MY TAKE ON SISYPHUS PART I

The concept of the absurd is generally understood as the human urge to find a meaning in existence, and our inability to find any. It starts with Kierkegaard, who was the first to use the word “absurd” philosophically, in the following note made by him in 1849 in his Journals:

“What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason and my powers of reflection tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say, where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act, and yet here is where I have to act... The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the absurd, is to act upon faith ... I must act, but reflection has closed the road so I take one of the possibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do otherwise because I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection.”

However, absurdism as a philosophy is generally attributed not to Kierkegaard, but to the French philosopher-writer Albert Camus, and he has certainly deserved this attribution by generously writing about the meaning of the absurd, and by his explicit philosophical treatment of absurdity in his famous 1942 essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe.

Sisyphus is one of the most important philosophical generalizations of human existence in world literature, and yet his great merit for philosophy has always been conspicuously unappreciated. It is true that the great Camus, in the twentieth century, has famously provided us with the most interesting angle on Sisyphus to date, but, while giving him ample credit for this achievement, we cannot ignore the fact that, pursuing that specific angle, he has somehow underappreciated the allegorical value of this personage. He sees Sisyphus’ job merely as a meaningless occupation, and discusses the need for his Sisyphus to discover a meaning, and eventually happiness, in that glaring absurdity of his existence. Yet, in following this particular angle, he is falling short of the full picture. He fails to explain the nature of Sisyphus’ occupation, particularly the fact that he is engaged in an activity which is not only senseless, but which also causes great suffering; and it is this aspect of suffering that makes a lot of difference in our analysis of Sisyphus, and its application to real life.

It is perhaps unnecessary for us to know who exactly Sisyphus is, and why he has been punished. After all, there is a tremendous difference between him and us: he was condemned to an eternity of Sisyphean labor, whereas our labor in life has a clearly delineated finish line, beyond which we may count on either a blissful deliverance, or an eternal rest in peace from all our worldly toils. Two utterly different psychologies are involved here: a psychology of eternal hopelessness and a psychology of transcendent hope. I understand Camus, of course, as he draws his own kind of lesson from his hero, but perhaps we might draw more than one lesson from Sisyphus, and translate his situation into a broader picture, relevant to our time, just as it is relevant to all time.

Sisyphus first appears to us from the pages of Homer, both the Iliad and the Odyssey, but episodically, and not exactly along the lines where we would like to meet him. Here are the two distinctive Homeric passages where Sisyphus is featured: the crime, and the punishment.---

“There is a city Ephyre in the heart of Argos, pasture-land of horses, and there dwelt Sisyphus that was the craftiest of men, Sisyphus, son of Aeolus; and he begat a son Glaucus; and Glaucus begat peerless Bellerophon.” (Iliad vi, 152-155)

“And I saw Sisyphus in agonizing torment trying to roll a huge stone up to the top of a hill. He would brace himself, and push it towards the summit with both hands, but just as he was about to heave it over the crest its weight overcame him, and then down again to the plain came bounding that pitiless boulder. He would wrestle again and lever it back while the sweat poured from his limbs and the dust swirled round his head.” (Odyssey xi, 593-600)

So, the crime of Sisyphus is having been “the craftiest of men,” (who cheated the gods and even death, but we do not learn these details from Homer), and his punishment is hard, senseless labor. It may be quite entertaining to learn the details of his crime, as revealed to us by various sources of Greek mythology, but the crime does not correlate to the punishment at all, in the sense of clarifying the latter, and thus it is irrelevant to the focus of our interest, which is obviously Sisyphus’ “job in hell,” if I am allowed to put it this way.

Now, what exactly is Sisyphus doing as a matter of endless daily routine?

It is right here that we finally make the connection between Sisyphean labor and the meaning of human life as such. How many men and women during the past six thousand years, and currently, could easily identify themselves with Sisyphus, more than with any other personage of Greek mythology? ...

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)