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ely_28 's review for:
The Myth of Sisyphus
by Albert Camus
I’m glad I decided to read Nietzche right before reading “The Myth of Sisyphus” because he was mentioned already on the first page. I have been on the wave of reading some philosophy but I can’t say it’s particularly easy.
Originally, due to the title, I thought this was a fiction book such as “The Stranger” but cooler, since it has Greek mythology in it. However it turned out to be an existential work and one of the most influential philosophical texts of the 20th century.
The title was misleading but the original myth of Sisyphus is about a powerful and clever king who pissed off Zeus and was sentenced to death but then he escaped and pissed off Zeus even more and they repeated that cycle until finally he was punished with the worst possible task: to roll a bigass stone up a hill without never actually managing it and having to do it again and again until the end of times. Yes yes, horrifying… none of that was in the book though. In the book we see Camus comparing people's desire to find the meaning or purpose of life as aimlessly as Sisyphus rolled his stone. With such comparison, Camus was laying the groundwork for a philosophical theory called absurdism.
The main idea of the book is that us people are rational and tend to believe that life has some sort of a meaning, purpose or a point and therefore we get into the conflict with the irrational, meaningless and absurd world – no let me correct myself, Camus didn’t see the world as absurd but rather the relationship between the individual and the world. Yeah, it sounds a little bit like nihilism, but it’s more than that. Nihilism stands for the fact that life is meaningless and therefore it is pointless to look for any meaning whilst absurdism ...sort of also believes that but it still hesitantly allows some meaning or value in life for the individual. I’m not going to dwell on it any further though, back to the book!
The book was…a lot to take in.
Camus offers 3 solutions to the aforementioned dilemma between an individual and the world.
First: kill yourself! (This is bad, don’t do that, this only makes the absurd even more absurd.)
Second: philosophically kill yourself! …No, the right term is actually “philosophical suicide” which means that we pretend that there is a higher power or a meaning. In this particular field Camus often brought up Dostoevsky which was rather fun.
And Third: embrace it (probably the healthiest), meaning that one should see that such meaninglessness actually gives us freedom to do what we want and feel about the world however we wish to feel. Such an idea concludes that even Sisyphus who apparently got “the worst” punishment could actually find happiness because the meaninglessness of his act also gives him freedom.
That is pretty much a short and highly simplified summary of the contents of this book. I feel like I should probably read this again in 20 years because 1) I could understand more than half of the many references he makes on different authors and 2) I could probably understand it better in general (because hopefully I do mentally grow and get smarter with years…:))
In general…one hell of a book, definitely a good one but it really put my focus on a test since every sentence was somehow significant. But I enjoyed it much more than I enjoyed “The Stranger” because even though it was kind of difficult, at least it wasn't boring.
Originally, due to the title, I thought this was a fiction book such as “The Stranger” but cooler, since it has Greek mythology in it. However it turned out to be an existential work and one of the most influential philosophical texts of the 20th century.
The title was misleading but the original myth of Sisyphus is about a powerful and clever king who pissed off Zeus and was sentenced to death but then he escaped and pissed off Zeus even more and they repeated that cycle until finally he was punished with the worst possible task: to roll a bigass stone up a hill without never actually managing it and having to do it again and again until the end of times. Yes yes, horrifying… none of that was in the book though. In the book we see Camus comparing people's desire to find the meaning or purpose of life as aimlessly as Sisyphus rolled his stone. With such comparison, Camus was laying the groundwork for a philosophical theory called absurdism.
The main idea of the book is that us people are rational and tend to believe that life has some sort of a meaning, purpose or a point and therefore we get into the conflict with the irrational, meaningless and absurd world – no let me correct myself, Camus didn’t see the world as absurd but rather the relationship between the individual and the world. Yeah, it sounds a little bit like nihilism, but it’s more than that. Nihilism stands for the fact that life is meaningless and therefore it is pointless to look for any meaning whilst absurdism ...sort of also believes that but it still hesitantly allows some meaning or value in life for the individual. I’m not going to dwell on it any further though, back to the book!
The book was…a lot to take in.
Camus offers 3 solutions to the aforementioned dilemma between an individual and the world.
First: kill yourself! (This is bad, don’t do that, this only makes the absurd even more absurd.)
Second: philosophically kill yourself! …No, the right term is actually “philosophical suicide” which means that we pretend that there is a higher power or a meaning. In this particular field Camus often brought up Dostoevsky which was rather fun.
And Third: embrace it (probably the healthiest), meaning that one should see that such meaninglessness actually gives us freedom to do what we want and feel about the world however we wish to feel. Such an idea concludes that even Sisyphus who apparently got “the worst” punishment could actually find happiness because the meaninglessness of his act also gives him freedom.
That is pretty much a short and highly simplified summary of the contents of this book. I feel like I should probably read this again in 20 years because 1) I could understand more than half of the many references he makes on different authors and 2) I could probably understand it better in general (because hopefully I do mentally grow and get smarter with years…:))
In general…one hell of a book, definitely a good one but it really put my focus on a test since every sentence was somehow significant. But I enjoyed it much more than I enjoyed “The Stranger” because even though it was kind of difficult, at least it wasn't boring.