Leaps & boulders

“At the end of his 1895 address “Is Life Worth Living?,” the pragmatist philosopher William James tells his audience to take a leap of faith: we may never be certain that our lives have a meaning, but maybe they do. Why not take a chance on this “maybe”? Day in and day out, we take more mundane leaps of faith. For example, I promise to meet a friend at her apartment; while I may be killed on the highway on my way there, I may not, either. I hope to see her later, and that hope animates my choice to get on the road. Why not adopt a similar faith in life’s worthwhileness? I used to balk at the idea of a leap of faith. I sided with Albert Camus over Søren Kierkegaard, whom he mercilessly critiques in the first part of the Myth of Sisyphus. For Camus, Kierkegaard recognizes the absurdity of the human condition— “the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.” Yet, Kierkegaard, by calling on us to take a leap of faith, eliminates the absurd. In contrast, Camus says, “Being able to remain on the dizzying crest—that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge.” Instead of the leap of faith, Camus proposes a different image: Sisyphus rolling the boulder endlessly up a hill, only to see it fall back down. Camus advocates grit over faith. Plant your feet firmly on the ground, disregard all hope of a future reward, and keep at it...” https://open.substack.com/pub/celineleboeuf/p/leaps-of-faith?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios