The Philosophy of the Absurd: Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay
2. 0:03by Albert Camus and is considered as one of the most popular existentialist works of the
3. 0:0920th century. It gave rise to the philosophy of Absurdism, sharing some concepts with Existentialism
4. 0:15and Nihilism. The fundamental concern of the book is the
5. 0:18notion of the Absurd, which is best described as “the conflict between the human tendency
6. 0:24to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless,
7. 0:31meaningless, and irrational universe", with the ‘unreasonable silence’ of the universe
8. 0:36in response. Trying to define this, is like water slipping through one’s fingers.
9. 0:41However, this world in itself is not absurd, what is absurd is our relationship with the
10. 0:46universe, which is irrational. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. It
11. 0:52is all that links them together. Thus, the universe and the human mind do not each separately
12. 0:57cause the Absurd, but rather, the Absurd arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing
13. 1:03simultaneously. “I don’t know whether this world has a
14. 1:06meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is
15. 1:11impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to
16. 1:17me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand.
17. 1:24The Myth of Sisyphus explores the value of
18. 1:27life in a world devoid of religious meaning, his work can be seen as a reply to Dostoevsky
19. 1:33and Kierkegaard. He calls the Absurd, which we all live in,
20. 1:37to be “sin without God.” However, Camus does not consider himself as an atheist.
21. 1:42He states: “I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
22. 1:46This reflects the notion of the Absurd. The search of the possibility of the existence
23. 1:51of God is humanly impossible, but this also entails that the proof that God does not exist
24. 1:56is impossible too. He writes: “In a universe suddenly divested of illusions
25. 2:01and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived
26. 2:09of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man
27. 2:14and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”
28. 2:19The book declares that within the limits of nihilism, it is possible to find the means
29. 2:24to proceed beyond nihilism, embracing the absurd. It sums itself as a lucid invitation
30. 2:30to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert. The way out of despair is to reaffirm
31. 2:36the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with authenticity.
32. 2:42The problem of suicide must be met face to face,
33. 2:46he states: “There is but one truly serious philosophical
34. 2:49problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to
35. 2:55answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” One answer to the absurd is physical suicide,
36. 3:02which tends to happen without going through reflection, “one evening the person pulls
37. 3:06the trigger or jumps.” Killing oneself is a sort of confession, that life is too much,
38. 3:12that it is incomprehensible, or that it is not worth the trouble. He links this to what
39. 3:17he calls the “feeling of absurdity”, closely tied to the feeling that life is meaningless.
40. 3:23And the act of suicide is linked to the idea that life is not worth living. Thus, dying
41. 3:28voluntarily implies the absence of any profound reason for living and the uselessness of suffering.
42. 3:34However, there are plenty of contradictions. Those who commit suicide might be assured
43. 3:39life has a meaning, and those who feel life is not worth living still continue to live.
44. 3:45Camus believes that our instinct for life is much stronger than our reasons for suicide,
45. 3:49avoiding the full consequences of the meaningless nature of life through an act of eluding,
46. 3:56commonly manifesting itself as hope. Physical suicide is never an option for the
47. 4:01Absurd man, much like the leap of faith, it is acceptance at its extreme, it would be
48. 4:06a way of going along with our absurd condemnation, by implicitly affirming that life is really
49. 4:12intolerably absurd and that suicide is our only option.
50. 4:16The difference between an absurd man and an ordinary man is that the absurd man gets more
51. 4:22out of life because his detachment comes from a heightened awareness that makes him more
52. 4:27open to experiences. An absurd worldview is one that abandons values, one that rests content
53. 4:34with description, and does not seek explanation or justification. Through the examples of
54. 4:40the seducer, the actor, the conqueror, and the artist, it becomes clear that the Absurd
55. 4:46Man lives out a kind of show; he lives only "as if" he were fully committed to what he
56. 4:53is doing. He carries out his days willingly, and lives “without appeal” as Camus puts it.
57. 4:58Camus also talks about ‘philosophical suicide’.
58. 5:01One of the most common forms of escaping the absurd is precisely believing in some ready-made
59. 5:06belief system (practically all of the world’s religion), where one accepts something as
60. 5:11true that isn’t convincing but is convenient and easy for him to believe in. It is any
61. 5:17hypothetical belief system that immediately alleviates one from the meaningless void of
62. 5:23existence, at the cost of committing a sort of mental suicide by shutting down one’s
63. 5:28mental faculties.
64. 5:29The contrary of suicide, for Camus, is man condemned to death. Since we cannot evade
65. 5:35death, we must entertain death, keep it busy. Man is in constant lucidity of his own absurd
66. 5:41nature with the passionate flames of human revolt.
67. 5:45“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your
68. 5:51very existence is an act of rebellion.” We all live in an absurd freedom, and to become
69. 5:57lucid and conscious of it is to revolt, embracing a world devoid of meaning or purpose:
70. 6:03“[Revolt] is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity. It is an insistence
71. 6:09upon an impossible transparency. It challenges the world anew every second. Just as danger
72. 6:15provided man with the unique opportunity of seizing awareness, so metaphysical revolt
73. 6:21extends awareness to the whole of experience […]”
74. 6:24Camus draws from the absurd three consequences: revolt (we must not accept any answer or reconciliation
75. 6:30in our struggle), freedom (we are absolutely free to think and behave as we choose), and
76. 6:36passion (we must pursue a life of rich and diverse experiences). Essentially, man is
77. 6:42his own end. And he is his only end. If he aims to be something, it is in this life:
78. 6:48“the flames of earth are surely worth celestial perfumes.”
79. 6:52Another big part of the absurd is our daily existence,
80. 6:55the absurd person is someone who has seen through the ridiculous repetitions
81. 7:00of daily life: “Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office
82. 7:04or factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
83. 7:11Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed
84. 7:17most of the time. But one day the ‘why‘ arises and everything begins in that weariness
85. 7:23tinged with amazement.” He associates this condemnation to the mythological
86. 7:28character of Sisyphus, a man who lived an immoral life, and who is condemned by the
87. 7:33gods to the worst punishment of all: a monotonous and repetitive task consisting of rolling
88. 7:40a large boulder up a hill, only to reach the top of the hill and have the boulder roll
89. 7:45back to the bottom for him to start all over again, and again, and again, for eternity.
90. 7:51Condemned to a life of pain, only to have his efforts be completely insignificant in
91. 7:57the end. And there’s nothing he can do to change that situation, so he lives “without
92. 8:01appeal.” For Camus, Sisyphus is the ideal absurd hero,
93. 8:06who lives life to the fullest, hates death and is condemned to a meaningless task.
94. 8:11This incredibly vivid imagery is an allegory of the human condition. It is our punishment
95. 8:17to our futile search for meaning in an indifferent and meaningless universe, while working on
96. 8:22the same mundane tasks, we all have to push our own boulders only to watch it roll back
97. 8:28down. What really makes our human existence absurd is our consciousness of our Sisyphean
98. 8:34condemnation when we avoid the trap of philosophical and physical suicide.
99. 8:39However, Camus does not encourage us to fall into despair. He imagines Sisyphus defiantly
100. 8:45meeting his fate as he walks down the hill to begin rolling the rock again, when he is
101. 8:50briefly free, when he is “superior to his fate and stronger than his rock”, he is
102. 8:55thus not only a prisoner, but a rebel. Even if the daily struggles of our lives sometimes
103. 9:01seem equally repetitive and absurd, we still give them significance and value by embracing
104. 9:07them as our own. “The struggle itself towards the heights
105. 9:11is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
106. 9:17The Myth of Sisyphus tackles the colossal project of the meaning of life itself. However,
107. 9:22Camus does not try to describe or explain it through metaphysics, he merely observes
108. 9:28how we are occasionally struck by the feeling of absurdity, he wants us to follow his analysis
109. 9:34of a state of mind we have all shared at one time or another, focusing solely on how we
110. 9:41are to live, and how we can be happy. “For if there is a sin against life, it
111. 9:47consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and
112. 9:53in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”