The Myth of Sisyphus (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide)
By SparkNotes
()
About this ebook
Making the reading experience fun!
SparkNotes Philosophy Guides are one-stop guides to the great works of philosophy–masterpieces that stand at the foundations of Western thought. Inside each Philosophy Guide you’ll find insightful overviews of great philosophical works of the Western world.
Read more from Spark Notes
King Lear: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Like It (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Julius Caesar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Much Ado About Nothing (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tempest (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bird by Bird (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Romeo & Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard III (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of Solitude (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Autobiography of Malcom X (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Measure for Measure (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Outsiders (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Winter's Tale (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlas Shrugged SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTempest: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Gentlemen of Verona (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHenry V (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComedy of Errors (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Raisin in the Sun (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOthello (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Lear (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet (No Fear Shakespeare Graphic Novels) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDune (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings1984 SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard II (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Myth of Sisyphus (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide)
Related ebooks
Existentialism and Contemporary Cinema: A Sartrean Perspective Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCamus in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Republic (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Archaeology of Knowledge (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSingle-Sentence Shakespeare Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMadness and Civilization (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Thomas Pynchon and Emerging Postmodernism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhilosophical Investigations (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Good and Evil (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFear and Trembling (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProlegomena to a Philosophy of Religion Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fathers and Sons (Translated by Constance Garnett with a Foreword by Avrahm Yarmolinsky) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Chosen (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Good and Evil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Farewell to Truth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Practice and Theory of Bolshevism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKierkegaard's God and the Good Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Genealogy of Morals (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Religion from Tolstoy to Camus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Marxist Reading of Young Baudrillard: Throughout His Ordered Masks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLysis (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTheologico-Political Treatise — Part 1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Monster, 1959: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Foucault For Beginners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry Into its Origin and Growth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKierkegaard's Existentialism: The Theological Self and the Existential Self Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Book Notes For You
Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5 AM Club Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Poverty, by America By Matthew Desmond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill: Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John Gottman: Conversation Starters Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary of 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi: Summary by Fireside Reads Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Workbook for Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary of Ichiro Kishimi's and Fumitake Koga's book: The Courage to Be Disliked: Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Untamed by Glennon Doyle: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of How to Know a Person By David Brooks: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel by Jeanine Cummins: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Myth of Sisyphus (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Myth of Sisyphus (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) - SparkNotes
Summary and Analysis
An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide
Summary
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
If we judge the importance of a philosophical problem by the consequences it entails, the problem of the meaning of life is certainly the most important. Someone who judges that life is not worth living will commit suicide, and those who feel they have found some meaning to life may be inclined to die or kill to defend that meaning. Other philosophical problems do not entail such drastic consequences.
Camus suggests that suicide amounts to a confession that life is not worth living. He links this confession to what he calls the feeling of absurdity.
On the whole, we go through life with a sense of meaning and purpose, with a sense that we do things for good and profound reasons. Occasionally, however, we might come to see our daily actions and interactions as dictated primarily by the force of habit. We cease to see ourselves as free agents and come to see ourselves almost as machine-like drones. From this perspective, all our actions, desires, and reasons seem absurd and pointless. The feeling of absurdity is closely linked to the feeling that life is meaningless.
Camus also associates the feeling of absurdity with the feeling of exile, a theme that is important not just in this essay but also in much of his fiction. As rational members of human society, we instinctively feel that life has some sort of meaning or purpose. When we act under this assumption, we feel at home. As a result, absurdists feel like strangers in a world divested of reason. The feeling of absurdity exiles us from the homelike comforts of a meaningful existence.
The feeling of absurdity is linked to the idea that life is meaningless, and the act of suicide is linked to the idea that life is not worth living. The pressing question of this essay, then, is whether the idea that life is meaningless necessarily implies that life is not worth living. Is suicide a solution to the absurd? We should not be fooled, Camus suggests, by the fact that there are only two possible outcomes (life or suicide)—that there are only two possible answers to this question. Most of us continue living largely because we have not reached a definitive answer to this question. Further, there are plenty of contradictions between people's judgments and their actions. Those who commit suicide might be assured life has meaning, and many who feel that life is not worth living still continue to live.
Face to face with the meaninglessness of existence, what keeps us from suicide? To a large extent, Camus suggests that our instinct for life is much stronger than our reasons for suicide: We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
We instinctively avoid facing the full consequences of the meaningless nature of life, through what Camus calls an act of eluding.
This act of eluding most frequently manifests itself as hope. By hoping for another life, or hoping to find some meaning in this life, we put off facing the consequences of the absurd, of the meaninglessness of life.
In this essay, Camus hopes to face the consequences of the absurd. Rather than accept fully the idea that life has no meaning, he wants to take it as a starting point to see what logically follows from this idea. Rather than run away from the feeling of absurdity, either through suicide or hope, he wants to dwell with it and see if one can live with this feeling.
Commentary
As his starting point, Camus takes up the question of whether, on the one hand, we are free agents with souls and values, or if, on the other hand, we are just matter that moves about with mindless regularity. Reconciling these two equally undeniable perspectives is one of the great projects of religion and philosophy.
One of the most obvious—and on reflection, one of the most puzzling—facts about human existence is that we have values. Having values is more than simply having desires: if I desire something, I quite simply want it and will try to get it. My values go beyond my desires in that by valuing something, I do not simply desire it, but I also somehow judge that that something ought to be desired. In saying that something ought to be desired, I am assuming that the world ought to be a certain way. Further, I only feel the world ought to be a certain way if it is not entirely that way already: if there was no such thing as murder it would not make sense for me to say that people should not commit murder. Thus, having values implies that we feel the world ought to be different from the way it