167: Albert Camus - How To Live Freely In This Meaningless World (Philosophy Of Absurdism)

Albert Camus - How To Live Freely In This Meaningless World (Philosophy Of Absurdism). In this podcast we will be talking about how to be free from the philosophy of Albert Camus. Albert Camus is one of the most representative figures of the philosophy of the “absurd” or “absurdism".

The main theory of Camus is to embrace the absurdity of life as a simple fact, without falling into despair. This ability to embrace absurdity means to be free. According to Camus, there are 2 types of freedom: Common Freedom, defined as the ability to choose between different options - for example, whether to take a glass of water from the table or not - and Absurd Freedom, the ability to live a life without meaning. For Camus, Absurd Freedom is true freedom. In a world without meaning, individuals can discover that they can do whatever they want, while still taking full responsibility for their actions.

Without any legitimate pressure from other people, society and so on, we can learn to only follow our inner motivations and personal values. Reaffirming this power coming from such an inner freedom, we as individuals thus create our own meaning of life.

So to help you understand how to be more free, we bring you 7 ways to live freely from the philosophy of Albert Camus:
01. Believe in freedom
02. Fight for freedom
03. Be creative
04. Act rebellious
05. Be free but lawful
06. Acknowledge the negative sides of your freedom
07. Use your freedom to improve yourself
I hope you enjoyed listening to these 7 ways you can be free from the philosophy of Albert Camus and find them helpful in your life.

Albert Camus is one of the greatest French writers and thinkers. He was a philosopher, an author and a journalist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and his most famous works are The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel. Camus is one of the most representative figures of the philosophy of the “absurd” or “absurdism,” which is a philosophical movement having as its central hypothesis that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe. Camus considered that absolute freedom must be balanced with absolute justice - too much freedom leads to the situation when the strong suppresses the weak but too much justice kills freedom, and we need to live and let live. As a promoter of the philosophy of the “absurd”, Camus believed that life has no meaning, that the universe simply exists and that it is indifferent to people’s lives. We are like Sisyphus from Greek mythology, forever carrying that heavy rock to the top of the hill, although we know the rock will always fall down and our life's work is meaningless. Our condition might be tragic, but Camus considered that this exact condition hides a blessing in disguise: life does not have a meaning, but we are free to attribute it any meaning we want. His philosophy has inspired a lot of people in dealing with the absurdity of life and even today, his philosophy is extremely relevant.