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A review by samahcanread__
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
when i first read Franz Kafka books five years ago, it was like being claustrophobic in my own skin, faced with the question of the necessity of life, and if life should be lived with purpose and passion, and if not, if one find themselves not living life and questioning its purpose, was the answer suicide. All these ideas stayed in the back of my head, till the day I read The Outsider (L'Etranger) by Albert Camus, about a man living unapologetically in this world, not questioning his purpose, who rather die than conform to society. Then this led to discovering Camus' philosophy, and then reading The Myth of Sisyphus
I'd be lying if I said I didn't struggle with this book. Mainly because Camus was bringing many other philosophers' ideas that I wasn't familiar with; Kierkegaard's existentialism, Husserl's phenomenology, Jaspers' humanistic existentialism, and many more were more or less new notion I was learning about, the same time I was reading how Camus was using them to defend his philosophy, which is embracing the absurdity of human existence and creating value and meaning, arguing that by putting efforts and showing resilience, not suicide and despair, are the appropriate responses.
He also argued that Sisyphus, despite his eternal punishment of rolling the boulder all the way up, knowing his fate and how it will roll down before reaching the top, is the poster oy of absurdism, happy and values life over death and wishes to enjoy his existence as much as possible and we must emulate his resilience.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't struggle with this book. Mainly because Camus was bringing many other philosophers' ideas that I wasn't familiar with; Kierkegaard's existentialism, Husserl's phenomenology, Jaspers' humanistic existentialism, and many more were more or less new notion I was learning about, the same time I was reading how Camus was using them to defend his philosophy, which is embracing the absurdity of human existence and creating value and meaning, arguing that by putting efforts and showing resilience, not suicide and despair, are the appropriate responses.
He also argued that Sisyphus, despite his eternal punishment of rolling the boulder all the way up, knowing his fate and how it will roll down before reaching the top, is the poster oy of absurdism, happy and values life over death and wishes to enjoy his existence as much as possible and we must emulate his resilience.