The Myth of Sisyphus

546 Words3 Pages
The Myth of Sisyphus I. Camus’ life A. The point of philosophy is life: “The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But he point is to live.” B. Camus’ life and work were dominates by the juxtaposition of an indomitable will towards happiness and justice on one hand and the indifference and hostility of the world on the other hand. This juxtaposition constitutes the absurd. II. The Absurd. The absurd is a disproportion or conflict between our expectations or ideals and reality. In particular, it is the confrontation between our longing pr nostalgia for order, meaning and clarity on the one hand with the chaos, confusion, and irrationality of the world on the other hand; between the human longing for happiness and the evil in t he world. The absurd is not in man alone nor in the world alone, but in the juxtaposition of the two: “The world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose calls echoes in the human heart.” (The myth of Sisyphus) III. Suicide. Suicide is not a logical consequence of the absurd. It attempts to escape the absurd by removing one of its elements: the human longing for order (philosophical) of the unbearable, unintelligible world (physical). One must live with the absurd, not try to escape it. A. Philosophical suicide. The existential leap of faith to believe in an ultimate order and intelligibility, but one inaccessible to man, is philosophical suicide. It kills the human longing for an order and clarity it can understand. B. Physical suicide. Killing oneself is an attempt to escape the absurd rather than facing it. One cannot accept the world, so one ends their existence in it. This is not a consequence of the absurd, but an escape from it. IV. Consequences of the Absurd
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