The Myth Of Sisyphus

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.“

I first came across the closing sentence of French philosopher Albert Camus’ book-length essay, The Myth Of Sisyphus, when I was in college. (It was that kind of college and I was that kind of student.)

I don’t think I actually read the book (I was that kind of student, too), but the sentence stuck in my mind because it was so absurd. Really? One must imagine Sisyphus happy? One must imagine Sisyphus happy? One must imagine Sisyphus happy? It made no sense at all, to imagine a man doomed for eternity to engage in a brutal and fruitless task, only to have all his work undone and be forced to start over each time he’s nearly completed it.

Yet the sentence remained stuck in my head and all these decades later I was lucky enough to have the time and energy and interest, so I finally read The Myth Of Sisyphus this month.

I still don’t understand it.

But, and I think Camus would agree, that’s okay. Perhaps in the end, remaining faithful to the task, rather than actually accomplishing it, is the more important point.

One reason I don’t understand it is the first third or so of the book is Camus fencing spiritedly with existential philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Lev Shestov, Soren Kierkegaard, and Edmund Husserl. I’ve barely heard of most of them, let alone read their writings, so I can’t even say whether Camus presents their arguments accurately, let alone whether he “wins” the bouts. But it really did feel like the 29 year-old Camus was single-handedly taking on a pan-European team of existentialists and, if not winning, at the very least thoroughly enjoying the competition.

Camus is writing in 1942, after the Fall of France and at the peak of fascist hegemony across Europe. Though he doesn’t refer to the war (despite being active in the Free French resistance) or the Holocaust (though he lived next to the Alpine village of Le-Chambon which undertook the largest sustained rescue of European Jews throughout WW II), it is the setting of and impetus for Camus’ thinking and writing.

How can God (an all-good, all-powerful God) exist in such a world? (Answer: He can’t.) Without God, the world is absurd so why not just commit suicide? (I’ll tell you, says Camus.)

This is the central question Camus is wrestling with: why go on living when the life is absurd, when one’s efforts are puny and futile, when the forces of evil are so powerfully arrayed?

Having exiled himself from religious stories and images (and the hope they can offer; indeed, in part because of the hope they can offer because there is no room for hope in this absurd world), Camus then casts about for examples of heroes/role models for the man seeking to live in full recognition of the world’s absurdity.

Among the archetypes he considers are Don Juan, The Actor, and The Conqueror. Thought it’s not apparent from the text, these are again examples drawn closely from Camus’ own life and experience. (Someone else is going to have to analyze the interplay of Camus’ personal life and its effect on his philosophical musings and conclusions…and probably already has.) Though married, he had already embarked on a string of extramarital infidelities, including at least one longstanding and serious affair, that would continue the rest of his short (dead in a car crash at 46) life. He wrote prolifically for the theater, publishing more plays than novels. And he was surrounded by conquerors, men of action (whether moral or not) entering fully into their work and seeking to shape the world.

Camus ends finally with Greek mythology and Sisyphus. In Sisyphus he finds “the absurd man”—a man who recognizes the absurdity and hopelessness of the world, and his place in it. And in Sisyphus’ radical acceptance of his situation, Camus finds liberation and happiness. “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” (p. 123)

The Myth Of Sisyphus is a book written in and for hard times: times in many ways distant and different from our own, times in some ways forebodingly similar. It’s not an easy read (both for reasons Camus intended and for reasons he couldn’t have imagined), but it’s a useful one if you’re looking for fortification against the swirling troubles that surround us.