Abstract
We, as Homo sapiens, are inconsistent creatures. One minute, we might be overflowing with energetic feelings of vitality, meaning, and purpose; the next, we might suddenly feel sapped by a nagging sense that nothing we do really signifies anything grand or important. Ultimately, nothing we do matters at all. French thinker Albert Camus (1913–1960) was fascinated by this inconsistency. In his 1942 essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, he sets out to explore it (does it really signify anything), writing there seems to me to be a severe philosophical query, that is, suicide. Deciding if one’s life is worth living consists of and thus comes to the foundational query of philosophy, which ultimately construes that no legitimate reasoning can be put forward to commit physical suicide, yet, philosophical suicide, as therein lies sapiens’ survival. Therefore, the article delves into this foundational question of philosophy.
Contribution: Thus, the main purpose and aim of this article is to propagate a positive necessity regarding suicide. And the answer to this is that there is no affirmative qualification in taking one‘s own life. The reason for this will be explained in the article and specifically in the conclusion.
Keywords: absurd; Camus; Kierkegaard; Dostoevsky; IT; suicide; allegorical; African perspective; Heidegger.
Introduction
Karpouzos (2024:1) writes that the perspectives of Albert Camus add to the acceleration of philosophical paradoxes that are acknowledged as Absurdism. It construes the Absurd as the battle between sapiens’ tendency to investigate the price or cost and effect in life, as well as sapiens’ incompetence to grasp any effect in non-terminations, as meaningless, as well as within a non-analytical cosmos, with the unacceptable quietness of Nature in response.1 In quietness, I, as the author of this article, am referring to it in both spheres that are equal in my mind, that of one, physics and metaphysics.2 Therefore, the structure of the article will be as follows. Firstly, under the heading of Albert Camus, a brief overview is sketched regarding Camus from Karpouzos’ (2024) point of view, where he delves into the complex paradox that came to be known as Absurdism. Secondly, Søren Kierkegaard, who also wrestled with the paradox of Absurdism. Thirdly, Fyodor Dostoevsky sided against suicide as he regarded himself a Christian later in his life. Fourthly, the IT to the it problem or vice versa, and, fifthly, the difference between physical suicide and philosophical suicide. Sixthly, Christianity and then to choose as sapiens, then chose the allegorical between abiding in heaven or grandiose life on earth and lastly, the African perspective on Absurdism. In this research article, a dialogue exists between existential philosophy, philosophy of science and perhaps liberation theology. Physics and metaphysics are related here in terms of suicide, philosophical suicide and Christian belief.
Albert Camus
According to Karpouzos (2024:1),3 Camus’ perspectives added to the positive acceleration of the acknowledgement that philosophy established as Absurdism (being a positive grandeur). In contrast, Karpouzos came to view Absurdism as the battle between sapiens’ propensities to explore the cost–benefit of sapiens’ competence, striving to uncover (understand) contextual purpose in a useless, aberrant cosmos, with the Absurd caginess (lack of providing too much information) of the universe in reply. Henceforth, life is not Absurd; what is Absurd is sapiens’ accord with the cosmos that is (crazy) where the reader of this article can choose one (or more than one) of the following synonyms: aberrant, absurd, crazy, foolish, incoherent, insane, preposterous, ridiculous, stupid, unreasonable, unsound, unwise and wrong. Agnate to Karpouzos (2024:1) – Camus is an existentialist, yet he nevertheless rigidly rebuffs the label during his existence.
Camus is accurately categorised as an atheist-existentialist. Yet, he would dissociate himself with this trademark. In his work, he persistently repudiates the statement: ‘I do not believe in God, and I am not an atheist’ (Karpouzos 2024:1). Automatically (to my mind), it gives the impression of the Absurd. The examination of the probability that there is a subsidiary of the Divine or God is philosophically futile, yet it also necessitates the validation that a Divine does not prevail is futile too. In The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Camus (1955) wrote:
In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels like an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of Absurdity. (p. 6)
The Myth of Sisyphus is a ferocious interpretation of absurdism. It wanders off with a compelling as well as a captivating affidavit (Camus 1955):
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. (p. 4)
Therefore, if one is a philosophical scholar who wants to criticise the idea that the heart and soul are not validated to be alive, to embrace the living, then life itself is not an extension of agreeing to the foundational question of philosophy. According to Karpouzos (2024:2), when Camus refers to the “natural deed of suicide,” he means philosophical suicide, which occurs when humans accept something as true so that they are persuaded. Acceptance is useful and acceptable to religious people. Acceptance in existing established faiths such as Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism extends to all terrestrial religions.
Wrathall (2025) refers to Martin Heidegger, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in the following manner:
Heidegger allows the likelihood that there are other, non-sapiens beings that also participate in our kind of being. He petitioned in Being and Time (Karpouzos 2024) that the sciences, as environs of sapiens enterprise, have a way of being of this essence as sapiens. John Haugeland has implied such assertions that Dasein is any lucid arrangement that stems as well as abetted from conformation (Wrathall 2025):
John Haugeland develops these claims by arguing that Dasein is not defined by species membership but by participation in a coherent, self-sustaining normative order, one that is generated, maintained, and answerably upheld through socially instituted standards rather than mere behavioural conformity. But the textual support for Haugeland’s reading is equivocal at best. Heidegger never says that science or language is Dasein; rather, he says that such things share Dasein’s kind of being. Moreover, Heidegger in fact repeatedly uses Dasein as a count noun, and he explains that the word Dasein does not designate a way of being at all, but rather a particular entity that we are ourselves, the human Dasein. We are each respectively a Dasein. (n.p.)
That brings us to another famous existentialist, namely, Søren Kierkegaard and the reason for this is that Kierkegaard advocates that the individual approach is to proceed with a belief apropos Christianity, the eventual aberrant intuitive factuality, which is the most rational thing to do.
Søren Kierkegaard
Notwithstanding this, the above-mentioned acceptance is in its entirety a paradoxical so-called ‘act of trusting and/or faith’ in the light of the philosophy of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.4 Kierkegaard defined himself as a Christian, even though he ignored the traditional church, which contrived sapiens (his belief), to become apathetic and passive in their religion, as many of the sapiens were formally Christians embracing no concept of what is needed to be a profound Christian. Kierkegaard, according to Karpouzos (2024), famously stated:
The world is Absurd, and we must live in it. As I grew up, I opened my eyes and saw the real world, I began to laugh, and I haven’t stopped since. Kierkegaard states that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. We enjoy a freedom that is both appealing and terrifying. (p. 3)
In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard (1941:45) stated the following: ‘For the self is a synthesis in which the finite is the limiting factor, and the infinite the expanding factor’. Therefore, sapiens are made of two paradoxes: the limited and the everlasting. Kierkegaard acknowledged the finite (limited) as the substantiality of one’s sensibility, while the infinite (everlastingness) correlates to probability, like, for instance, that sapiens can choose. He furthermore underlines the following: agony is the giddiness of freedom, as we, therefore, as sapiens, enjoy a freedom that is both tempting and alarming.
Also, we as sapiens forget individuality in the limitless, when sapiens ban contemplations with enough probabilities and only gratuitously around the appeals of culture and social hope and predictions. Since sapiens’ aura is in a captious mode in a non-liberated way where no other options or opportunities prevail, sapiens becomes a parody, a mere statistic, a nonentity in the world. The paradoxical part is that most sapiens are non-appreciative of this as they identify all as though it were (or are) their own choices. Therefore, do most sapiens live a total distortion or lie, as they participate in the wholeness of life, on the distortion of what their family, friends and society tell them what or what not to do.
Young (in Wrathall 2025) explains it as follows:
Thus, Heidegger’s hope for another beginning is the hope for a new ethos – a non-metaphysical form of life that involves taking part in the disclosure of a particular style of life that is shaped by one’s locale. Already in Being and Time, Heidegger had emphasised that human beings are essentially being-in-the-world, and that means that we only are who we are because we are involved with our world. In his later work, this thought develops into the claim that, as Malpas puts it, a human being is ‘intimately tied to place’. To be a human being, Heidegger explains in his later work, means to dwell. And to dwell well is to dwell poetically. Poetic dwelling recognises that: our world is not a human achievement but is rather gifted’ to us in the adaptation Ereignis of being. […] In a state of spiritual health, we experience a deep and festive gratitude for the favour die Gunst that has been bestowed on us, for the wonder that around us a world worlds, that there is something rather than nothing, that there are things and we ourselves are in their midst. (p. 1)
And I think that is what Camus and Kierkegaard also wanted to conspire to as Kierkegaard advocates that the alone approach is to proceed a belief about Christianity, the eventual aberrant intuitive factuality, that is the most rational thing to do. This is the ultimate intuitive subject matter. Although Camus (1955:85) stated that he cannot know that God does not exist, he is determined to believe that God cannot exist; he opposes religious faith.
Fyodor Dostoevsky3
I concur with Camus (1955:86) that Kierkegaard’s work can be viewed as an acknowledgement of the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky’s5 paradoxical work, whereby both the writers, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky endorse the insanity or Absurdity of the cosmos, only to grasp the crime of an idea of a God. Camus (1955) could not have said it better when he wrote the following regarding The Brothers Karamazov, where Dostoevsky stipulates:
The chief question that will be pursued throughout this book is the very one from which I have suffered consciously or unconsciously all lifelong: the existence of God. It is hard to believe that a novel sufficed to transform into joyful certainty the suffering of a lifetime. One commentator correctly pointed out that Dostoevsky is on Ivan’s side and that the affirmative chapters took three months of effort, whereas what he called the blasphemies were written in three weeks in a state of excitement. There is not one of his characters who does not have that thorn in the flesh, who does not aggravate it or seek a remedy for it in sensation or immortality. (p. 71)
What we as sapiens can clearly acknowledge is that Dostoevsky had a profound impact on Camus. Camus (1955:87) was excited by the dynamic and foundational cause of insight that both narratives, namely Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, reveal. Especially the aesthetic Geist of Ivan Karamazov verified Camus the most enticing of all Dostoevsky’s foundationalist sapiens that his works allude to (Camus 1955):
If God is dead, then all is permitted resonated with him. However, he criticises both Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky for their leap into irrational faith. Dostoevsky ultimately turned away from the Absurd by embracing Christianity, which Camus sees as an invalid response to the Absurd. (p. 71)
The IT to the it problem or vice versa
In Demons, Dostoevsky (1872) delves into the concepts: (1) that life has meaning; (2) there is life after death, and therefore; (3), there is a God, or (4) life has no meaning and (4.1) all that sapiens do is absurd and; thus, (4.2) no God. Dostoevsky (1872:364) names it as nothing (life), more than an atrocious parody. Kirilov is the protagonist in Demons who perpetrates a kind of rational suicide, when he argues that a priori God only exists through sapiens and therefore God does not exist in IT-self. God does not exist because of another Divine so-called intervention. God only exists because of sapiens. Therefore, if sapiens did not need God to believe in it, IT would not exist, and yet, sapiens must understand that they make God real. The only Species that love a Deity, if in existence or not, sapiens need the notion and not the other way around. It is pre-evolutionary that manifests itself in a postfoundational belief. To vindicate the above-mentioned statement, we can reflect on what Musa (2022) says in his article ‘On Being Uniquely Human in the World: A Reflection on the Contributions of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen’:
It is hardly surprising that human distinctiveness is taken as a theological problem between theology and science. At best, this is a quest within which the meaning and the function of human life are discerned and oriented towards its good goals. At worst, it is only an ideological battle of the mind between theologians and scientists. Van Huyssteen moved beyond the crisis and its ideological interest to a more balanced approach in his interdisciplinary approach, to lead and guide useful conversations between the two fields of learning and life. In his own words, Van Huyssteen argues that, in the interdisciplinary conversation between theology and the sciences, the boundaries between our disciplines and reasoning strategies are indeed shifting and porous, and deep theological convictions cannot be easily transferred to philosophy, or to science, to function as data in a foreign disciplinary system. (n.p.)
Thus, I, as the author thinks that Kirilov’s awareness of a God is crucial, and that IT is a prerequisite for sapiens’ existence. Meaning that for Kirilov, awareness of God makes him and other sapiens in need of his and sapiens’ existence. Nonetheless, Kirilov knows that IT does not and cannot exist. Camus is accurately categorised as an atheist-existentialist. Yet, he would dissociate with this trademark. The following claim is frequently refuted in his work, “I do not believe in God, but I am not an atheist” (Karpouzos 2024:1). Automatically (to my mind), it gives the impression of the Absurd. The examination of the probability that there is a subsidiary of the Divine or God is philosophically futile, yet it also necessitates that the validation that a Divine does not prevail is futile too. Yet and notwithstanding this, if IT does not exist, sapiens are free. Therefore, the question may be asked: why would sapiens kill themselves and allow (it)self to exit the sapien world (Karpouzos 2024:4)?
Yet, if IT does not prevail, sapiens are complementary, why assassinate one and furlough this planet to subsequently obtain immunity? Kirilov is finitely conscious of this, ‘he kills himself out of love of humanity’ (Karpouzos 2024:5), and he portrays to his brothers a profound arduous way, of which he will be the first, and it could be called a didactic death by own hand. Kirilov’s handgun bullet will be the momentous one for the final revolt. Therefore, it is not anguish that drives him to lose his life thus far, but love for his fellow sapiens, for his own well-being. This echoed his concluding contention: ‘All is well’ (Karpouzos 2024:5).
At the same time, Dostoevsky suggested that suicide is the sole compelling return to an apprehension that IT does not prevail; however, Camus urges that the sapiens who are bereaved of IT do not have to oust himself or herself, yet acknowledge rather that they are convicted to death and live their lives encompassing the idiocy of this philosophy. Camus (1955) refers to it in the following manner:
The ultimate Absurd Man is best expressed in the mythological character of Sisyphus, a man condemned by the gods to a lifetime of rolling a boulder up a hill, only to reach the top of the hill and have the boulder inevitably roll back down to the bottom for him to start all over again, condemned to a lifetime of pain and anguish and working hard only to have his efforts be completely futile in the end. (p. 73)
Therefore, what causes sapiens to be insane is their knowing of Sisyphean’s denouncement when sapiens use escapism to side-step this philosophical killing of oneself. Perchance, in one of Camas’ (1955:74) best quotes, he stated, translated into my own philosophical tableau: The endeavour apropos the crest is sufficient to pad sapiens consciousness. Sapiens must conceptualise Sisyphus to be ecstatic. Next, Camus enumerates a juncture when Sisyphus is strolling back down the hill, when he is momentarily able to be ‘the boss’ of his destiny and is improving on his rock scenario. And here I concur with Camus (1955:75) when sensing: ‘Sisyphus then, is both a prisoner and a rebel’, suggesting that sapiens live in an insane immunity.
When fixating on our lucidity to grasp the consciousness of it, it is then plain and simple as sapiens, mute against this philosophy, just to assert life and keep at it, that is the only systematic philosophical outcome. It is a marvellous (marvellous as I want to reiterate the positive modus thereof), battle betwixt sapiens and its own darkness. To me, it is an urgent proposition of an absurd or impossible clarity. It objects to the cosmos again in all moments.
The difference between physical suicide and philosophical suicide
Vulnerability embodies sapiens with a special space and time to their intuitive alertness, which is comprehended by the metaphysical insurgency when enhancing sapiens to the whole of the cosmonautic adventures. To be vulnerable is to avoid (say no) to your own stupidity, to a clueless clarity and say yes to other more seductive clarities. Therefore, the alone method is to explain an unjust cosmos in a categorically free will of modus, free of that very existence as an act of dissent and uprising. Thus, death by your own hand is never an option for the absurd sapiens, the same for example, a leap of faith, is a recognition at its extreme, thus more or less, a going along with our Absurd accusation, just by essentially affirming that life is an absolution of extreme, impossible, painful and unbearable existence of Absurdness and taking one’s own life by your own hand, is our only way out (Karpouzos 2024:6).
The paradoxical part is that most sapiens are non-appreciative of this as they identify all as though it is their own choices.
This admission and awareness observe life with connotation and essence, as only then sapiens are willingly free, sapiens choose to live without application. Camus (1955:76) states, ‘Defining absolutes and universals subjectively, rather than objectively’.
I concur with Karpouzos (2024:6) that Camus writes with great delicacy. He further interjects what it is; what motivates us as sapiens, is not that Camus’ banner of the ludicrously which is so desperately allegorical, descriptive, metaphoric and symbolic. However, the comedy and drama of Camus’ belief, that he believes in it so veraciously yet so affectionately, therefore entertains his fate and dissent, that Sisyphus emerges to be a Panpsychist to Camus and therefore no more emergence yet panpsychism-substantiveness for sapiens. And herein lies the sublimity of Camus’ thoughts, and it is why we as sapiens regard him as an extraordinary dramaturg: what he does is that he takes religious proviso and adapts it into secular metaphors and then reapplies them back into a functional normality. In fact, what he does is use them at the same time as a reality and an allegory.4
Christianity abiding the heavens or the grandiose of life on earth
Christianity aggrandises the afterlife in an abiding nirvana. Camus tries to grandiose life on this planet. He stipulates, ‘the present and the succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul is the ideal of the absurd man.’ This is Camus’ infinity: an infinite rhythm of traducements. Notwithstanding this, Camus’ revolt is only figurative? In The Drowned and the Saved, Levi (2018) contemplates his time consumed in the gulag, where he was bombarded with the lure to pray:
I, too, entered the Lager as a non-believer and as a non-believer I was liberated and have lived to this day; actually, the experience of the Lager with its frightful iniquity has confirmed me in my laity. It has prevented me, and still prevents me, from conceiving of any form of providence of transcendent justice […] I must nevertheless admit that I experienced (and again only once) the temptation to yield, to seek refuge in prayer. This happened in October 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death. Naked and compressed among my naked companions with my index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the commission that, with one glance, would decide whether I should immediately go into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instant, I felt the need to ask for help and asylum, then, despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: you do not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, with the greatest impiety of View publication stats which a non-believer is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise, to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it. (pp. 150–155)
And thus, it brings us to the African response to Absurdism, and the reason has to do with the following: the author’s Gestimmtheit7 as it totes the substantial emotive heart-warming emotion Gemut, but then as a phycoexistential prejudice towards the phenomenon, matter in the sense-making procedures that canvas and regulate those very procedures. As Veldsman (2017:2) hails it the effective-cognitive dimension of human beings, and in the context of this article, my own Gestimmtheid bring a relief in my own emotion as the dealings for suicide are broken paradoxically with the suicide of my own philosophy. They are two sides of the same coin. This brings us to the African response to Absurdism.5
An African response to Absurdism
Although there is no well-defined creed or denomination viewed as ‘African Absurdist Theology’, a considerable number of African theologians and senior scholars have embraced the idea that Absurdism is, especially, searching on views from African traditional religions and especially the liberation theologians. These enlistments are applied for in the search for meaning in an ostensible meaningless cosmos. The strain and stress between sapiens’ quest for purpose and the seemingly lack of it make the best practices like ethics and social justice, an abomination more frequent than not.
Scholars from South Africa, for example, Jerry Pillay6 as well as Frank Chikane,7 have marked the way African traditional religions can comprehend different mind-sets, on the Absurd, probably treasure-trove meaning and purpose in societal life, and juxtaposing, which contradict the self-absorbed world view of a few Western philosophical ways to the ‘Absurd’.
When referring to Pillay’s work on Absurdism, it is especially relevant to the notion of reconciliation in South Africa. The notion of reconsolidation, especially in the background of South Africa’s post-apartheid era, has been purported as a venture into the Absurd, displaying ongoing protests and the repetitive essence of rivalry. This is regularly associated with the character of Sisyphus, condemned to a boundless, impractical endeavour.
Deduction
As indicated in the introduction, we resonated with this sublimity of the paradoxes in using the following structure. Under the heading Camus, we delved into the complex paradox that must be known as Absurdism. Camus is accurately categorised as an atheist-existentialist. Yet, he would dissociate with this trademark. In his work, he persistently repudiates the next statement: ‘I do not believe in God, and I am not an atheist’ (Karpouzos 2024:1). Automatically (to my mind), it gives the impression of the Absurd. The examination of the probability that there is a subsidiary of the Divine or God is philosophically futile, yet it also necessitates that the validation of a Divine does not prevail, is futile too in The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (Camus 1955). The Myth of Sisyphus was his methodological and philosophical tool in a ferocious interpretation of the Absurd. It wanders off with a compelling and captivating affidavit.
That brought us to another famous existentialist, namely, Søren Kierkegaard and the reason for this is that Kierkegaard advocates that the alone approach is to proceed with a belief apropos Christianity, the eventual aberrant intuitive factuality, which is the most rational thing to do, according to Kierkegaard. Fyodor Dostoevsky and what the IT has to the it problem (or vice versa), where Kirilov’s awareness of God is crucial, and that IT is a prerequisite for sapiens existence.
Nonetheless, he/Kirilov knows that IT does not and cannot exist. Then Kirilov (1872:986) yelled: ‘Why do you not realise that this is sufficient reason for killing oneself’, as he assembles his act with diverse paradoxical awareness of rebellion and ability, as Kirilov (1872:871) reiterates, ‘I shall kill myself to assert my insubordination, regarding my new and dreadful liberty’. Kirillov is therefore a paradoxical Absurd sapiens: as he kills himself to become it. His acumen being that: if IT does not exist, he (Kirilov) becomes it, and if IT does not exist, he must kill himself. Therefore, must he kill himself to become it? Still, the same for Nietzsche, to kill IT is to become it oneself. Yet and notwithstanding this, if IT does not exist, sapiens are free …, therefore may the question be asked: why would a sapiens kill themselves and allow themselves to exit the sapiens’ world (Karpouzos 2024:4)?
Conclusion
Thus, in this article, we deliberate the difference between physical suicide and philosophical suicide, as the author concurs with Karpouzos (2024:6) that Camus writes with great delicacy. Camus’ use of allegory, description, metaphor, and symbolism is what moves us as humans, according to Karpouzos (2024:4). Camus’ conviction strikes a balance between veracity and tenderness, creating both comedy and drama. Sisyphus reveals his true self to Camus, leading to turmoil and fulfillment. Therein (to me) lies the substantive as well as sublimity for sapiens of Camus’ thoughts, as he explains why we as sapiens regard him as an extraordinary dramaturg: What he does is that he takes religious proviso and adapts it into secular metaphors and then reapplies them back into a functional normality. In fact, what he does is use them at the same time as a reality and allegorical set pieces. This then juxtaposes the allegorical abiding heaven or grandiose life on earth, and us as sapiens gave recognition through Camus’ proponent all over the world, as well as African theologians, and therefore it abides to entertain this battle of the paradox that is the Absurd.
Final thought
It is clear from this article that Camus rejects the notion of physical suicide, rather suggesting an interlock with philosophical suicide, therefore taking on the path of Sisyphus, where he or she, time and time again, rolls up the boulder to the top. When it rolls down again, and again – take pleasure in that. Be content and find little tricycles of happiness (small pods of pleasures) on the way down just to roll them back to the top. This is also what I meant under the heading: Christianity and the allegorical between abiding in heaven or grandiose life on earth, where I categorically state:
The effective-cognitive dimension of human beings and in the context of this article, my own Gestimmtheid bring a relief in my own emotion as the dealings for suicide are broken paradoxically with the suicide of my own philosophy. They are two sides of the same coin.
Acknowledgements
CoPilot was used to brainstorm structure and phrasing during the early drafting of this manuscript. All intellectual contributions and final content are the result of the author’s work. The content was reviewed and edited by the author, who takes full responsibility for its accuracy.
Competing interests
The author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
CRediT authorship contribution
Johan A. van Rooyen: Writing – review & editing. The author confirms that this work is entirely their own, has reviewed the article, approved the final version for submission and publication, and takes full responsibility for the integrity of its findings.
Ethical considerations
This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.
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References
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Camus, A., 2025, Absurdism: Living HAPPILY in a world without meaning, viewed 13 August 2025, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aiNCl8rREU.
Dostoevsky, F., 1872, Demons, Goodreads, San Francisco, CA.
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Footnotes
1. As an example, regarding the Absurdity of life, Camus famously stated:
2. For the sake of this article, physics and metaphysics can be differentiated by the following definitions: physics is the scientific study of the physical world, focusing on matter, energy, motion and their interactions, while metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that explores foundational questions about the nature of reality, existence and being. It often delves into concepts beyond the scope of empirical science, like the nature of time, space and causation. For instance, physics studies ontology (‘what is’), while metaphysics explores epistemology (‘what is possible’ or ‘what is the nature of existence’) – at a more abstract level. Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history.
3. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.
4. Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions of both East and West and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. For its proponents, panpsychism offers an attractive middle way between physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. The worry with dualism – the view that mind and matter are fundamentally different kinds of thing – is that it leaves us with a radically disunified picture of nature, and the great difficulty of understanding how mind and brain interact. And while physicalism offers a simple and unified vision of the world, this is arguably at the cost of being unable to give a satisfactory account of the emergence of human and animal consciousness. Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature (Goff, Seager & Allen-Hermanson 2022 Panpsychism).
5. In this article, I tried to explain and summarise the distinction between It and it within an African context. This hyphen IT takes celebration to the author as an African and phrase as it is based on correspondingly as the preservation with the one or the other. There are many IT‘S in the sapiens sphere of being and points to misjudgement as for the which for this article is, that IT (S) has an ontological and epistemological value to ‘IT’ as a qualification that I don’t think Camus would approve of the epistemological side of it. His stance was only ontological.
6. Jerry Pillay is the current (since 2023) General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. He is a Reformed pastor, member of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, former professor of theology at the University of Pretoria where he heads the Department of History and Ecclesiology and was Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He was elected president of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) in 2010 and, in June 2022, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), to take office on 01 January 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=71447581
7. Frank Chikane is a South African civil servant, writer and cleric. He is a member of the African National Congress and moderator of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs for the World Council of Churches.
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