Eric Teachout
Philo 253 Ethics and the Good Life
Prof. Anthony Rudd
December 14, 2012
Final Essay
Kierkegaard vs. Camus on the Nature of Knowledge and Subjectivity
In the nature of philosophical studies, perhaps the most fundamental of all questions is the
existential “why” which expresses an innate desire of humans for meaning and unity in life. Yet, when
these studies turn to discourse, sparks fly and confusion can often follows. In The Myth of Sisyphus, a
famous work in the field of existential philosophy, Albert Camus accuses existential religious thinkers
who posit a meaning in the universe, including Søren Kierkegaard, of the projection of subjective values
onto the nature of an absurd and meaningless universe. However, I wish to argue that Camus’ own
beliefs on absurdism require a subjective evaluation to stand them up. I will conduct my critique of
Camus using Kierkegaard’s own arguments on the relationship of descriptive and evaluative knowledge
in his Works of Love. And even while these authors were separated by a century, we shall see in
Kierkegaard’s writings an indirect counter to Camus’ absurdism.
To begin, I move first to articulating the basic principles of Camus’ absurdism. The conclusion of
Camus’ argument is that the universe is absurd, i.e. that there is objectively no meaning in the world.
However, before entering his actual argument, it is necessary to receive the logical structure in which
Camus defines absurdity. As Camus describes, the general notion of absurdity comprises of comparative
relationship between two terms. In an absurd relationship, these terms are so divided against and
contradictory to one another that their relationship is seen as preposterous, a “divorce” as Camus
describes it. Camus illustrates this notion through a person with a sword who runs at a group of men
with machine guns. In this example, as Camus articulates, “the disproportion between the man’s
intentions and the reality he will encounter” give way to the absurdity we see in his situation. Thus, in
any absurd relationship, the greater the distance between the two terms, the greater the absurdity in
their association (22).
Camus thus applies this logical structure to the subject of meaning in the universe. The core
thesis of Camus’ argument reads as follows: “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the
human need and the unreasonable silence of the world” (21). In this relationship, we find the two terms
to be articulated, one relating to the human subject and the other to the outer objective existence
surrounding him. This first term, “human need”, Camus defines more plainly elsewhere, “The mind’s
deep desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man’s unconscious feelings in the face of his
universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity” (13). Behind these words, we get a
glimpse of Camus’ own desire for meaning and understanding of the world.
However, as Camus describes, the individual’s ability to discern any notion of true meaning in
the universe is practically non-existent. He writes, “I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty.
This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said…” (16). Camus despairs the possibility of
ever receiving true knowledge of the world which, is always elusively beyond reach, like “nothing but
water slipping through my fingers” (14). To get a complete of the sense of Camus’ argument here, we
must understand his criterion of what would constitute such true knowledge. For Camus, he requires
knowledge which is both rational – for “there is nothing beyond reason” (27) – and perfectly complete –
“I want everything explained to me or nothing” (14). Thus, as we shall see later, Camus finds that any
view that defines knowledge in reference to anything other than the faculty of reason is an escape from
the absurd.
Between these two notions – the human desire for meaning and the universe’s unwillingness to
give it – Camus perceives an unbridgeable gap of absurdity, a complete divorce between man and his
own existence:
“The absurd depends on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them
together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures
together. This is all I can discern clearly in this measureless universe where my
adventure takes place” (16).
In its entirety, I find that Camus’ argument on the absurd can be summarized as the following: Between
myself and the universe, there is such a gap in meaning, so great that one must ask, “How could it be
possible for any meaning to exist?”
From quotes strung throughout his essay, it is clear that Camus believes that this principle of
absurdity, that there is no meaning in the universe, must follow from the two terms and the
understanding of their relationship. At one point he dismisses any evaluation of remarkableness in his
arguments by asserting them as “facts” which have been already demonstrated by many others (12).
Similarly, Camus characterizes his view of the absurd as a “consciousness” or definitive “awakening”
from the daily monotony of life, such that it is the necessary and final result whenever one breaks the
rhythm of life and asks the fundamental “why” of existence (10). Thus, it is clear that in respect to his
own views, Camus finds not only validity and possibility but real insight and knowledge of the universe.
In contrast to his own view of the absurd, Camus issues harsh critique of certain religious figures
(including Kierkegaard) who hope for meaning in the universe in spite of having observing the absurd
relationship. Camus finds in these views a form of escapism from the true nature of the absurd: “Hope
is eluding, the evading of the absurd” (7). In Camus’ evaluation, Kierkegaard and other religious figures
have first witnessed the absurdity of the universe – that there is only meaninglessness – and then
sought to escape the absurdity by locating its nature in their conception of God. He writes of
Kierkegaard, “Thus it is that through a strained subterfuge, he gives the irrational the appearance and
God the attributes of the absurd: unjust, incoherent, and incomprehensible” (29). In quoting
Kierkegaard who admits to his own “sacrifice of the intellect” for the sake of belief in God, Camus
evaluates Kierkegaard’s logical movement as both a “leap” and “philosophical suicide” (28, 26, 21).
While certain aspects of Camus’ analysis of Kierkegaard are essentially correct, I perceive that
many are false projection of his own views of the absurd onto others. For the sake of this essay, I wish
not to go in too much detail, but some response is certainly necessary. Certainly, Kierkegaard’s belief in
God depends on faith, and thus his conception of knowledge goes beyond reason. However, I argue
that in respect to his own conception of the absurd Camus misplaces Kierkegaard’s movement of faith.
Camus finds that the witness of the two terms of the relationship – human need and the
unreasonableness in the universe – necessitates his belief in the absurd. And because Kierkegaard
makes note of both of these, Camus argues that Kierkegaard’s views must be a witness of the
meaninglessness of the universe and a consequent step beyond this perception. However, as I shall
soon argue, we must question the necessity which Camus associates with his conclusion of absurdity.
Instead, I think that, in respect to Camus’ philosophical system, it would be correct to place Kierkegaard
before the movement towards absurdity. But alas, these would be the subject of another project.
To counter Camus’ absurdism, I wish to utilize Kierkegaard’s distinction of knowledge and belief
in his Works of Love. In this work Kierkegaard seeks to provide a full description of the notion of love for
the Christian who holds faith in God. In the chapter titled “Love Believes All Things”, Kierkegaard
expounds upon Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians that “love believes all things – yet is never deceived”
(13:7). And while Kierkegaard’s arguments here are formulated specifically in respect to the nature of
trust in human relationships, I wish to adapt them in reference to our discussion of a possible belief in
meaning in the universe.
In the chapter “Loves Believes All Things”, Kierkegaard’s arguments work primarily as a defense
of the component of truth with Christian love against those who find it to be naïve and weak. These
critics, whom Kierkegaard describes as possessing a worldly or “sagacious” wisdom, instead advocate a
general mistrust of others, which “believes nothing at all” (226). Kierkegaard writes:
Love is the very opposite of mistrust, and yet it is initiated into the same knowledge. In
knowledge they are, if you please, indistinguishable... [O]nly in the conclusion and in the
decision, in faith... are they the very opposite. In other words, when love believes
everything it is by no means in the same sense as light-mindedness, inexperience, and
naiveté, which believes everything on the basis of ignorance and inexperience. No love
is as knowledgeable as anyone, knows everything that mistrust knows, yet without
being mistrustful… (228).
In the quote above, we discover the first traces of a distinction between what Kierkegaard calls
“knowledge” and “belief”. Above Kierkegaard is insistent that love’s component of trust is not out of
sheer optimism about human nature or any kind of lack of knowledge; rather, love shares the same
knowledge as mistrust, but from this makes a different movement, i.e. chooses a different belief. Let us
elaborate each of these terms.
Kierkegaard associates this knowledge with “a placing of opposite possibilities in equilibrium”,
which is a practice, an “art” which requires much training and experience in its development (231, 229).
We may understand knowledge as the merely descriptive component of our understanding. As such, it
is the practice of perceiving with “infinite indifference” in any given situation the sum and likelihood of
all possibilities (231). “Knowledge is like sheer transparency when most perfect and purest, just as the
perfection of water is to have no taste” (233). However, it should be noted that Kierkegaard never in
any way claims that humans ever have this knowledge, such as in a possessively totalistic manner.
Rather, the perfection of this indifference in knowledge is only imagined or thought of “…in the infinite
sense” (228).
Yet, as Kierkegaard articulates we must always be making a belief from this knowledge, which
can be understood as the corresponding evaluative component of our understanding. Kierkegaard
writes, “There is no decision in knowledge; the decision, the determination, and the firmness of
personality are the first in the ‘ergo’, in belief” (231). In his association of belief with the notion “ergo”,
we should not perceive Kierkegaard as attempting any sort of failed justification of the naturalistic
fallacy of formal logic: that is impossible to derive an evaluative conclusion from any set of descriptive
assumptions. We may understand belief as the moral evaluation or action “in response to” or “in light
of” descriptive knowledge.
Stepping back to the issue of trust in human relationships, Kierkegaard understands mistrust
and love as sharing in their knowledge that “*t+ruth and falsity reach unconditionally as far” (228). We
can elaborate this observation in the following manner: In any given social situation, an individual must
always make a decision as to whether to place her trust, her resources, her vulnerability in the hands of
another person, however far that vulnerability may extend. Yet, whatever decision she makes (and this
important), she always must do so in the lack of complete knowledge, and must necessarily take some
risk. Within this uncertainty, love and mistrust represent opposing general ethical approaches in respect
to one’s disposition to place her trust in others. Thus, as Kierkegaard describes, “Neither mistrust nor
love and believing all things are cognitive conclusions, but choices one makes at the witness of the
totality of possibilities inherent to knowledge” (234).
Kierkegaard goes a step further in critiquing the supposed “wisdom” of mistrust. This is where
our considerations on Camus’ absurdism become relevant. For in the same manner as the mistrusting
person believes nothing from others, so does Camus “mistrust” the possible rationality universe, in his
self-professed view of “skeptical metaphysics”. However, Kierkegaard expresses his critique of the
soundness of the argument in the one who mistrusts:
“What mistrust says or presents is really only knowledge; the secret and falsity lies in
this, that it summarily converts this knowledge into a belief and pretends that nothing
happened, pretends that it is something that does not even need to be noticed, ‘since
everyone who has the same knowledge must necessarily come to the same conclusion,’
as if it were therefore eternally certain and entirely decided that when knowledge is
given then how once concludes is also given.”
Similar to the falsity in the logic of the mistrusting, Camus, as shown previously, seems to believe that
his conclusion about the absurdity of the world necessarily follows from his understanding of the
relationship between the world and himself. In the same way, his association between his absurdism
and the supposed “facts” of the world mirror the argument of those who have passed over the validity
of their views. In basic terms, Camus has collapsed in his view of absurdism the distinction between
belief and knowledge, and merely perceived his view as the “consciousness”. He has taken terms that
constitute descriptive knowledge, that all persons should agree on (that the universe goes not deliver an
easy, coherent, and complete knowledge of meaning and that humans have a deep desire for such),
posited an evaluative direction from these terms (there is no meaning in the universe), but then
perceived such as plainly demonstrated descriptive knowledge. Yet, as Kierkegaard describes, “To
communicate decision in knowledge or knowledge in decision is an upside-downness” (231). Thus, by
conferring on his belief the title of knowledge, Camus has reversed, collapsed, and disordered a proper
arrangement of logical claims.
And the implications of this argument go even further. In noting that Camus has made an
evaluative claim, we realize that he has made a judgment out of uncertainty. And because of this, we
also remember Kierkegaard’s argument that a belief is always informed by faith. Thus, with these two in
mind, we see that Camus’ absurdism fails the very criteria of knowledge that he had previously set forth
for himself. In concluding that the universe is absurd, Camus has indeed taken his own “leap” in a given
evaluative direction. And if Kierkegaard’s belief in God is “philosophical suicide” in departing from
rationality, Camus as well has jumped off the building of reason.
The argument basically comes down to the falseness in an argument from absence. It is true
that there is certainly some gap, some divorce between the supply and demand of man’s meaning in the
universe. Camus is right in that the universe does not give complete and absolute certainty to anything.
However, no gap, no matter how large, can ever prove a complete absence. Even if one perceived a gap
spanning the length of light years, even the length of infinity, that the immediate satisfaction of man’s
need was so utterly unlikely, this could never constitute a total void or a true impossibility. For in such a
void, a true and complete meaning could always still exist. Camus writes that the only connection
between man and the universe is absurdity, but in terms of perfect human rationality, humanity does
not even have this connection.
From the preceding arguments, I posit the following as final principle for ethical-philosophical
studies:
All claims about the evaluative and meaningful nature of the universe – even to deny
the existence of any objective value or meaning – are themselves subjective and
evaluative in nature.
In conclusion, I have shown how Camus’ evaluation of his own views and the “consciousness” they
possess, are themselves subjective evaluations which are in need of revelation. In closing I wish to
articulate that I have not intended in this paper to create a dialogue in which the critique of subjective
bias is thrown left and right as a method to pull down the validity of one another’s claims. Rather, I have
sought to demonstrate the intrinsic nature that subjectivity plays in our overall moral judgments. In
future research, it should be inquired that, if all evaluations are fundamentally subjective in nature, how
can subjectivity be properly utilized in seeking the truth about the relationship of ourselves and the
universe?
Works Cited
Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. Ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995. Print.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1955. Print.