Digital Commons@WOU

A New Existentialism: Rebellion vs. Suicide in the 21st Century

WUC Santiam Room

There exists a dichotomy in existence: rebel against the absurd or commit suicide. I will begin my paper by first defining what is meant by the absurd. This will lead me to a brief discussion of what existentialism is, specifically the ideas of Albert Camus and his inquiries into suicide and rebelling against the absurd; I assert that Camusian thought died with Camus and existentialism as a movement died soon after. It was type-casted as being a child of pop culture and did not successfully break itself from that mold. My central thesis is that our existence precedes our essence and that we must then spend our existence rebelling against the absurd or commit suicide and I will explore how we rebel and why we must rebel. Finally, I will address the assertion made by some philosophers that living in rebellion is creating a metaphysical prison of our own making and argue that not only is this not the case, but living in rebellion is the only way to acknowledge and exercise our radical free will and that we must live in, through, and after the requisite existential crisis resulting from that free will, knowing that we have the ability to do whatever we want to do in the face of an indifferent universe.