Sisyphus is condemned in Greek mythology to eternally roll a large boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down when he reaches the top. Camus suggests this is a fitting punishment that represents the absurdity of humanity's endless and futile pursuit of meaning and reason in a world devoid of both. He argues living with acceptance of life's absurdity means revolting against it through passionate embrace of life, rather than escaping through suicide or faith. Sisyphus comes to represent the absurd man who defiantly continues his task despite its meaninglessness.
Sisyphus is condemned in Greek mythology to eternally roll a large boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down when he reaches the top. Camus suggests this is a fitting punishment that represents the absurdity of humanity's endless and futile pursuit of meaning and reason in a world devoid of both. He argues living with acceptance of life's absurdity means revolting against it through passionate embrace of life, rather than escaping through suicide or faith. Sisyphus comes to represent the absurd man who defiantly continues his task despite its meaninglessness.
Sisyphus is condemned in Greek mythology to eternally roll a large boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down when he reaches the top. Camus suggests this is a fitting punishment that represents the absurdity of humanity's endless and futile pursuit of meaning and reason in a world devoid of both. He argues living with acceptance of life's absurdity means revolting against it through passionate embrace of life, rather than escaping through suicide or faith. Sisyphus comes to represent the absurd man who defiantly continues his task despite its meaninglessness.
Sisyphus is condemned in Greek mythology to eternally roll a large boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down when he reaches the top. Camus suggests this is a fitting punishment that represents the absurdity of humanity's endless and futile pursuit of meaning and reason in a world devoid of both. He argues living with acceptance of life's absurdity means revolting against it through passionate embrace of life, rather than escaping through suicide or faith. Sisyphus comes to represent the absurd man who defiantly continues his task despite its meaninglessness.
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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
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?
Pedagogical Suicide, Philosophy of Nihilism, Absurdity and Existentialism in Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and Its Impact On Post-Independence Odia Literature