Part 2, “The Absurd Man,” presents three examples of personalities-the Don Juan, the actor, and the conqueror-who learn how to navigate life’s absurdities. It’s better to face absurdity squarely, neither cooperating with it nor pretending it doesn’t exist. In these ways, they commit philosophical suicide.
Existential philosophers, whose job is to understand absurdity, are especially prone to this, either by leaping into the arms of God or into arbitrary certainties, or by worshipping absurdity. This yearning to comprehend life fully, and thereby transcend death, can never be fulfilled ironically, that is absurdity.įor most thinkers, the pain becomes too great, and they cast off their insights and retreat to the safety of arbitrary beliefs that posit eternal truths.
Some people, despairing life’s futility, kill themselves others explore the deserts of meaninglessness, trying fully to understand absurdity. If life is too absurd to matter, one question remains-whether to commit suicide. Part 1, “An Absurd Reasoning,” posits that there is only one truly important philosophical problem: whether life is worth living. The Myth of Sisyphus contains five parts, including three extended essays on absurdity, a short piece on Sisyphus as a tragic hero of the meaningless, and an appendix that critiques Franz Kafka’s Existential novels. He criticized existentialists for peering into the abyss of life’s emptiness and backing away in fear, believing it better to stare at absurdity unblinkingly and defiantly. Though he deserves acclaim as a representative of existentialism, a philosophy that grapples with life’s meaninglessness, Camus rejected that term and instead called himself an absurdist. The tragic Greek figure Sisyphus-a rebel whom the gods punish by forcing him to push a boulder up a mountain only to watch it fall back down, over and over forever-symbolizes the absurd human condition. The huge gap between that craving and life’s actual sterility is an absurd condition that can’t be pushed aside but must be faced squarely. The book’s premise is that humans yearn deeply for something they can never have: the certainty that life is worthwhile and meaningful.
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