
tyrant’s acts never authorize one to become tyrannical in turn. The
rebel, by embracing a “philosophy of limits,” does not deny his
master as a fellow human being, she denies him only as her
master; and she resists the inevitable temptation to dehumanize
her former oppressor. In the end, rebellion “aspires to the relative
and supposes a limit at which the community of man is
established.”

Criticism:

Rebellion and a sense of heroism are fundamentally useless tools

if absurdity is ever-present no matter what. Moreover, an
understanding of human limitations provides a deeper sense of
comfort than fighting a battle that cannot be won and never truly
existed to begin.