After a few dozen pages of what I felt like was mostly incomprehensible abstract talk he drops down to Earth. After that it becomes a pleasant read. Ignoring the epic one liners that are seemingly taken out of context everywhere he gets his point across pretty well. Personally, I don't get it, and probably will never understand how an absurdist can end up anywhere but in misery. Do something for nothing? No thank you.
I didn’t rate this because I couldn’t figure out what to rate it. Much of this I didn’t understand. My main takeaway is that there is freedom in acknowledging life is absurd and that there is joy to be had in that space. I think
I'm unable to give a rating to this book - partly because I find myself unable to judge a work of philosophy which is unanimously considered to be brilliant, and partly because there were a lot of things that went way over my head. Especially in the middle of the book where Camus goes heavy handed into explaining what the Absurd is and his critics of the contemporary philosophers. I was unable to follow because it requires at least a general understanding of the works of people that he criticises.
This will require at least one, and possibly multiple, re-reads for me to finally be able to say that yes, I read The Myth of Sisyphus and I "understood" it. Until then, this essay will remain an enigma to me.
The Myth of Sisyphus is broken down into four parts counting out the Appendix at the end. The parts are entitled as follows:
- An Absurd Reasoning
- The Absurd Man
- Absurd Creation
- The Myth of Sisyphus
The first three parts beget Albert Camus’s philosophy, even though he restrains at the opening of the book from calling it so, notifying that the essay will merely describe the ‘intellectual malady’ that is absurdity.
Camus inaugurates the book magnificently with a firm assertion: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – come afterwards.”
In the subsequent flow of words and chained sentences which I scrutinized in hopes of …
The Myth of Sisyphus is broken down into four parts counting out the Appendix at the end. The parts are entitled as follows:
- An Absurd Reasoning
- The Absurd Man
- Absurd Creation
- The Myth of Sisyphus
The first three parts beget Albert Camus’s philosophy, even though he restrains at the opening of the book from calling it so, notifying that the essay will merely describe the ‘intellectual malady’ that is absurdity.
Camus inaugurates the book magnificently with a firm assertion: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – come afterwards.”
In the subsequent flow of words and chained sentences which I scrutinized in hopes of finding the thread Camus promised to give at the beginning of the book, I kept searching for the answer to the question ‘Is life worth living?’ expecting a certain yes or no at some point in the book. However, I neglected the facts that a) this answer was referred to as the ‘one truly philosophical problem’ and b) the author only promised description, not answers. So, to say the least, I was foolish. I was swimming midst The Myth of Sisyphus’ pages trying (vainly) to find an anchor to my existential enquiries. But even though I did not get my expected-to-be well contoured answer (obviously), I was offered a brilliant depth of reflection, ideas and perspectives to a topic that agonized, agonizes and eventually will keep on agonizing the minds of entire generations.
Some of my favorite excerpts from the first three parts:
Camus summarizes Husserl’s method of reasoning as such: “Thinking is not unifying or making the appearance familiar under a guise of a great principle. Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one’s consciousness, making every image a privileged place[…] [Phenomenology] confirms absurd thought in its initial assertion that there is no truth, but merely truths[…] Consciousness does not form the object of its understanding, it merely focuses, it is the act of attention”
A beautiful pertinent remark: “The theme of the irrational, as it is conceived by the existentialists, is reason becoming confused and escaping by negating itself. The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.”
Thus, the absurd man emerges from these lines a dozen pages later. “Not to believe in the profound meaning of things belongs to the absurd man.”
Camus stresses on hope’s role in disentangling man from the web of absurdities. It makes him unable to question the daily momentum of things. “Everything that makes man work and get excited utilizes hope. The sole thought that is not mendacious is therefore a sterile thought. In the absurd world the value of a notion or of a life is measured by its sterility.”
A reflection on love: “We call love what binds us to certain creatures only by reference to a collective way of seeing for which books and legends are responsible.”
To resume Camus’ standpoint using his own words, I shall borrow this passage from the sub-paragraph entitled ‘Absurd Freedom’: “I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know whether this world has a meaning which transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.”
Part four is my favorite part: the myth of Sisyphus.
Accused of having stolen Gods’ secrets, Sisyphus was condemned to incessantly roll a boulder up a steep hill. Before he could reach the top, the rock would always roll back down, thus obliging him to start over. The gods’ punishment ended up consigning Sisyphus to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration. Camus’ interpretation and parallelism with mortal men is quite enthralling and indefinitely thought provoking. He is captivated by the moment at which Sisyphus is at the summit and the rock down the hill. It is during that return that Sisyphus interests our author, well, because he becomes conscious. “If this myth is tragic,” says Camus, “that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? 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.” GENIUS. He adds later on: “At that subtle moment when man glances backwards over his life, Sisyphus returning towards his rock, in that slight pivoting, he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death.”
This review is clearly fused with so much quoting and the closure to it will nonetheless be equipped with three more. Bear with me. I can’t help it. The author has his way with words.
Camus says somewhere at the first couple pages “I create for myself barriers between which I confine my life.” to conclude in the final pages that “the struggle itself towards heights is enough to fill man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” In the in-between, he throws this gem “The important thing, as Abbé Galiani said to Mme d’Epinay, is not to be cured, but to live with one’s ailments.”
To sum it up, Albert Camus acknowledges our confinement. He acknowledges our impotence, as absurd men, to overcome irrationality. And even though it’s in our nature, how we end up handling it and applying it to our daily routine is up to us. What seemed to be the extreme and only solution at the beginning of the novel and that is suicide, quickly dissipated into living ‘with one’s ailments’ and eventually became the joy of self-accomplishment.
Are you aware, dear reader, of your Sisyphean rock? Did you ever attempt to break its curse? I’m a struggler, dearest reader, and the rock keeps on getting bigger. I hope yours is as mythological as Sisyphus himself and the gods.
