Abstrakt
Under the perspective of hope, existential philosophers Albert Camus and Soren Kierkegaard are typically understood as inverted images: Kierkegaard embraces hope, which is for him a religious sentiment that he describes at length in Fear and Trembling through the character of Abraham. Camus-on the other hand-rejects hope, seeing both Kierkegaard and Abraham as individuals who had committed what Camus terms a 'philosophical suicide.' Camus' Myth of Sisyphus thus can be understood as an answer to Kierkegaard's Abraham: Sisyphus-unlike Abraham-is an individual who had accepted the absurd nature of the world, rejected hope, and thus achieved happiness.
In my paper, I will argue that Camus' criticism of Kierkegaard and of Abraham is not final-that Camus, in fact, sees hope as an existentially important phenomenon. I will show that Camus does not reject hope in The Myth of Sisyphus but merely temporarily suspends it, only to return to it in his later writings.
Therefore, The Myth of Sisyphus is only one of the many 'stages on life's way,' and I will illustrate that hope is an important aspect of human existence not only for Kierkegaard but also for Camus. That said, Camus' understanding of hope will not be the same as Kierkegaard's; it will exist not in relation to God, but in a relationship with other human beings.