Camus, Heidegger and Houllebecq are discussing Painting

Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger and Michel Houllebecq are sitting in front of Arnold Böcklin's painting of the "Isle of the Dead". They are drinking a glass of wine, smoking a cigarette and discussing. The philosophy of the German Heidegger influenced the way of thinking of the later existentialist Camus. The picture was painted in 2015 just at the time when in Paris the assassination of Charlie Hebdo took place. Asking about the meaning of "being" is somewhat pointless in view of the "Ship of the Dead" and under the impression of the attack of Islamists on "Charlie Hebdo". Heidegger, the "influencer" begins the phenomenological description of being with the search for authenticity in "being to death" as affirmation of human limitation. Thus the pictorial motif poses the question of our being in this world, our limitations and, ultimately, our absurdity.