Camus and the Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French writer whose work addressed the human condition in the modern world. His book, The Myth of Sisyphus, presents his views on the experience of absurdity in human life in a world in which traditional, pre-modern, sources of value and meaning are no longer given for human beings.
This article is intended to highlight passages in Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus that I think are key to understanding the points Camus is making. The aim in doing this is to help orient readers to the ideas I discuss in the Philosophy of Life Newsletter.
The ancient myth that Camus takes as his illustration of the absurd is the tale in which Sisyphus is punished by the gods for cheating death. His punishment is to roll a heavy stone up a hill, to watch as it rolls back down, and then to repeat the same action incessantly.
Here is Camus' telling of the myth:
THE GODS had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. Ægina, the daughter of Æsopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on condition that Æsopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains.
Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror. It is said also that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife’s love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, led him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him. (Camus, 2018, p. 84)
Describing the Absurd
Before returning to Camus' interpretation of the myth, we'll review some of his remarks on the absurd and its place in modern human life.
Generally speaking, to describe something as "absurd" is to point to its being in some way ridiculous, stupid, unreasonable, or silly. This is also broadly what is going on in moments at which human life is experienced as absurd. It would be reasonable to think that past human beings did not have this experience in the same way that those modern humans do who are moved by Camus' discussion. Whereas in the past, the universe and human life was widely experienced as filled with meaning and divinely given order, the "disenchantment" of the world that began with the dawn of modernity raises fundamental questions about meaning and purpose.
In the The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus describes the feeling of the absurd as a feeling of being an alien in the world:
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. (Camus, 2018, p. 11)
Next, Camus points out, the world is not absurd in itself. Rather, absurdity arises because of the human being's relation to the world. He writes:
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. This is all I can discern clearly in this measureless universe where my adventure takes place. (Camus, 2018, p. 21)
It is the human being's trying to make sense of the world, using reason, that creates the sense of alienation and the feeling of absurdity. Non-human organisms do not struggle with absurdity. As Camus claims, "if I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world" (Camus, 2018, p. 39).
The Modern World and the Absurd
Camus emphasizes that the experience of the absurd arises in unique ways for people living in the modern world. Human beings living in prior ages widely viewed the universe and human existence as having inherent, externally given meaning. We would not expect them to have experienced the world as alien and irrational in anything like the modern way. In the modern world, by contrast, many people ask whether the world has any inherent meaning. For them, unlike prior human beings, this is very much an open question.
New questions about meaning are raised in the modern world, and some of the routine, mechanized aspects of modern life are especially prone to giving rise to feelings of meaninglessness and absurdity. Camus writes about the "why" that arises for many people in the course of engaging in their daily routines:
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. (Camus, 2018, p. 15)
Camus on Kierkegaard
Camus discusses the ideas of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in relation to the absurd. Kierkegaard recognized the experience of the absurd but sought to explain it in the context of his Christian faith. The Kierkegaardian Christian begins with a certain despair over the meaning of existence and the existence of God, and then organizes their subjectivity around a "leap of faith" in which paradox and faith are seen as going hand-in-hand. Camus describes this strategy:
For [Kierkegaard] ... antinomy and paradox become criteria of the religious. Thus, the very thing that led to despair of the meaning and depth of this life now gives it its truth and its clarity....This effect of the “leap” is odd, but must not surprise us any longer. He makes of the absurd the criterion of the other world, whereas it is simply a residue of the experience of this world. “In his failure,” says Kierkegaard, “the believer finds his triumph. (Camus, 2018, pp. 30-31)
According to Camus, approaches like Kierkegaard's are lacking. They are ways of escaping the full force of the absurd by formulating a religious explanation that makes sense of everything.
Revolt and the Absurd
Camus argues that the appropriate response is to accept the absurd. He describes doing this as a sort of "revolt":
[t]hat revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it That revolt gives life its value. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores its majesty to that life. (Camus, 2018, p. 40).
Camus claims that the problem is not one of finding out whether or not life has to have meaning in order to be lived. Instead, he claims, life "will be lived all the better if it has no meaning" (Camus, 2018, p. 40).
He continues:
Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness. Negating one of the terms of the opposition on which he lives amounts to escaping it. To abolish conscious revolt is to elude the problem. The theme of permanent revolution is thus carried into individual experience. Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it. (Camus, 2018, p. 40).
The human being who has accepted the absurd can "accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation” (Camus, 2018, p. 44).
Camus' Interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus
This background on Camus' views about the absurd helps us understand his interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus. Camus considers what it is like for Sisyphus as he descends the mountain, having just finished rolling the rock up. As he descends, he knows that he will have to do the same thing once again when he reaches the bottom. This descent, according to Camus, is his "hour of consciousness" (Camus, 2018, p. 85).
Camus claims that the descent will sometimes occur in sorrow, but it can also be joyful - just as today's absurd human being can find joy in existence:
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. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward 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. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling. (Camus, 2018, p. 87).
Camus finds in Sisyphus' struggle - and likewise in the struggle of the modern human being - the possibility of the embrace of a universe "without a master" (Camus, 2018, p. 87). In both cases, Camus argues, in spite of the absurdity, it is possible to feel in some sense "that all is well" (Camus, 2018, p. 87).
Reference
Camus, A. (2018). The myth of Sisyphus. New York, NY: Vintage Books.