Absurdity and meaning

"Man has the right to distrust the universe, to feel he is in a strange and hostile world. Modern writers like Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, and others have spoken of the terrible absurdity of existence. We live in a cold, dead or dying world which we cannot trust because it is threatening, inhuman, meaningless, and absurd. Of course these writers, novelists, dramatists and philosophers spoke as atheists (Sartre and Camus spoke from the standpoint of atheistic existentialism), and seemed to have overlooked one thing. When they said that the world was absurd and meaningless they knew this only because man possesses the opposite notion of meaning. The person who does not know what meaning is does not feel, nor will he understand, what meaning is. He will never rebel against, nor be disturbed by, absurdity; but will live in it like a fish in water. And the fact that man revolts against the absurd and the meaninglessness of existence speaks for the existence of that meaning."

Final Lecture