The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Translated from the French by Justin O’Brien
"Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere act of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide. I know, to be sure, the dull resonance that vibrates throughout these days. Yet I have but a word to say: that it is necessary."
***
After reading The Stranger (1942), I was left with a sense that the novel described a state of being and a way of interacting with the world, as embodied by his character Meursault. Interestingly, I felt that it raised a question–or, posited a point of view–that was offered but not explained. A question without an answer of what anyone is to do with the absurdist life. I was heartened to read Sartre’s 1947 essay An Explication of The Stranger, which echoed my view, and promised that Camus’ volume of essays (perhaps one long essay) The Myth of Sisyphus would go on to discuss in some detail the philosophy that informs The Stranger. Indeed, it did, and I found it so interesting.I’m going to proceed with my own “Coles Notes” on this book, shamelessly emphasising the parts of the book that spoke to me more, while glossing over the ones I found less compelling. Much that I want to remember is important quotations from the text. All of this speaks to the fact that my Author in Depth project is a personal learning activity, and the blog posts are to remind me of my learning as I look back; and for anyone interested in following along casually.
The book is divided into four sections. The first section is titled “An Absurd Reasoning,” where Camus outlines his absurdist philosophy. It was an absorbing section to read, partly because this was a revisit of the text for me. I’d read some of it in high school and remember being taken with his ideas of realizing the absurd, and of philosophical suicide.
He starts, though, with the question of literal suicide: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Camus answers his opening question in his 1955 introduction: “The fundamental subject of “The Myth of Sisyphus” is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradox which cover it is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate.”
My reading of this chapter suggests Camus believes that many people live out their lives with no awareness of the absurd. However, perhaps one day, one wakes to the truth of the way things are:
Notes:
I’d like to explore the relationship between Absurdism and Buddhism, as I find there are similar sentiments but also significant differences.
I’ll be reading Caligula, a play and the last in his “alienation/exile” cycle of 1937-1942 consisting of The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Caligula.
He starts, though, with the question of literal suicide: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Camus answers his opening question in his 1955 introduction: “The fundamental subject of “The Myth of Sisyphus” is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradox which cover it is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate.”
My reading of this chapter suggests Camus believes that many people live out their lives with no awareness of the absurd. However, perhaps one day, one wakes to the truth of the way things are:
“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm–this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”
When people realise that there is no meaning to life, that the only certainty is death, they search for meaning. This is the absurd: the confrontation of the human need for meaning in an essentially meaningless world. “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” At this point, we usually try to escape from this rather uncomfortable feeling. To solve the unsolvable problem of the absurd, people may commit suicide, or they may commit “philosophical suicide”: fixing the problem with an unjustified leap to meaning, usually to a religious belief or some sort of philosophical “reason” (I confess I got a bit lost here). I loved the idea that it is the moment before one choses or refuses to leap that holds Camus’ interest:
“The danger, on the contrary, lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. Being able to remain on that dizzying crest–that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge.” Camus doesn’t support any idea that leads to resolving the absurd for oneself. His ideal is to be awake to the absurd and then insist on living within it, within the horrible tension."
"This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together…I must sacrifice everything to these certainties and I must see them squarely to be able to maintain them. Above all, I must adapt my behaviour to them and pursue them to their consequences. I am speaking here of decency. But I want to know beforehand if thought can live in those deserts.” But he opines that it doesn't have to be horrible. Camus goes on to posit three consequences of the attempt to live in an absurd world: Revolt, Freedom and Passion.
“That revolt gives life its value. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores its majesty to that life.”
“Consciousness and revolt, these rejections are the contrary of renunciation. Everything that is indomitable and passionate in a human heart quickens them, on the contrary, with its own life. It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one’s own free will. Suicide is a repudiation. The absurd man can only drain everything to the bitter end, and deplete himself. The absurd is his extreme tension, which he maintains constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousness and in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof to his only truth, which is defiance. This is a first consequence.”
“The divine availability of the condemned man before whom the prison doors open in a certain early dawn, that unbelievable disinterestedness with regard to everything except for the pure flame of life–it is clear that death and the absurd are here the principles of the only reasonable freedom: that which a human heart can experience and live. This is a second consequence. The absurd man thus catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation.”
***
The middle sections of the book were slightly less interesting to me. Camus gives examples of how one might live an absurd life, in his chapter “The Absurd Man”, including Don Juanism, Drama, and Conquest.
The next chapter is Absurd Creation, concerned with philosophy, fiction and “ephemeral art.” I read this all, but confess to not understanding some of it. I did some listening to commentary on the book afterwards which helped.
***
He ends with “The Myth of Sisyphus,” a chapter that uses the Greek myth as an example and summary of absurdism as it relates to our relationship with our objective life. Here is an explanation of the original myth. Camus’ telling culminates with the task that the gods have set Sisyphus: rolling a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again. He must walk to the bottom of the hill again only to push up the rock. It falls again, and this pattern repeats with no hope of ever ending.
“You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero…one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred time over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass…At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit.”
“It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphis interests me…I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end…At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.”
“All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing.”
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. That struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
***
I finished up by watching a couple of videos and podcasts that helped me put this book in context. I liked this one:
The Myth of Sisyphus–Albert Camus from Revolution and Ideology
And this is quick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhLXT2AJUC8&t=308s
***
- Revolt: Does life have to have meaning to make it worth living? No, Camus answers (and addresses the question of suicide):
“That revolt gives life its value. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores its majesty to that life.”
“Consciousness and revolt, these rejections are the contrary of renunciation. Everything that is indomitable and passionate in a human heart quickens them, on the contrary, with its own life. It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one’s own free will. Suicide is a repudiation. The absurd man can only drain everything to the bitter end, and deplete himself. The absurd is his extreme tension, which he maintains constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousness and in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof to his only truth, which is defiance. This is a first consequence.”
- Freedom:
“The divine availability of the condemned man before whom the prison doors open in a certain early dawn, that unbelievable disinterestedness with regard to everything except for the pure flame of life–it is clear that death and the absurd are here the principles of the only reasonable freedom: that which a human heart can experience and live. This is a second consequence. The absurd man thus catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation.”
- Passion:
***
The middle sections of the book were slightly less interesting to me. Camus gives examples of how one might live an absurd life, in his chapter “The Absurd Man”, including Don Juanism, Drama, and Conquest.
The next chapter is Absurd Creation, concerned with philosophy, fiction and “ephemeral art.” I read this all, but confess to not understanding some of it. I did some listening to commentary on the book afterwards which helped.
***
He ends with “The Myth of Sisyphus,” a chapter that uses the Greek myth as an example and summary of absurdism as it relates to our relationship with our objective life. Here is an explanation of the original myth. Camus’ telling culminates with the task that the gods have set Sisyphus: rolling a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again. He must walk to the bottom of the hill again only to push up the rock. It falls again, and this pattern repeats with no hope of ever ending.
“You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero…one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred time over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass…At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit.”
“It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphis interests me…I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end…At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.”
“All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing.”
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. That struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
***
I finished up by watching a couple of videos and podcasts that helped me put this book in context. I liked this one:
The Myth of Sisyphus–Albert Camus from Revolution and Ideology
And this is quick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhLXT2AJUC8&t=308s
***
Notes:
- The notion of suicide is very particular here. I wonder what he’d make of the biology of mental illness, or other reasons for choosing to end one’s life, such as medical assistance in dying. I understand his conclusion that suicide isn’t justified as his philosophical argument, and right for Camus himself; but there are other ways to examine the choice to end one’s life (eg for political resistance, or for medical assistance in dying), or the inability to be able to use higher level reasoning (such as a mental illness that impairs one’s judgement).
- While he concludes that we must imagine Sisyphus “happy” I wonder if I’d substitute the word happy for “accepting.” But I think I understand his undeservedness here, following his argument laid out in his essay. He makes a bold statement.
I’d like to explore the relationship between Absurdism and Buddhism, as I find there are similar sentiments but also significant differences.
I’ll be reading Caligula, a play and the last in his “alienation/exile” cycle of 1937-1942 consisting of The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Caligula.
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