the myth of sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is the first work I read by him. I was planning on reading The Stranger first, but the book club beat me to it. I went into this book expecting some Hannah Arendt type of abstract writing and was positively surprised that I was understanding as much as I did on first read. With Hannah Arendt, I found myself often rereading sentences and paragraphs just to begin to understand what she was on about. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m confident in my understanding of absurdism as outlined in this essay at all.
The first half of the book has Camus arguing what absurdism is and how it differs from existentialism. He explains it using examples from daily life as well as historical figures like Caligula. While he admits that his examples often draw on controversial characters, he makes it clear that being an absurdist does not determine whether one commits heinous acts or not. In his own words:
,Everything is permitted‘ does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions. It does not recommend crime, for this would be childish, but it restores to remorse its futility. Likewise, if all experiences are indifferent, that of duty is as legitimate as any other. One can be virtuous through a whim (Loc. 833).
Being an absurdist simply means that one is a rebel against reality, recognizes the futility of laboring for a life one cannot know of, and behaves in solidarity with anyone who is lucid against the mechanical act of living. It’s a liberation from unquestioned and unchallenged social mores. It compels one to explore alternatives to the universally accepted way of life and become a creator, a god even, in this realm, capable of shaping it instead of succumbing to its pointlessness (which is further explored in Absurd Creation).
Then in the second half, he discusses concrete examples of absurdism such as fictional figures like Don Juan, the Spanish legendary libertine who seduced each woman with equal care and without caring about his relationships being out of wedlock—a taboo at the time—among other things, types of people such as the conqueror (or adventurer), whether of knowledge or of land, and types of artistic expression such as the drama, in which the actor makes a person on stage and leaves that person on stage. The making of people gets its own chapter which further discusses making art for the sake of making it.
In all of his attempts to discuss what the absurd is, Camus seeks to answer why life may not be worth living in the grand scheme of things. We cannot know what death is like or what comes after it, and neither can we know the inner life of someone dealing with suicidal ideation. All life is a performance and that performance defines who we are to the outside. To him, suicidal ideation is an art form, brooded in the hearts of people just like poetry or paintings. Its origin is the same (in the mind) and eventually makes its way outwards as an expression that can be interpreted by others.
What Camus doesn’t do is discuss whether life is worth living. This is not something he’s interested in exploring as it had been done plenty of times before by other existentialists. What he seeks out to do is to assume life is not worth living and how to deal with it other than suicide which is what absurdism is: recognizing that life is shit and that we’re all in it together. We are not born as absurdists and have to find our way to it. There is a turning point in life where we do discover it, usually after a shock or some disillusionment. Most of the world cannot be comprehended, let alone be explained with reason. Thus the world is irrational and shouldn't be rationalized which is why his chosen examples choose to live on impulses.
What's interesting is the position of women in this essay. At first, I took the use of „man“ to be gender-neutral implying „human“ the way Hannah Arendt uses it. However, women have been throughout this essay, and almost without fail, the objects of desire and not subjects with agency. They are who Don Juan seduces, who the Absurd Man desires, not people capable of lucidity themselves. I wasn’t expecting a feminist work, yet not this either. This essay may be emancipatory for men, yet not for anyone who doesn’t belong to „man“ as Camus uses the term.
Another thing I find odd is that Camus considers suicide to only having been dealt with as a social phenomenon. One of the first impressionable articles I‘ve read in my degree was Emile Durkheim‘s The Suicide which tried to reframe suicide as a social rather than a psychological phenomenon. So I just assumed that suicide as a psychological phenomenon was the dominant default. Maybe he meant the lack of its consideration from philosophical perspective as a valid outcome.
In any case, this was a pleasant read. The Myth of Sisyphus is the kind of book I’ll have to read a couple of times before I can begin to truly understand it. I tried my best on my first read: Taking notes, reflecting on the content as my reading progressed, and using this summary when I was really confused. I also made sure to look up the authors and characters he referenced to understand more where he’s coming from. I hope I didn’t misinterpret something so terribly wrong that it appalled you as a reader, as I tried my best to reproduce his thoughts in my post.