Why “the demand for happiness and the patient quest for it” isn’t a luxury or a mere need but our existential duty.
“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in his 119-page philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus in 1942. “Everything else … is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenged — the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
In the beautifully titled and beautifully written A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning (public library), historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus’s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his “yearning…
Continue reading: A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation | Brain Pickings.
First Night Design 
Thank you for this….I am a great fan and will re blog. Wishing you a lovely Friday and weekend ahead. Janet:)
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Wishing you an extra-special weekend for being so kind, Janet!
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Reblogged this on My Life as an Artist (2) and commented:
Definitely worth reading…
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[We must] be happy with our friends, in harmony with the world, and earn our happiness by following a path which nevertheless leads to death. But who says we must? If we live in a world without absolute meaning we need not have any musts. No need to care for the aged or despair at millions killed by war. Who decides the musts? Flawed and selfish humans? It’s hard to have hope in us. Very interesting post..
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Brain Pickings is well worth following. She posts many fascinating articles. My only sadness is that I get so little time to read more than a few of them. Thanks for commenting, Adrienne.
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I love reading the French existentialists Camus and Sartre. Thanks for the share.
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I’m pleased you enjoyed it, orwell1627. Thank you visiting.
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