The Myth of Sisyphus
Even Within Nihilism, It Is Possible to Proceed Beyond Nihilism
Author: Albert Camus
Recommended by half-Danish descendent of the father of modern Iranian dentistry Niles Christensen during a day trip to Half Moon Bay.
[still in progress and it took me 3 hours to read the first 23 pages but man this is so interesting]
An Absurd Reasoning
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem - suicide.
Judging whether or not life is worth living amounts to answering this question. All other questions are preceded by this one.
If Nietzsche’s claims that a philosopher must preach by example to be deserving of respect is true, you can appreciate the reply to that question, for it will precede the definitive act.
The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions
Scientists such as Galileo were not willing to die for ontology - he was willing to abjure scientific truth with ease as soon as it endangered his life. And he was right in doing so - whether or not the earth orbits the sun is a matter of profound indifference after you are dead.
On the other hand, many people die because they judge that life is not worth living
Others paradoxically get killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (paradoxical in that, what was a reason for living is also a reason for dying).
So, the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. How to answer it?
On all essential problems - those that run the risk of leading to death or those that intensity the passion of living - there are two methods of thought.
The method of La Palisse (seems to go along the lines of logicism)
The method of Don Quixote (seems to go along the lines of existentialism)
It is solely the balance between evidence and lyricism that can allow us to simultaneously achieve emotion and lucidity.
Suicide and Individual Thought
Suicide is usually dealt with as a social phenomenon. Contrarily, if we consider the relationship between individual thought and suicide, it is an act prepared within the silence of the heart. One is usually ignorant of it, but beginning to think of it is beginning to be undermined.
Society has little connection with such beginnings. The beginning occurs within one’s heart, as that is where the answer to the question must be sought.
There are many causes for suicide, and generally the most obvious ones are the least powerful. Rarely is suicide committed through reflection, but what sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. If it is hard to fix the precise instant when the mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itself the consequences it implies. Suicide is a confession that life - which is never easy - is not worth the trouble. It is a recognition of the absence of a profound reason for living.
A world that can be explained with bad reasons is a familiar world. But in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or a hope of a promised land. The divorce between man and his life leads to the feeling of absurdity, and there is a direct connection between the feeling of absurdity and the longing for death.
Faced with Absurdity, is Life Worth Living?
The problem may seem both simple and insoluble. Approaching the problem a priori, it seems that there are two available solutions: yes or no. This would be too easy, the answer is only so straightforward for a minority.
Many continue questioning without concluding
Many answer “no” yet act as if they thought “yes”
From a Nietzschean criterion, everyone thinks “yes” in one way or another
Many who do commit suicide are often assured of the meaning of life
Contradictions are constant. In the face of such contradictions and obscurities might lead us to think that there is no relationship between one’s opinions on life and one’s acts to leave it. Yet, there is an attachment to life that is stronger than the suffering in the world, and the body habitually eludes annihilation.
Such contradictions raises an important problem - is there a logic to the point of death?
Absurd Walls
Deep feelings transcend what they are conscious of saying. Great feelings - like the feeling of absurdity, jealousy, or generosity - take with them their own universe, and frames the perspective with which we look at the world. A feeling is a metaphysic, an attitude of mind, a worldview, that comes prior to words. What is already true of specialized feelings, will become even more so of emotions as indeterminate as when faced with beauty absurdity. They are as vague as they are definite, as remote as they are present.
The feeling of absurdity is elusive, but that very difficulty is deserving of reflection.
It is true that some aspect of someone will remain forever unknown to us, but practically we know people; we can recognize them by their behaviour, by the totality of their deeds, by the consequences caused in life by their presence, and as a result irrational feelings which cannot be formally analyzed. It is apparent that we do not know an actor personally after watching all of their works. Yet, if we add up all of the roles they’ve played, it feels true to say we know them a little better by the end of it.
There is a moral to this apparent paradox - a person defines themself by their make-believe as well as by their sincere impulses.
This implies a lower key of feelings that is inaccessible to the heart but partially disclosed by the way one acts and the attitudes of mind one assumes.
These feelings define a method, a way of approaching life, that is evidently one of analysis and not of knowledge. Methods imply metaphysics; unconsciously they disclose conclusions they often claim not to know yet.
The method defined here acknowledges the feeling that all true knowledge is impossible. Certain external aspects of things can be quantified or described (more objectively), some more intangible things elude precise description and are felt as a climate (more subjectively). The climate of absurdity is in the beginning, and the end is the absurd universe as seen through the implacable lens of the absurd.
