Philosophical Dictionary

The final par of the "Philosophy Carol" series. Meeting the Ghost of Philosophy in an eternal cafe brings you to an epiphany.

Camus ends a book about suicide with a man pushing a rock forever and calls him happy. The line is an instruction to the reader, not a report on Sisyphus’s mood, and it closes a real argument about the absurd. Two philosophers later pushed back hard. Were they right, or is Sisyphus just asymptomatic?

A meme claims absurdists are nihilists who fell for their captor. Nietzsche’s notebooks split nihilism into a weary kind and a destructive kind, Camus warned that the absurd can make murder look indifferent, and Stockholm syndrome itself is a contested label. Is the joke unfair, or does it land a real hit?

Absurdism, existentialism and nihilism start from the same uncomfortable silence: the universe does not answer our questions about meaning. Nihilism shrugs, existentialism builds its own meaning, and Camus called the believers’ leap philosophical suicide. So is absurdism just existentialism with good vibes?