“The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus
This deeply philosophical book is a 1942 essay that begins from a single question: is life worth living, considering that it has no inherent meaning? It was written in the midst of World War 2, when death and despair were part of daily life.
Camus approaches the question from the darkest possible angle: suicide. As he puts it, “The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd.” Here, “the absurd” means the clash between the human need for meaning and a universe that offers none.
His answer is that even without belief in God, suicide is not legitimate. Because the absurd exists only in the confrontation between human longing and a silent world, and suicide ends that confrontation rather than facing it. For Camus, suicide is an escape, much like the leap of faith, and the better response is to keep living in full awareness of the absurd.
Camus tests this thesis against the major thinkers who confronted the absurd, particularly Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Shestov, whom he criticizes for escaping it through a leap of faith. He also draws on Dostoevsky’s characters and closes with an appendix on Kafka, whose work he reads as a perfect portrait of the absurd that ultimately turns toward hope.
And his own answer is revolt: To keep living with the absurd, without hope of resolving it and without ever resigning to it.
This attitude is perfectly captured in Camus’ reading of the myth of Sisyphus. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a mountain for eternity, only to watch it fall every time. However, Camus argues that when Sisyphus walks back down the mountain to start over, knowing full well his tragic and endless fate, this lucid awareness of his situation is where Sisyphus triumphs. Because, by being conscious of his fate and still doing his meaningless task with scorn rather than hope, the punishment loses its power over him and instead Sisyphus owns his punishment.
This leads to Camus’ famous conclusion: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Now, it is tempting to conclude that the struggle itself becomes the meaning, but Camus actually rejects this. His point is that the struggle needs no meaning to be enough: lucidly living with the absurd, without hope or resentment, is itself the source of Sisyphus’s happiness.
This philosophical foundation would later become the basis of Camus’ subsequent absurdist novels. A foundation where he argues that without a higher meaning we are free from imposed purposes, whether from society, religion, or fate. The goal then becomes living as fully as possible, with lucid freedom, rather than getting lost in the search for meaning.
I must admit, this is not an easy book to read, despite being only 142 pages long (I had just finished a 1100+ page novel without any problem). It can feel like sorting through a stack of scrap notes: part argument, part literary criticism, part lyrical set piece, with the myth itself reduced to a short coda near the end. It is an incredibly dense book of big philosophical pondering, without a conventional structure. Yet somehow, the looseness is part of its power. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
