By making his rock “his thing” (123), Sisyphus finds joy in being. Though it may seem odd, Camus indicates that Sisyphus is happy. His passion, freedom, and revolt, however, make him stronger than the punishment intended to crush him.
Sisyphus definition full#
Sisyphus is aware of the full extent of his punishment: he is fully conscious of the fate imposed on him by the gods and the utter futility of his existence.
Sisyphus definition free#
This “choosing to live” is a matter of consciousness, for through his attitude and outlook, Sisyphus can free himself from his punishment and triumph over his situation without being able to change it. Sisyphus represents the “absurd hero” because he chooses to live in the face of absurdity. Yet, for Camus, Sisyphus is not to be pitied. Camus observes that a person’s life can become, essentially, a mundane routine: “Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday according to the same rhythm…” (12-13). In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to the pointless task of rolling a large rock up a mountain, only to watch the rock roll back down, and to repeat the task for eternity.Īs a life filled entirely of mundane and trivial labor, Sisyphus’s existence is meant to illustrate the futility (and absurdity) we confront in our own lives. Absurdity and Happiness: The Myth of Sisyphus As we’ll see, in place of the false hope of religiosity, Camus advises a vivid awareness of the absurd and a form of revolt. Camus opposes this form of escapism, claiming that existentialists “deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them” (24).Ĭamus rejects appeals to the transcendent for him, the absurd – the “divorce” between us and the world – represents the inescapable human condition. He thereby proposes that we take “a leap of faith,” essentially arguing that belief in God will ultimately provide one’s life with meaning. These thinkers, Camus claims, contradict themselves by presupposing that life is absurd in some way, but proposing a solution to the absurd (so that life isn’t really absurd after all).įor example, Kierkegaard sees life as profoundly absurd, due to its central lack of meaning. The Myth of Sisyphus is primarily a critique of existentialism, specifically the attempts by thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Heidegger to overcome the absurd by appealing to God or the transcendent.
Sisyphus definition how to#
Having diagnosed the essential human problem, Camus shifts his interest to prognosis, determining whether and how to live in the face of the absurd.
As an epistemological thesis, the absurd highlights our desire to understand and the fundamental limits of our knowledge. As a metaphysical thesis, the absurd is a confrontation between the human mind and an indifferent universe: what exists is a “mind that desires and the world that disappoints” (50). We just do not, and according to Camus, we cannot understand what we want to understand.Ĭamus’s doctrine of the absurd then has both metaphysical and epistemological aspects.
We also want to understand why bad things happen to good people, why good things happen to bad people, why we’re here, where we’re going, and what it all means.Ĭoncerning how things actually are, however, evil goes unpunished, good deeds often are not rewarded, good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, and we don’t understand any of it. This though is not what Camus means by “absurd.” For Camus, the absurd originates from a combination of two things: the way we want the world to be and the way the world actually is.Ībout how we want the world to be, it just seems to be a part of human nature that we have a sense of justice and fairness, and so we want the world to be just and fair: we want evil punished and virtue rewarded. There are many things we might naturally call absurd: a rude joke, an outrageous statement, or the price of a pair of designer jeans.
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