Caligula’s Absurd Fight Against Absurd Reality

Abstract

Man in the contemporary world wishes to be happy but finds his desires to be frustrated by the nature of existence. Albert Camus, the French Nobel laureate, is hailed as a philosopher novelist-an advocate of existentialism, a harbinger of a philosophy of the absurd. He defines the absurd as something which arises from a confrontation between the human desire for coherence and understanding and the existing irrationality and opacity of the world. His interpretation of the absurd conforms to the ancient mythic patterns used to represent the human condition like Tantalus tormented by the illusions of water and of fruit-laden trees beyond his reach; Prometheus chained to a rock; and Sisyphus pushing his boulder towards the hilltop, only to see it rolls back. The main moral consequence drawn by Camus from his analysis was that the absurd reduces all actions to ethical equality insofar as they cannot be referred to any ‘absolute’ standard of right and wrong.