Us vs. Them

[noticed at Ruthless Precision]

Albert Camus began his famous 1942 essay (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) with this statement: “There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.” ...

Camus’ suicide question deals with ultimate purpose and also faces us each day, but only as an underlying nuisance if we see no purpose to life. Most of us find purpose in life either in God or in a direct awareness of purposefulness, even if we deny His existence. But the torture question does not deal with something we know directly and it is not an easy question to dismiss via something like belief in God. For it deals with something much more uncertain: my own development of virtue. It asks essentially, “Have I developed enough virtue to not allow each day of my life to be reduced to wishing ill on others?

-- from this post