painting a Nude Male Figure dancing in the face of mortality (Sisyphus) - Video

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. All the rest— whether
or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterward.
These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve
our respect must preach by example. You can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the
definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to
the intellect.
If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the
actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. Galileo, who held a scientific truth
of great importance, abjured it with the greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life. In a certain sense, he did right.1
That truth was not worth the stake. Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of
[4] profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. On the other hand, I see many people die
because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or
illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason
for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. How do you answer it?
On all essential problems (I mean thereby those that run the risk of leading to death or those that intensify
the passion of living) there are probably two methods of thought: the method of La Palisse and the
method of Don Quixote. Solely the balance between evidence and lyricism can allow us to achieve
simultaneously emotion and lucidity. In a subject at once so humble and so heavy with emotion, the
learned and classical dialectic must yield, one can see, to a more modest attitude of mind deriving at one
and the same time from common sense and understanding.