The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay
by Albert Camus.
It comprises about 119 pages and was published
originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de
Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin
O'Brien followed in 1955.
In the essay, Camus introduces his philosophy
of the absurd: man's futile search for meaning,
unity, and clarity in the face of an unintelligible
world devoid of God and eternal truths or
values.
Does the realization of the absurd require
suicide?
Camus answers: "No.
It requires revolt."
He then outlines several approaches to the
absurd life.
The final chapter compares the absurdity of
man's life with the situation of Sisyphus,
a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned
to repeat forever the same meaningless task
of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to
see it roll down again.
The essay concludes, "The struggle itself
[...] is enough to fill a man's heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
The work can be seen in relation to other
absurdist works by Camus: the novel The Stranger,
the plays The Misunderstanding and Caligula,
and especially the essay The Rebel.
Summary
The essay is dedicated to Pascal Pia and is
organized in four chapters and one appendix.
Chapter 1: An Absurd Reasoning
Camus undertakes the task of answering what
he considers to be the only question of philosophy
that matters: Does the realization of the
meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily
require suicide?
He begins by describing the absurd condition:
Much of our life is built on the hope for
tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings us closer to
death, the ultimate enemy; people live as
if they didn't know about the certainty of
death.
Once stripped of its common romanticism, the
world is a foreign, strange and inhuman place;
true knowledge is impossible, and rationality
and science cannot reveal the world—such
explanations ultimately end in meaningless
abstractions and metaphors.
"From the moment absurdity is recognized,
it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of
all."
It is not the world that is absurd, nor human
thought: the absurd arises when the human
need to understand meets the unreasonableness
of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute
and for unity" meets "the impossibility of
reducing this world to a rational and reasonable
principle."
He then characterizes a number of philosophies
that describe and attempt to deal with this
feeling of the absurd, by Heidegger, Jaspers,
Shestov, Kierkegaard, and Husserl.
All of these, he claims, commit "philosophical
suicide" by reaching conclusions that contradict
the original absurd position, either by abandoning
reason and turning to God, as in the case
of Kierkegaard and Shestov, or by elevating
reason and ultimately arriving at ubiquitous
Platonic forms and an abstract god, as in
the case of Husserl.
For Camus, who set out to take the absurd
seriously and follow it to its final conclusions,
these "leaps" cannot convince.
Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging
the contradiction between the desire of human
reason and the unreasonable world.
Suicide, then, also must be rejected: without
man, the absurd cannot exist.
The contradiction must be lived; reason and
its limits must be acknowledged, without false
hope.
However, the absurd can never be accepted:
it requires constant confrontation, constant
revolt.
While the question of human freedom in the
metaphysical sense loses interest to the absurd
man, he gains freedom in a very concrete sense:
no longer bound by hope for a better future
or eternity, without a need to pursue life's
purpose or to create meaning, "he enjoys a
freedom with regard to common rules".
To embrace the absurd implies embracing all
that the unreasonable world has to offer.
Without a meaning in life, there is no scale
of values.
"What counts is not the best living but the
most living."
Thus, Camus arrives at three consequences
from the full acknowledging of the absurd:
revolt, freedom and passion.
Chapter 2: The Absurd Man
How should the absurd man live?
Clearly, no ethical rules apply, as they are
all based on higher powers or on justification.
"Integrity has no need of rules."
'Everything is permitted' "is not an outburst
of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment
of a fact."
Camus then goes on to present examples of
the absurd life.
He begins with Don Juan, the serial seducer
who lives the passionate life to the fullest.
"There is no noble love but that which recognizes
itself to be both short-lived and exceptional."
The next example is the actor, who depicts
ephemeral lives for ephemeral fame.
"He demonstrates to what degree appearing
creates being."
"In those three hours he travels the whole
course of the dead-end path that the man in
the audience takes a lifetime to cover."
Camus's third example of the absurd man is
the conqueror, the warrior who forgoes all
promises of eternity to affect and engage
fully in human history.
He chooses action over contemplation, aware
of the fact that nothing can last and no victory
is final.
Chapter 3: Absurd Creation
Here Camus explores the absurd creator or
artist.
Since explanation is impossible, absurd art
is restricted to a description of the myriad
experiences in the world.
"If the world were clear, art would not exist."
Absurd creation, of course, also must refrain
from judging and from alluding to even the
slightest shadow of hope.
He then analyzes the work of Dostoyevsky in
this light, especially The Diary of a Writer,
The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov.
All these works start from the absurd position,
and the first two explore the theme of philosophical
suicide.
However, both The Diary and his last novel,
The Brothers Karamazov, ultimately find a
path to hope and faith and thus fail as truly
absurd creations.
Chapter 4: The Myth of Sisyphus
In the last chapter, Camus outlines the legend
of Sisyphus who defied the gods and put Death
in chains so that no human needed to die.
When Death was eventually liberated and it
came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he
concocted a deceit which let him escape from
the underworld.
Finally captured, the gods decided on his
punishment for all eternity.
He would have to push a rock up a mountain;
upon reaching the top, the rock would roll
down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over.
Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who
lives life to the fullest, hates death, and
is condemned to a meaningless task.
Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless
toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent
working at futile jobs in factories and offices.
"The workman of today works every day in his
life at the same tasks, and this fate is no
less absurd.
But it is tragic only at the rare moments
when it becomes conscious."
Camus is interested in Sisyphus' thoughts
when marching down the mountain, to start
anew.
This is the truly tragic moment, when the
hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition.
He does not have hope, but "there is no fate
that cannot be surmounted by scorn."
Acknowledging the truth will conquer it; Sisyphus,
just like the absurd man, keeps pushing.
Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges
the futility of his task and the certainty
of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity
of his situation and to reach a state of contented
acceptance.
With a nod to the similarly cursed Greek hero
Oedipus, Camus concludes that "all is well,"
indeed, that "one must imagine Sisyphus happy."
Appendix
The essay contains an appendix titled "Hope
and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka".
While Camus acknowledges that Kafka's work
represents an exquisite description of the
absurd condition, he maintains that Kafka
fails as an absurd writer because his work
retains a glimmer of hope.
Sources
The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom,
and Selected Essays, Albert Camus, Alfred
A. Knopf 2004, ISBN 1-4000-4255-0
See also
Absurdism
Eternal return
Theatre of the Absurd
The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard
External links
Chapter 4 of the essay 'The Myth of Sisyphus',
by Albert Camus
SparkNotes on 'The Myth of Sisyphus'
Suicide and Atheism: Camus and The Myth of
Sisyphus at the Wayback Machine by Richard
Barnett
The Absurd Hero by Bob Lane
Text and Meaning in The Myth of Sisyphus by
Aberjhani
