Camus, Albert, & O'brien, Justin. (1991). The myth of Sisyphus and other essays (1st Vintage international ed.). New York: Vintage Books.
Camus starts out: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” (3). “Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. On the contrary, we are concerned here, at the outset, with the relationship between individual thought and suicide” (4). “…killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it” (5). “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 (6). “Reflection on suicide gives me an opportunity to raise the only problem to interest me: is there a logic to the point of death? I cannot know unless I pursue, without reckless passion, in the sole light of evidence, the reasoning of which I am here suggesting that source. This is what I call an absurd reasoning” (9).
The absurdity of life is that there is nothing else. “This hearth within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction” (19). Camus rejects the logic of the affirmation of the existence of God. He doesn’t reject the affirmation of God (42). “What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny, what I cannot reject—this is what counts” (51). “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it” (51).
“Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion” (64). “The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live” (65).
The Absurd Man (Don Juan, Actor, Conqueror): “The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. ‘Everything is permitted’ does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions” (67). Don Juan goes out and woos women. He does not do this for some future gain or punishment, but for pleasure now. “I see Don Juan in a cell of one of those Spanish monasteries lost on a hilltop. And if he contemplates anything at all, it is not the ghosts of past loves, but perhaps, through a narrow slit in the sun-baked wall, some silent Spanish plain, a noble, soulless land in which he recognizes himself. Yes, it is on this melancholy and radiant image that the curtain must be rung down. The ultimate end, awaited but never desired, the ultimate end is negligible” (77). The actor mimes the absurd, he is not content with living his own absurdity, but must embody the absurdity of another. The conqueror understands that man is the end of man’s own existence and that there is nothing else. He would love to transcend the whole of the world but he knows that this is impossible.
“Let me repeat that these images do not propose moral codes and involve no judgments: they are sketches. They merely represent a style of life. The lover, the actor, or the adventurer plays the absurd. But equally well, if he wishes, the chaste man, the civil servant, or the president of the Republic” (90).
Camus then examines artistic creation. “Creation is the great mime” (94). He looks at the suicide of Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, who doubts that God exists, but kills himself to prove that ‘he will not be had’ (105). Then there is ephemeral creation, of which I will say nothing.
He ends with an examination of the myth of Sisyphus. “They [the gods] had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor” (119).
Sisyphus climbs the hill pushing the rock. It is brutal, difficult work. The rock falls. “It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!...That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness…He is stronger than his rock.,” and, “The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd…Sisyphus, the proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious…There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” (121).
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy” (123).
