The Myth of Sisyphus

Introduction

The Myth of Sisyphus (French: Le Mythe de Sisyphe) is the philosophical essay by Albert Camus published in October 1942 by Gallimard in Paris. The essay is Camus's first systematic articulation of the analysis of the absurd — the gap between the human craving for meaning and the universe's silence on whether life has any — and of the ethic of lucid revolt that constitutes the proper response to the absurd condition.

The book opens with one of the most-quoted opening lines in twentieth-century philosophy: Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux: c'est le suicide (There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide). The development of the argument turns on the question of whether the recognition of the absurd condition warrants suicide (Camus's answer: no), leap into religious or philosophical faith (Camus's answer: also no), or the third option of lucid revolt — the affirmation of life in the face of the absurd condition without pretense that the absurd is not there (Camus's answer: yes).

The essay is short (about 100 pages in standard editions) and divided into four parts: an opening absurd reasoning that establishes the analysis of the absurd condition; an absurd man section that considers exemplary figures of the absurd response (Don Juan, the actor, the conqueror, the artist); a absurd creation section on the artistic response to the absurd; and a concluding meditation on the figure of Sisyphus.

Composition and publication

Camus worked on the Myth during the years 1940 and 1941, alongside the composition of The Stranger and the play Caligula. The three works together constitute what Camus called the cycle of the absurd — the first phase of his literary-philosophical project before the post-war cycle of revolt that includes The Plague (1947) and The Rebel (1951).

The composition took place in difficult circumstances. Camus had moved from Algeria to mainland France in 1940; the fall of France in June 1940 disrupted his life; he was in unoccupied France through the composition years and in occupied Paris from 1942 onward, working on the clandestine resistance newspaper Combat.

The publication was complicated by the circumstances of occupied France. The Vichy and German authorities had control over publication; Camus had to negotiate the constraints. The original 1942 edition contained a chapter on Kafka that was removed in subsequent editions; later editions included additional material from Camus's notebooks.

The standard English translation by Justin O'Brien (Knopf/Vintage, 1955) is the dominant English text.

Central doctrines

The absurd condition

The central doctrine is the analysis of the absurd condition. The absurd is not a property of the world (which is indifferent rather than absurd) or of the human being (who craves meaning rather than producing the absurd); the absurd is the relation between the human demand for meaning and the world's silence on whether life has any.

The recognition of the absurd condition is itself substantial. The human being proceeds for portions of life within the assumption that life has meaning; the recognition of the absurd comes through encounters with the features of existence that expose the assumption — boredom that suddenly reveals the purposelessness of daily routine, death that suddenly reveals the finitude of projects, confrontation with the silence of the universe on questions about meaning.

Once the recognition has occurred, it cannot be reversed. The human being who has confronted the absurd cannot return to the naive assumption that life has meaning. The question is what to do with the recognition.

The three responses

The three possible responses to the absurd condition are suicide, philosophical suicide (the leap into religious or philosophical faith that denies the absurd), and lucid revolt.

Suicide is the physical response of refusal to continue. Camus treats suicide as the wrong response: it capitulates to the absurd rather than facing it; it eliminates the human side of the absurd relation rather than preserving the recognition.

Philosophical suicide is the intellectual response of denial — the leap into religious or philosophical faith that pretends the absurd is not there. Camus treats this as the response of Kierkegaard's leap of faith, of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology that reaches beyond the available evidence, of religious belief that affirms meaning despite the silence of the universe. Camus rejects this response as intellectual dishonesty.

Lucid revolt is the third response: the affirmation of life in the face of the absurd condition without pretense that the absurd is not there. The absurd hero recognizes the absurd, refuses both suicide and the leap, and continues to live with the recognition intact. The revolt is lucid in that it does not pretend the absurd is not there; it is revolt in that it refuses to capitulate to the conclusions (suicide, philosophical leap) that the absurd might seem to recommend.

The figures of the absurd

The central section of the book considers exemplary figures of the absurd response. Don Juan exemplifies the absurd lover: the pursuit of quantity (substantial conquests, experiences) rather than quality (substantial single relation), recognition that no single love can fulfill human craving for meaning. The actor exemplifies the absurd recognition through multiplicity of lives lived on stage. The conqueror exemplifies the pursuit of historical action without illusion that the action has transcendent meaning. The artist — treated more extensively in the absurd creation section — exemplifies the production of works that recognize the absurd condition without pretending to escape it.

Sisyphus

The concluding meditation turns on the figure of Sisyphus, condemned by the Greek gods to roll a boulder up a hill for it to roll back down forever. The figure represents the absurd hero: the work is pointless, the situation is hopeless, the response is to embrace the work itself.

The famous closing sentence: Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux (One must imagine Sisyphus happy). The sentence compresses the Camusian ethic: the absurd hero affirms existence in the face of pointlessness, finds meaning in the work itself rather than in supposed transcendent ends.

Reception

The immediate reception was substantial. The book established Camus as a major philosophical voice alongside the reception of The Stranger in the same year. The post-war French intellectual culture treated the book as one of the canonical statements of the mid-century existentialist mood (though Camus resisted the existentialist label).

The reception has been and continuous. The English translation of 1955 established the book in Anglo-American intellectual culture; the subsequent generations of readers have encountered Camus's analysis as the introductory statement of the absurd. The existential psychotherapy tradition (especially Irvin Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980) engages the analysis substantially.

The contemporary engagement continues. Thomas Nagel's The Absurd (1971) developed an analytic engagement with Camusian themes; Susan Wolf's work on meaning in life engages the framework; the recent revival of philosophical attention to questions about meaning, mortality, and the post-religious condition returns to The Myth of Sisyphus.

Place in the wiki

The Myth of Sisyphus is the canonical philosophical statement of the analysis of the absurd condition and the principal source for the Camusian ethic of lucid revolt. It is one of the most-read works of twentieth-century philosophy outside academic philosophy and anchors the contemporary engagement with questions about meaning, mortality, and the post-religious condition.

Further reading

• Camus — the author
• The Absurd — the central philosophical category the book develops
• Existentialism — the tradition the book is conventionally classified within (though Camus resisted the label)
• Nietzsche — the philosophical predecessor whose post-religious analysis Camus extends
• Amor Fati — the Nietzschean ideal that the absurd ethic extends
• The Stranger — the novel of the same period that illustrates the absurd condition through fiction

Camus's 1942 philosophical essay on the absurd. The canonical statement of the mid-century philosophical analysis of the absurd condition and the ethic of lucid revolt.