Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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henry quirk
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

Post by henry quirk »

What's your take on how somebody who rolls a rock up a hill for all of eternity can be regarded as "happy."

He's a dumbass.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:15 pm The question comes up why sisyphus should be happy. Seems obvious enough so I answer the question.
But did you answer it knowledgeably, Nick? Have you read Sisyphus, or were you just guessing?

I suspect it has to be the latter; because you'll find that neither Collectivism nor Simone Ramone have anything to do with his answer.

Sorry, dude...you were just WAAY off topic.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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henry quirk wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:22 pm What's your take on how somebody who rolls a rock up a hill for all of eternity can be regarded as "happy."

He's a dumbass.
Heh. Plausibly.

Camus didn't think it worked out that way, though. He thought that there were two undeniable, irrefutable "facts" that had to be believed.
  • First, that there was no meaning to life.
  • Second, that human life is unbearable in the absence of meaning.
He thought that any perspective that lets go of one of these "facts" had stopped being realistic, and had, in fact, committed what he called "intellectual suicide."

These two "facts," he said, are what is bundled into the claim that "life is absurd." "Absurd" doesn't mean just "funny," but rather suffused with irony and tragedy...both ridiculous and agonizing, like a guy having to roll a rock up a hill, while still being a conscious person.

How sad. How stupid. How pointless. How risible and ridiculous. How insufferable. And how inescapable. :shock:

That's what Camus thought life was like. We're born without our say so, live for a few short and painful years filled with both longing and disappointment, then we die without our say so, and it all adds up to nothing. In itself, it's as absurd as if we were just condemned to be rolling a rock up a hill.

But he went on to argue that Sisyphus could become "the absurd hero" (his wording) by accepting that that was how life was, and still saying, "I defy the gods, and will roll my rock willingly, rather than at their command. I may not be able to escape, but I will not let them be my reason for rolling, and there's nothing they can do about that. Thus, if I change my own reason for action, even if the action can't change, I can make the rock they've put on me into 'my rock,' my thing, my choice."

That, it seems to me, is his proposed solution. If anybody thinks I've misread Camus on that, or if anybody has comments on the solution he proposes, I'm open.
Last edited by Immanuel Can on Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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henry quirk
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:50 pm
henry quirk wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:22 pm What's your take on how somebody who rolls a rock up a hill for all of eternity can be regarded as "happy."

He's a dumbass.
Heh. Plausibly.

Camus didn't think it worked out that way, though. He thought that there were two undeniable, irrefutable "facts" that had to be believed.
  • First, that there was no meaning to life.
  • Second, that human life is unbearable in the absence of meaning.
He thought that any perspective that lets go of one of these "facts" had stopped being realistic, and had, in fact, what he called "intellectual suicide."

These two "facts," he said, are what is bundled into the claim that "life is absurd." "Absurd" doesn't mean just "funny," but rather suffused with irony and tragedy...both ridiculous and agonizing, like a guy having to roll a rock up a hill, while still being a conscious person.

How sad. How stupid. How pointless. How risible and ridiculous. How insufferable. And how inescapable. :shock:

That's what Camus thought life was like. We're born without our say so, live for a few short and painful years filled with both longing and disappointment, then we die without our say so, and it all adds up to nothing. In itself, it's as absurd as if we were just condemned to be rolling a rock up a hill.

But he went on to argue that Sisyphus could become "the absurd hero" (his wording) by accepting that that was how life was, and still saying, "I defy the gods, and will roll my rock willingly, rather than at their command. I may not be able to escape, but I will not let them be my reason for rolling, and there's nothing they can do about that. Thus, if I change my own reason for action, even if the action can't change, I can make the rock they've put on me into 'my rock,' my thing, my choice."

That, it seems to me, is his proposed solution. If anybody thinks I've misread Camus on that, or if anybody has comments on the solution he proposes, I'm open.
I've read Al: he's a dumbass too.
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:37 pm
Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:15 pm The question comes up why sisyphus should be happy. Seems obvious enough so I answer the question.
But did you answer it knowledgeably, Nick? Have you read Sisyphus, or were you just guessing?

I suspect it has to be the latter; because you'll find that neither Collectivism nor Simone Ramone have anything to do with his answer.

Sorry, dude...you were just WAAY off topic.
You have just revealed your prejudicial ignorance. No conception of why the collective takes the place of Man's natural awareness to its source. So what else is new?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:11 pm No conception of why the collective...
Oooooff topic, Nick. This ain't the "collectivist" thread.
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:11 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:37 pm
Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:15 pm The question comes up why sisyphus should be happy. Seems obvious enough so I answer the question.
But did you answer it knowledgeably, Nick? Have you read Sisyphus, or were you just guessing?

I suspect it has to be the latter; because you'll find that neither Collectivism nor Simone Ramone have anything to do with his answer.

Sorry, dude...you were just WAAY off topic.
You have just revealed your prejudicial ignorance. No conception of why the collective takes the place of Man's natural awareness to its source. So what else is new?
What you call knowedgable is what agrees with you. Your narrow minded intellectual snobbishness is not to be questioned. However for all those familiar with Socratic irony they know that the purpose isn't to sleep through it but to acquire the need to see it for what it is.

This will be over your head but this exerpt explains the intent of Socratic irony and its relation to sisyphus being happy as opposed to awakening.
One of Socrates’ aims (in using irony) was to awaken men from the sleep of moral and intellectual complacency. Irony is used to free men from the dominance of general or abstract conceptions which appeared to convey knowledge, but which actually cloaked ignorance. The ironic standpoint involves an affirmation of the existing subject, the individual who refuses to yield to conventional opinion, who questions ostensible ‘ knowledge,’ who refuses to be explained away by a speculative dialectic. An ironist such as Socrates suggests that most of man’s knowledge is not truly knowledge at all, but the presumption to knowledge. The effect of Socrates’ inquiries is negative and is intended to be so. The destruction of comfortable certainty, Socrates seemed to believe, would lead individuals to self-conscious reflection, to an awareness of what they do not know, to what they are not. In this regard, Kierkegaard maintains that Socrates . . . occupied himself with the problem , w hat it means to be a m an.. . Socrates doubted whether we are men at birth; one does not so easily get the chance to becom e a m an or to know what it is to be a man. F or the ideality in being a m an was what concerned Socrates, and what he sou gh t.2 Irony is in the service of a philosophical self-consciousness, a philosophical anthropology. Kierkegaard’s own irony served to ‘ mask ’ his deep, personal commitment to Christianity. If Socrates asked, how can I become a man, Kierkegaard asked, how can I become a Christian? In the Concept of Irony Kierkegaard emphasizes the negativity of irony insofar as any knowledge claim is subject to the critical power of the ironic standpoint. Irony is the antithesis of the actual and is oriented in the direction of the ideal infinity of the possible.................
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:37 pm
Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:11 pm No conception of why the collective...
Oooooff topic, Nick. This ain't the "collectivist" thread.

If your mind would just open for a moment you would understand why the collective is the same as sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill following universal laws. It is what we do. The collective is Sisyphus
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:49 pm ...the collective is the same as sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill..
Super-lame, Nick.

No relevance at all. You don't even know the book, obviously.
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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Sisyphus had to roll the rock up the hill as punishment from the gods so doing it because he convinced himself he wanted to makes no sense
For had he the freedom to stop rolling the rock up the hill then he would have stopped doing so immediately so he is not actually free at all
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

Post by Immanuel Can »

surreptitious57 wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:51 pm Sisyphus had to roll the rock up the hill as punishment from the gods so doing it because he convinced himself he wanted to makes no sense
I have to agree.

It's just Fatalism with a nice shine on top.
For had he the freedom to stop rolling the rock up the hill then he would have stopped doing so immediately so he is not actually free at all
Yeah, I think that too. But because the Existentialists -- at least the modern ones -- are so into individual, existential choice, they suppose that the Fatalism won't matter if we just imagine things a different way. Of course, they will.

"You must imagine Sisyphus happy," writes Camus. I think he really means, "You must imagine Sisyphus deluded."
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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There is a world of difference between accepting reality as it is and thinking that every imposition arises out of personal free will
It cannot be free will if you have zero choice over the situation you are in as that is like a solipsist version of Stockholm Syndrome

You accept the situation you are in is not of your making without then deluding yourself into thinking that you have true freedom
Or else everything is true freedom and so there is no way of separating actual freedom from the pseudo freedom you think is real
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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surreptitious57 wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:39 pm Stockholm Syndrome
Good analogy.
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henry quirk
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

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As I say elsewhere: the only existentialist I pay attention to, the only one worth payin' attention to, is Bugs 🐰.

You won't find him pushin' some stone around, like a dung beetle, for eternity.

That kinda pointless shit, that's for life's Fudds.
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Re: Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

Post by Nick_A »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:50 pm
Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:49 pm ...the collective is the same as sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill..
Super-lame, Nick.

No relevance at all. You don't even know the book, obviously.
You probably believe Plato's republic is about a city rather than about a person's being. A myth can only appeal to the person reading it. Not everyone is satisfied with the superficial. Most are content to follow the crowd and their personalities obediently follow the rock and societies continue turning in circles pushing the rock up the hill as it again falls down . Yet the minority you dislike become capable of experiencing the world with both their higher and lower parts. They grow from the contradiction rather than being repulsed by it and find the way out by allowing the Spirit to hep in reconciling the "middle" Its not your thing so stick with mindless attacks.
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