Just Finished Reading: The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

This was a rather strange book though in general easier to read that my previous work by this author (The Rebel). Written and published during the Occupation, Camus attempts to answer the question of why we don’t choose to kill ourselves – basically asking the question of what makes life worth living. Typically of Camus, and maybe French philosophy in general, he doesn’t tackle the question head on but sidles up to it from an oblique but interesting angle by putting forward the idea of Absurdity.

As far as I can work out so far, Camus believes that human life is patently absurd in that we fully expect the world to be rational when obviously it isn’t – yet we still act as if it is. We expect things to make sense, for effect to follow cause, for history to flow in a certain direction, for things to progress and so on. None of this, according to Camus, is true. In another sense of the meaning of absurdity, Camus relates how the universe is silent to our questions basically because it is made out of dead matter which we imbue with a purpose it does not possess. Because we basically impose our meaning(s) on a meaningless universe the inevitable result is an absurd situation. In order to cope with this Camus proposes that individuals strong enough to deal with the consequences attempt to see things as they really are – to become lucid. Once lucidity is achieved (on a semi-regular basis) the individual who has accomplished this state becomes free from many of the constraints that bind other people to the pervasive illusions surrounding them allowing him to move beyond many of the disappointments that cause so much pain and fear.

I’m still wrapping my head around his ideas and think that I’m slowly working them out. Both Sisyphus and Rebel have been an instrumental foundation in the dissertation I’m working on and I think the idea of absurdity and lucidity have a great deal of mileage in them. If I remember correctly though, Camus says that the tension created by the acknowledgment of the divergence between our beliefs about the world and the reality should be maintained. I actually thought that once the world was fully accepted for what it is – essentially dead and meaningless – then the tension would no longer exist and the person holding that idea would be truly free. It’s something I’ll have to work on further. Of course holding this idea would be a heroic thing to do – what I think Camus is proposing is facing the universe naked without the comfort of arbitrary and contingent beliefs protecting us from raw reality. This is, as you might expect, far from easy (if achievable at all). It did actually read in places like some Buddhist books I’ve read in the past – the idea that giving up and letting go will be inevitably liberating. Or maybe, as I sometimes do, I’m reading too much into it.

Despite its strangeness, or more likely because of it, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Camus is often a beautiful author and I found myself on more that one occasion wishing that I could write that well. This talent probably comes from his other literary ventures which must bleed into his more philosophical works – indeed from what I can tell there is no great barrier between his two work strands. If you get the opportunity to read Camus I’d encourage you to do so. He can be hard work at times but he has a valuable insight into the human condition that challenges many of our deeply held and seemingly obvious conceptions of the world. Go on, expand your mind. When it bounces back it’ll never be quite the same again.