THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

SISYPHUS AND HIS EVER-LASTING

PUNISHMENT
Sisyphus is probably more famous for his punishment in
the underworld than for what he did in his life. According to the
Greek myth, Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock up to the top of
a mountain, only to have the rock roll back down to the bottom
every time he reaches the top. The gods were wise, Camus
suggests, in perceiving that an eternity of futile labor is a hideous
punishment.
SISYPHUS AND HIS EVER-LASTING
PUNISHMENT
According to one story, Zeus carried off Aegina, a mortal
woman who was the daughter of Asopus. Sisyphus witnessed
this kidnapping in his home city of Corinth. Sisyphus agreed to
inform Asopus as to who had kidnapped Aegina if Asopus would
give the citadel at Corinth a fresh-water spring. In making this
deal and bearing witness against Zeus, Sisyphus earned the
wrath of the gods while earning earthly wealth and happiness for
himself and his people.
SISYPHUS AND HIS EVER-LASTING
PUNISHMENT
Another story tells how Sisyphus enchained the spirit of
Death, so that during Death's imprisonment, no human being
died. Naturally, when the gods freed Death, his first victim was
Sisyphus. It is also said that Sisyphus told his wife not to offer
any of the traditional burial rites when he died. When he arrived
in the underworld, he complained to Hades that his wife had not
observed these rites and was granted permission to return to
earth to chastise her. Once granted this second lease on life,
Sisyphus refused to return to the underworld, and lived to a ripe
old age before returning to the underworld a second time to
endure his eternal punishment.
The
Myth
of
Sisyphus
Andiano | Balayo | Go
Lemoncito | Sanchez
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALBERT CAMUS

Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus around the same time

he wrote his first novel, The Stranger, at the beginning of World
War II. Camus was working for the French Resistance in Paris at
this time, far from his native Algeria. While it is never wise to
reduce ideas to their autobiographical background, the
circumstances in which this essay was written can help us
understand its tone. The metaphor of exile that Camus uses to
describe the human predicament and the sense that life is a
meaningless and futile struggle both make a great deal of sense
coming from a man, far from his home, who was struggling
against a seemingly omnipotent and senselessly brutal regime
ALBERT CAMUS

Albert Camus (1913–1960) is not a philosopher so much as

a novelist with a strong philosophical bent. He is most famous for
his novels of ideas, such as The Stranger and The Plague, both
of which are set in the arid landscape of his native Algeria
Camus studied philosophy at the University of Algiers,
which brought him into contact with two of the major branches of
twentieth century philosophy: existentialism and phenomenology.
ALBERT CAMUS

Camus is particularly interested in religious existentialists,

such as Kierkegaard (though such a label is not entirely fair to
Kierkegard), who conclude that there is no meaning to be found
in human experience, and that this necessitates a "leap of faith"
that places an irrational and blind faith in God.
Like existentialism, phenomenology influenced Camus by
its effort to construct a worldview that does not assume that there
is some sort of rational structure to the universe that the human
mind can apprehend.
What is Absurdism?
Absurdism

Absurdism is a philosophical perspective which holds that

the efforts of humanity to find meaning or rational explanation in
the universe ultimately fail (and, hence, are absurd) because no
such meaning exists, at least to human beings. The word absurd
in this context does not mean “logically impossible,” but rather
“humanly impossible.”
“There is but one truly serious philosophical
problem and that is suicide.”
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide

If we judge the importance of a philosophical problem by

the consequences it entails, the problem of the meaning of life is
certainly the most important.
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide

Two Reasons Why People Commit Suicide:

• Someone who judges that life is not worth living
• Someone who feels that they have found meaning to life may
be inclined to die or kill to defend that meaning
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide

Suicide amounts to the confession that life is not worth

living. He links this confession to what he calls the “feeling of
absurdity”.
The feeling of absurdity is closely linked to the feeling that
life is meaningless.
It is also associated with the feeling of exile, depriving us
from the homelike comfort of a meaningful existence.
 DOES THE IDEA THAT LIFE IS
MEANINGLESS NECESSARILY IMPLY
THAT LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING?
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide

Solution to the absurd:

• Suicide
• Leap of Faith
• Acceptance
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide

Face to face with the meaninglessness of existence, what

keeps us from suicide?
• Our instinct for life is much stronger than our reason for suicide.
• We instinctively avoid facing the full consequences of the meaningless
nature of life, through the act of eluding.
“It is difficult to describe the feeling of
absurdity”
Absurd
Walls
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd walls

• A moment of awakening in the depths of weariness with routine

• A moment of awareness of ourselves as drift wood on the river
of time
• When we see objects divested of the meaning and purpose that
we give them
• When we see a dead body and realize that this is our inevitable,
cold, and senseless end
Philosophical
Suicide
An Absurd Reasoning: Philosophical Suicide

Camus identifies the absurd in the confrontation between

our desire for clarity and our understanding of the world’s
irrationality. Neither the world nor the human mind is absurd, but
rather it is the confrontation between the two.
It is a contradiction that cannot be reconciled, and any
attempt to reconcile this contradiction is simply an attempt to
escape from it.
An Absurd Reasoning: Philosophical Suicide

Absurdity is derived from the comparison or the

juxtaposition of two incompatible things or ideas.
We are faced on one hand with man, who wants to find the
reason and unity of the universe, and on the other hand with the
universe, that provides him with nothing but mute and
meaningless phenomena.
An Absurd Reasoning: Philosophical Suicide

Existential Philosophers generally try to evade this confrontation

with the absurd.
• Jaspers
• Chestov
• Keikegaard
• Husserl
An Absurd Reasoning: Philosophical Suicide

Each one of them tries somehow to resolve the conflict between

human reason and an irrational universe in one way or another.
Jaspers, Chestov, and Kierkegaard, all in their own way, deny
human reason and fully embrace an irrational universe,
associating that with God. Husserl tries to deny the irrationality of
the universe by finding reason in the phenomena of direct
experience
Absurd
Freedom
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Freedom

The absurd man demands certainty above all else, and

recognizes that he can only be certain of the absurd. The absurd
is this conflict created between human reason and an
unreasonable universe, and it exists only so long as one is
consciously aware of it.
In order to cling to the absurd, then, the absurd man must
maintain conscious awareness of this conflict within him without
trying to overcome it.
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Freedom

Camus identifies three consequences of trying to live with the

absurd:
• Revolt
• Freedom
• Passion
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Freedom

Camus firmly counters the notion that a proper acceptance

of the absurd entails suicide. On the contrary, he suggests,
accepting the absurd is a matter of living life to its fullest,
remaining aware that we are reasonable human beings
condemned to live a short time in an unreasonable world and
then to die.
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Freedom

We generally live with the idea of freedom—that we are

free to make our own decisions and to define ourselves by our
actions. With this idea of freedom comes the idea that we can
give our lives direction, and then aim toward certain goals. In
doing so, however, we confine ourselves to living toward certain
goals—to playing out a certain role.
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Freedom

In abandoning the idea of there being any meaning to life,

the absurd man also abandons any notion of values. If there is no
meaning or purpose to what we do, there is no reason for doing
one thing rather than another. That being the case, we can apply
no standard of quality to our experiences.
HOW DOES SISYPHUS RELATE TO
ABSURDISM?