Sisyphus

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

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Dinesh ^club

. . . We get up, commute, work, eat, work, commute, sleep. But occasionally a breakdown occurs, a Chandos-like moment en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_Chandos_Letter in which a beat is skipped and the question of purpose arises. At such moments, we experience ‘weariness tinged with amazement’, as we confront the most basic question of all: why exactly do we go on living?

In a way, this is Campus’ variant on Heidegger’s question of Being. Heidegger thought the questionable nature of existence looms up when a hammer breaks: Camus thought similarly basic collapses in everyday projects allow to ask the biggest question in life. Also like Heidegger, he thought the answer took the form of a decision rather than a statement: for Camus, we must decide whether to give up or keep going. If we keep going, it must be on the basis of accepting that there is no ultimate meaning to what we do. Camus concludes his book with Sisyphus resuming his endless task while resigning himself to its absurdity. This: “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.’ ~ Page 150

3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

We seem to be like Sisyphus who, in Greek mythology, was condemned by the gods to pointlessness. His punishment was an endless cycle of rolling a rock to the top of a hill, watching it roll back down, and then having to roll it once again to the top. Many will argue that Sisyphus has it worse because his futile work was so monotonous and because it was for eternity, whereas ours is at least somewhat varied and ends with (individual and collective) extinction. Nevertheless, the apparent absence of any point to our lives suggests to some that our strivings are Sisyphean. ~ Page 15

. . . . Richard Taylor (American philosopher) imagines a variant on the story of Sisyphus, in which the gods “waxed perversely mercifully by implanting in him a strange and irrational impulse . . . to roll stones.” If we accept a subjectivist account of meaning, we would have to accept that, under these circumstances, Sisyphus’s life would have become meaningful merely because he would then find his life of stone-rolling immensely meaningful. Yet many of us think that although it would be a satisfying life, it would also be a meaningless one. Similarly, it seems odd to think that lives devoted to watching soap operas, counting hairs on people’s heads, . . . would be meaningful even if they were felt to be meaningful by the person who lived them. ~ Page 25

3 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passion as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hated of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measure by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

it is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stone is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crown his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. ~ Page 120 Excerpt: "Myth of Sisyphus" Author: Albert Camus

3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

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 his 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 it 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, is that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under this 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. ~Page 123 "Myth of Sisyphus" Author: Albert Camus

3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in its forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. ~ Page 123 -Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus

3 years ago. Edited 3 weeks ago.

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