"There is but one fundamental question of philosophy; judging whether life is, or is not worth living. All the rest comes afterwards."

If existence is an endless struggle, and joy is fleeting, is life truly worth living? Such is the question that many great thinkers have sought to answer throughout the course of history. The Greeks exemplified this in their “Myth of Sisyphus”, where a morally corrupt ruler was punished to labor a boulder to the summit of a mountain, from which it would fall back to the base and the labor would resume in an infinite cycle. This has resonated through time as an allegory for the cycle of personal struggle and the nature of the human condition.

The philosopher Albert Camus compared the punishment to humanity’s futile search for meaning and truth in an ultimately meaningless and indifferent universe. In one of his most famous quotes, Camus challenges the reader that “the fundamental question of philosophy is to answer whether life is or is not worth living.” But Camus doesn’t provoke in an act of cynicism, or even nihilism; Rather, that if one persists in the face of life’s suffering, as is the enduring nature of the human spirit, that there is a reason, a meaning beyond base survival instincts that compels one as an individual to meet life’s infinite labor; That in embracing, even standing defiant in the face of the inherent meaningless of the universe, one has the opportunity to understand their reason to persevere, to struggle forward, and to overcome.

Thus, Orator presents “The Burden of Existence.”