Answers:
To know what the author intended it to mean, it's best to take this sentence in context. It's from a passage in "The Myth of Sisyphus," by Albert Camus, that pertains to the question of suicide. The passage begins "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
The sentence you quoted is from a paragraph about how a sense of weariness can arise in someone whose life is repetitive and mechanical. Camus asserts that the weariness is good because it can lead to greater consciousness and thus to a deliberate, aware decision about whether to continue or to commit suicide. He's implying that to make that decision simply out of weariness, without full consciousness, would be unfortunate.
The sentence could mean a lot more, but I think that to go beyond what it means in context would also be unfortunate.
It means if no one can be conscious of something, there is no point in that thing's existence, and, depending on your philosophical perspective, one can go so far as to say that thing does not exist. For example, if everyone was color-blind, one could say that colors do not exist because the only purpose served by or result ascertained by their existence is our perception of them. To use a different example, there are colors in our world right now that have a shorter wave length than red, or a longer one than violet, but for all practicle purposes they do not exist, because we cannot be aware of them.
I like the quote - makes me pensive. Not sure what it's meaning. Where did you find / get it?
Just thinking about it, and because psychology says we are more often driven by our unconscious, it makes the quote quite a riddle.
Reminds of the "I think therefore I am" kind of meaning.
Just learning and taking notes.
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