Imagine this: You wake up, get dressed, brush your teeth, and go about your day. You smile at coworkers, complain about the coffee, laugh at a few jokes, and even manage to parallel park on the first try. But… what if you’re not actually there? What if you’re just going through the motions, utterly devoid of inner experience? Congratulations! You might be a philosophical zombie (p-zombie), the poster child for existential meh. And strangely enough, you might also be guilty of Camus’s philosophical suicide. Let’s unpack that, shall we?
A p-zombie is a creature straight out of philosophy’s greatest hits. It’s physically and behaviorally identical to a human but has no subjective experience. Think of a Hollywood actor convincingly playing a robot who’s trying to be human. That’s a p-zombie. They’re all output, no input. And that’s where things get spicy with Camus, who argued that to live authentically, we must grapple with the absurd—the stark realization that life has no inherent meaning.
According to Camus, some people opt out of this uncomfortable truth by committing philosophical suicide: they slap a nice, comforting band-aid of illusion over the gaping wound of existence. Religion, ideology, or any rigid belief system that pretends to answer life’s unanswerable questions? Boom. Philosophical suicide. You’re still technically alive, but are you really living?
So, what do a p-zombie and Camus’s philosophical suicide have in common? Both live in a way that skips the gritty confrontation with life’s absurdity. A p-zombie does it involuntarily—it’s not their fault they’re just cosmic automata. But philosophical suicide? That’s on you, pal. By outsourcing your existential struggle to a convenient story, you’re trading the messy beauty of being human for the security of a scripted existence.
The kicker is, a person who’s committed philosophical suicide might look and act just like a p-zombie. They smile, nod, and pay their taxes. But inside? Crickets. They’ve handed the reins of their consciousness to something outside themselves. They’ve gone full zombie mode—and not in the fun, brain-eating way.
Camus would argue there’s another option: Don’t be a zombie. Don’t fake it till you make it. Instead, stare absurdity in the face and shout, “Challenge accepted!” Be your own Sisyphus. Push that rock up the hill knowing full well it’ll roll back down… and smile anyway. Because to live authentically is to embrace the struggle, the uncertainty, and yes, even the absurdity.
So next time you catch yourself mindlessly scrolling or buying into an easy answer, ask: Am I really alive? Or have I become a philosophical zombie—dead inside but decent at small talk?