Camus and the Psychology of Meaning

Key points

Happiness requires effort: joy is constructed through attention and ongoing engagement with life.

Silence creates meaning: As therapy allows pauses, Camus saw silence as space where significance can emerge.

Limits guide freedom: Rebellion and compassion, not extremes, shape a life of dignity within an absurd world.

The French writer, Albert Camus, was 'a moralist who insisted that while the world is absurd and allows for no hope, we are not condemned to despair.'

Zaretsky, in A Life Worth Living , portrays Camus as a moralist who emphasizes the urgent need to create meaning in a world devoid of it. Camus resisted moralizing from above and instead sought to engage directly with reality, insisting we must invent meaning rather than despair.

Camus, like Nietzsche, rejected