If you have faith and have heard that Camus calls the leap of faith "philosophical suicide," you may have arrived here with an objection on the tip of your tongue: my faith is not an escape. The objection has good reason to exist, and the answer Camus's text allows is more precise than the textbook definition. The name is harsh, but it designates a movement of thought, not someone's state.
What Camus calls philosophical suicide
Philosophical suicide is the movement by which a thought recognizes the absurd and then eliminates it: it settles once and for all what the meaning is and stops sustaining the question. Camus himself coins the term, in the chapter "Philosophical Suicide" of The Myth of Sisyphus, and he warns that the name is not an insult: "I take the liberty of calling philosophical suicide the existential attitude. But this does not imply a judgment. It is a convenient way of designating the movement by which a thought denies itself and tends to surpass itself in what concerns its own denial." (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Brazilian edition by Record, quoted in our translation.)
The chapter stalls many readers, because Camus names figures he treats as if you already knew them: Kierkegaard, Chestov, Jaspers, Husserl. The key to getting through it fits in one sentence. They all saw the absurd with a lucidity Camus praises, they all saw the same abyss, and all of them, in the next moment, took a leap, recovering on the other side something that resolves the problem. Camus refuses to leap.
Why "suicide": the two sides of the confrontation
The absurd, for Camus, is not in the world and not in you: it is in the encounter between the two. On one side is a human being who needs things to have a reason for being. On the other is a universe that does not answer. The absurd is the friction between these two surfaces, and it exists only while the two touch.
That is where the word comes from. Camus opens the essay by saying there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, whether life is or is not worth living. He is not talking about psychiatry or sadness: he is saying every other question in philosophy comes after this one. Within that frame, so-called physical suicide eliminates one side of the confrontation, that of the one who asks. The leap eliminates the other, the world's silence, which is now silenced by an answer. Both end the tension. One removes the man, the other silences the world, and the result is the same: the friction is gone, and the absurd is gone with it.
Notice that the comparison is about structure, not about gravity or intent. That is why Camus has to say that the name does not imply judgment. He describes what a thought does with the tension, and it is the thought, not the person, to which the word applies.
And people of faith?
Here the conversation changes. When a Nous study group reached this chapter, the reading that came out of it was more exact than the textbook one. Philosophical suicide is not only the leap of faith of these four names. It is any act of settling once and for all the meaning of life: through faith, or through the opposite conclusion, "it has no meaning at all, it doesn't matter." In both cases the person has stopped living the question as open.
Camus's criterion was never belief. It is where a person places the weight of the decision. Whoever says "it doesn't matter" has also closed the question, just on the other side. That is why conviction in unbelief does not escape philosophical suicide just by being unbelief.
The consequence is that nothing prevents a Christian from being an absurd man in Camus's sense, if he does good because it is right, and not as advance payment on the eternal. The definition is in the chapter "The Absurd Man": the absurd man is "he who, without denying it, does nothing for the eternal." He is not someone who denies the eternal. He is someone who has stopped doing the math.
The door Camus shuts, without proving it does not exist
The lesson in the video proposes a reading of the book worth keeping before it sounds like a verdict on your faith: Camus shuts the door on consolation and, in no line, proves that it does not exist. What he proves is that he will not walk through it without being convinced. That is another thing, and it is far more respectable than denying it.
Put another way, the target of the argument is the faith that has decided once and for all to stop asking. The faith that keeps asking, Camus does not bring down.
The man who went to check
His rigor shows in a detail. When Chestov quotes Hamlet to support his own leap, Camus interrupts and writes: "But that is not how Hamlet pronounces it, or how Shakespeare writes it." He went to check the quotation before accepting the argument. Rigor is part of the method: whoever criticizes others' leaps begins by checking what each one wrote.
What is left when the leap and the exit are out
If the leap is out and physical suicide is out, revolt remains. Revolt here is neither protest nor revolution: it is the refusal to abandon either side of the confrontation. It means living with full awareness of the absurd, without hope of resolving it and without the resignation of pretending it does not exist. In the chapter "Absurd Freedom," Camus writes: "One of the few coherent philosophical attitudes is revolt. It is a perpetual confrontation of man with his own darkness."
Without the leap and without physical suicide, revolt is living with the question open. The full lesson shows how the chapter fits into the rest of the essay, and where to enter the book without stalling in it.
If this subject touches something you are going through, CVV, 188, is available to talk with anyone who needs it, at any hour and confidentially: call 188 or visit cvv.org.br.
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See the recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What is philosophical suicide according to Camus?
It is the movement by which a thought recognizes the absurd and, instead of sustaining it, eliminates it, settling once and for all what the meaning of life is. Camus uses the expression as a convenient way of naming this movement, and he warns that it does not imply a judgment. It is a concept about how a thought behaves, not about a person's state.
Why does Camus call the leap of faith philosophical suicide?
Because, in his reasoning, the structure is the same as physical suicide: both eliminate one of the two sides of the confrontation to end the tension. The absurd is born from the encounter between the human question and the silence of the world. One movement removes the one who asks, the other silences the world, and in both the friction disappears.
Do people of faith practice philosophical suicide?
Not necessarily. Camus's criterion is not belief. It is where a person places the weight of the decision. The reading of the Nous study group goes further: philosophical suicide is any act of settling once and for all the meaning of life, through faith or through the opposite conclusion, the "it doesn't matter." In both cases the person has stopped living the question as open.
Does Camus prove that God does not exist?
No. In the reading of the lesson, Camus shuts the door on consolation, and in no line does he prove that it doesn't exist. What he states is that he will not walk through it without being convinced, and that is something else.
Which philosophers does Camus accuse of philosophical suicide?
Kierkegaard, Chestov, Jaspers, and Husserl. Camus praises the lucidity with which they saw the absurd and criticizes the leap they made next, recovering on the other side of the abyss something that solves the problem. The critique is in the chapter "Philosophical Suicide" of The Myth of Sisyphus.
Continue: The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus: Summary and Where to Start · What is the Meaning of Life? · Apology of Socrates: not calendar wisdom · Primaticcio painted the end of the Odyssey as a talk
Source lesson: O Mito de Sísifo, de Albert Camus