Kierkegaard's Fear And Trembling

20607281
PHIL 265 Online
Midterm
October 25, 2017
Part 1 – Explanations (worth 25 marks each)
1. On p. 53 of the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus maintains that "[life] will be lived all the better if it has no meaning". Explain what you think Camus means by this claim by discussing it in light of relevant aspects of his broader philosophy.
Camus’ philosophy of absurdism states that life has no inherent meaning, and that search for meaning will only result in confrontation with the absurd. His quote, “[life] will be lived all the better if it has no meaning”, perfectly exemplifies the meaning behind his philosophy. I believe this quote is describing what happens when one confronts the absurd head-on and embrace it, rather than evade it. This idea

We must first define what it means to be ethical and what it means to be religious. Kierkegaard believed that there are three levels of existence: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. The aesthetic is when one lives according to pain and pleasure, ethical is when one lives according to the universally true values of society, and religious when one lives in accordance with the religious centre of existence. (Lecture Notes, 7). Teleological suspension of the ethical simply means that the ethical can be suspended, or disobeyed, in order to fulfill the religious. This can be explained through using Abraham’s story from Genesis. In the story, Abraham is ordered from God to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Kierkegaard argues that the action of human sacrifice can be considered ethical if the purpose is to serve the society, such as the case of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. (Kierkegaard, FT, Problem One) In Abraham’s case, however, he would simply be considered as a murderer since his action would not benefit society. Kierkegaard suggests, however, that Abraham’s action is justified due to teleological suspension of the ethical – that he suspended his ethical obligation for faith, and that religious faith can replace the ethical. This creates a paradox – how can an individual’s experience be higher than, and supplant something universal? According to

To him, any action other than confronting the absurd face-first would be considered as an act of eluding. This elusion can be found in many forms, one of them being suicide. Suicide can be thought of as the consequence of the absurd – when someone realizes that there is no meaning in life. They try to escape this fate by killing themselves, thus freeing them from the idea rather than battling it. In Camus’ mind, this is similar to Kierkegaard’s idea of accepting the absurd. Kierkegaard states that one must have faith in God to battle this feeling of anxiety. Kierkegaard is eluding from the true way of fighting the absurd by making it “the criterion of the other world, whereas it is simply a residue of the experience of this world”. (Camus, MS, Philosophical Suicide) Therefore, his interpretation fits the description of suicide. Only in this case, the person is not killing themselves, rather killing their rational thinking through a leap of faith, thus the term philosophical