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Click to read more about The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers All about The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. The myth of Sisyphus, and other essays / Albert Camus; translated from the French by Justin O'Brien FOR ME 'The Myth of Sisyphus' marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel. ALBERT CAMUS PARIS MARCH 1955. O my soul, do not aspire to.

The Myth of Sisyphus (French: Le Mythe de Sisyphe) is a 1942 philosophical essay by Albert Camus. The English translation by Justin O'Brien was first published 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 (1942), the plays The Misunderstanding (1942) and Caligula (1944), and especially the essay The Rebel (1951).

• 1Summary

Summary[edit]

The essay is dedicated to Pascal Pia and is organized in four chapters and one appendix.

Chapter 1: An Absurd Reasoning[edit]

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: we build our life on the hope for tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live their lives as if they were not aware of 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 explain the world: their stories ultimately end in meaningless abstractions, in metaphors. This is the absurd condition and '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 the '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 permanently 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 fully acknowledging the absurd: revolt, freedom, and passion.

Chapter 2: The Absurd Man[edit]

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[edit]

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 Dostoevsky 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[edit]

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. After finally capturing Sisyphus, the gods decided that his punishment would last 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. After the stone falls back down the mountain Camus states that 'It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end.' 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[edit]

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.

See also[edit]

• The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard

Sources[edit]

• The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays, Albert Camus, Alfred A. Knopf 2004, ISBN1-4000-4255-0

External links[edit]

• Complete original text (French)
• Chapter 4 of the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus
• Suicide and Atheism: Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus at the Wayback Machine (archived October 12, 2007) by Richard Barnett

Albert Camus (pronounced Kam-oo) (November 7, 1913- January 4, 1960) was a French author and philosopher and one of the principal luminaries (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of absurdism.

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Camus was the second youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (after Rudyard Kipling) when he received the award in 1957. He is also the shortest-lived of any literature laureate to date, having died in a car crash 3 years after receiving the award.
Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria to a French Algerian (pied noir) settler family. His mother was of Spanish extraction. His father, Lucien, died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during the First World War, while serving as a member of the Zouave infantry regiment. Camus lived in poor conditions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of Algiers.
In 1923, Camus was accepted into the lycee and eventually to the University of Algiers. However, he contracted tuberculosis in 1930, which put an end to his football activities (he had been a goalkeeper for the university team) and forced him to make his studies a part-time pursuit. He took odd jobs including private tutor, car parts clerk, and work for the Meteorological Institute. He completed his licence de philosophie (BA) in 1935; in May of 1936, he successfully presented his thesis on Plotinus, Neo-Platonisme et Pensee Chretienne for his diplome d'etudes superieures (roughly equivalent to an M.A. by thesis).
Camus joined the French Communist Party in 1934, apparently for concern over the political situation in Spain (which eventually resulted in the Spanish Civil War) rather than support for Marxist-Leninist doctrine. In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party (PCA) was founded. Camus joined the activities of Le Parti du Peuple Algerien, which got him into trouble with his communist party comrades. As a result, he was denounced as 'Trotskyite', which did not endear him to Stalinist communism.
In 1934, he married Simone Hie, a morphine addict, but the marriage ended due to Simone's infidelity. In 1935, he founded Theatre du Travail- 'Worker's Theatre'- (renamed Theatre de l'Equipe('Team's Theatre') in 1937), which survived until 1939. From 1937 to 1939, he wrote for a socialist paper, Alger-Republicain, and his work included an account of the peasants who lived in Kabylie in poor conditions, which apparently cost him his job. From 1939 to 1940, he briefly wrote for a similar paper, Soir-Republicain. He was rejected from the French army because of his tuberculosis.
In 1940, Camus married Francine Faure, a pianist and mathematician. Francine gave birth to twins Catherine and Jean Camus on September 5th, 1945. Also in this year, Camus began to work for Paris-Soir magazine. In the first stage of World War II, the so-called Phony War stage, Camus was a pacifist. However, he was in Paris to witness how the Wehrmacht took over. On December 15, 1941, Camus witnessed the execution of Gabriel Peri, an event which Camus later said crystallized his revolt against the Germans. Afterwards he moved to Bordeaux alongside the rest of the staff of Paris-Soir. In this year he finished his first books, The Myth Of Sisyphus. He returned briefly to Oran, Algeria in 1942.
Literary career
During the war Camus joined the French Resistance cell Combat, which published an underground newspaper of the same name. This group worked against the Nazis, and in it Camus assumed the moniker 'Beauchard'. Camus became the paper's editor in 1943, and when the Allies liberated Paris Camus reported on the last of the fighting. He eventually resigned from Combat in 1947, when it became a commercial paper. It was here that he became acquainted with Jean-Paul Sartre.
After the war, Camus became one member of Sartre's entourage and frequented Cafe de Flore on the Boulevard St. Germain in Paris. Camus also toured the United States to lecture about French existentialism. Although he leaned left politically, his strong criticisms of communist doctrine did not win him any friends in the communist parties and eventually also alienated Sartre.
In 1949 his tuberculosis returned and he lived in seclusion for two years. In 1951 he published The Rebel, a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution which made clear his rejection of communism. The book upset many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France and led to the final split with Sartre. The dour reception depressed him and he began instead to translate plays.
Camus's most significant contribution to philosophy was his idea of the absurd, the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither, which he explained in The Plague. Some would argue that Camus is better described not as an existentialist (a label he would have rejected) but as an absurdist.
In the 1950s Camus devoted his efforts to human rights. In 1952 he resigned from his work for UNESCO when the UN accepted Spain as a member under the leadership of General Franco. In 1953 he was one of the few leftists who criticized Soviet methods to crush a worker's strike in East Berlin. In 1956 he protested similar methods in Hungary.
He maintained his pacifism and resistance to capital punishment everywhere in the world. One of his most significant contributions was an essay collaboration with Koestler, the writer, intellectual, and founder of the League Against Capital Punishment.
When the Algerian War of Independence began in 1954 it presented a moral dilemma for Camus. He identified with pied-noirs, and defended the French government on the grounds that revolt of its North African colony was really an integral part of the 'new Arab imperialism' led by Egypt and an 'anti-Western' offensive orchestrated by Russia to 'encircle Europe' and 'isolate the United States' (Actuelles III: Chroniques Algeriennes, 1939-1958). Although favouring greater Algerian autonomy or even federation, though not full-scale independence, he believed that the pied-noirs and Arabs could co-exist. During the war he advocated civil truce that would spare the civilians, which was rejected by both sides who regarded it as foolish. Behind the scenes, he began to work clandestinely for imprisoned Algerians who faced the death penalty.
From 1955 to 1956 Camus wrote for L'Express. In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, officially not for his novel Reflexions Sur la Guillotine'. When he spoke to students at the University of Stockholm, he defended his apparent inactivity in the Algerian question and stated that he was worried what could happen to his mother who still lived in Algeria. This led to further ostracism by French left-wing intellectuals.
Camus died on January 4, 1960 in a car accident near Sens, in a place named 'Le Grand Frossard' in the small town of Villeblevin. Ironically, Camus had uttered a remark earlier in his life that the most absurd way to die would be in a car accident.
The driver of the Facel Vega, Michel Gallimard- his publisher and close friend- also perished in the accident. Camus was interred in the Lourmarin Cemetery, Lourmarin, Vaucluse, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France.
He was survived by his twin children, Catherine and Jean, who hold the copyrights to his work.
After his death, two of Camus's works were published posthumously. The first was an earlier version of The First Man, that Camus was writing before he died. The novel was an autobiographical work about his childhood in Algeria and was published in 1995.
Many writers have written on the Absurd, each with his or her own interpretation of what the Absurd actually is and their own ideas on the importance of the Absurd. For example, Sartre does little more than acknowledge it while Kierkegaard bases the existence of the God on the fact of the absurd. Camus was not the originator of Absurdism and regretted the continued reference to him as a philosopher of the absurd. He shows less and less interest in the Absurd shortly after publishing Le Mythe De Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus). To distinguish Camus's ideas of the Absurd from those of other philosophers, people sometimes refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring to Camus's Absurd.
His early thoughts on the Absurd appeared in his first collection of essays, L'Etranger (The Stranger/Outsider), and in the same year releases Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), a literary essay on the Absurd. He had also written a play about a Roman Emperor, Caligula, pursuing an Absurd logic. However, the play was not performed until 1945. The turning point in Camus's attitude to the Absurd occurs in a collection of letters to a fictitious German friend, published in the newspaper Combat.
Camus' ideas on the Absurd
In the essays Camus presented us with dualisms; happiness and sadness, dark and light, life and death, etc. He wanted us to face up to the fact that happiness is fleeting and that we will die. He did this not to be morbid, but so we can love life and enjoy our happiness when it occurs. In Le Myth, this dualism became a paradox; we value our lives and existence so greatly, but at the same time we know we will eventually die, and ultimately our endeavours are meaningless. Whilst we can live with a dualism (I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come), we cannot live with the paradox (I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless). In Le Myth, Camus was interested in how we experience the Absurd and how we live with it. Our life must have meaning for us to value it. If we accept that life has no meaning and therefore no value, should we kill ourselves?
Meursault, the Absurdist hero of Le Mythe de Sisyphe raises questions it cannot satisfactorily answer.
Camus' work on the Absurd was intended to promote a public debate. His various offerings entice us to think about the Absurd and offer our own contribution. Concepts such as cooperation, joint effort and solidarity are of key importance to Camus. In the essay Enigma, Camus expressed his frustration at being labeled a philosopher of the absurd. None of his previous work was intended to be a definitive account of his thoughts on the Absurd, although the Le Mythe de Sisyphe is often mistaken as such.
Camus made a significant contribution to our understanding of the Absurd, but was not himself an Absurdist. 'If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.' Second Letter to a German Friend, December 1943.

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