There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out here from the principle of his innocence. That innocence is to be feared. 'Everything is permitted,' exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact.

'My field,' said Goethe, 'is time.' That is indeed the absurd speech. What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the etern…

The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. 'Everything is permitted' does not mean that nothing is forbidden.

At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of th…

The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the q…

Entendia que ha larga ponderacao de males e bens, e que a arte de viver consiste em tirar o maior bem do maior mal.

It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of eith…