its actually Camus’ answer to abject nihilism and why people don’t just kill themselves. Knowing that all the work and effort of living is ultimately meaningless and the absurdity of continuing anyways.
Guess it sort of works if your life doesn’t involve a lot of suffering, kind of a shit philosophy otherwise. Don’t read Camus without reading Beauvoir.
It’s also important to realize that Camus was writing this in response to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Authors who had really expanded on an popularized nihilism and existentialism.
Kierkegaard tried to answer Nietzcsche’s nihilistic writings claiming that existence persists through faith, or something like it. Basically that we continue to live because we believe that living is important, and that gives it meaning.
Camus says, faith is dumb, living is dumb, but it’s not meaningless either. It’s just absurd, and we need to be comfortable with the absurdity.
EDIT: That said, I could still be misunderstanding Camus. I have read “Myth of Sisyphus” twice now and listened to it as an audiobook playing in the background more times than that, and it’s still a complete mess to pick apart. Camus’ writing is so dense with similes and metaphors and he takes the longest route to get to any point.
As someone who’s struggled with severe depression and also studied philosophy, it got really annoying listening to people say shit like “Just imagine Sisyphus happy, hurdeedur.”
Like, yeah, I’ve read it. But no good philosopher believes everything they read. People acted like I don’t know my shit just because I couldn’t will myself out of depression. It was so fucking annoying.
its actually Camus’ answer to abject nihilism and why people don’t just kill themselves. Knowing that all the work and effort of living is ultimately meaningless and the absurdity of continuing anyways.
Guess it sort of works if your life doesn’t involve a lot of suffering, kind of a shit philosophy otherwise. Don’t read Camus without reading Beauvoir.
You’re not wrong.
It’s also important to realize that Camus was writing this in response to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Authors who had really expanded on an popularized nihilism and existentialism.
Kierkegaard tried to answer Nietzcsche’s nihilistic writings claiming that existence persists through faith, or something like it. Basically that we continue to live because we believe that living is important, and that gives it meaning.
Camus says, faith is dumb, living is dumb, but it’s not meaningless either. It’s just absurd, and we need to be comfortable with the absurdity.
EDIT: That said, I could still be misunderstanding Camus. I have read “Myth of Sisyphus” twice now and listened to it as an audiobook playing in the background more times than that, and it’s still a complete mess to pick apart. Camus’ writing is so dense with similes and metaphors and he takes the longest route to get to any point.
Or without reading Emil Cioran.
In other words, pure copium.
As someone who’s struggled with severe depression and also studied philosophy, it got really annoying listening to people say shit like “Just imagine Sisyphus happy, hurdeedur.”
Like, yeah, I’ve read it. But no good philosopher believes everything they read. People acted like I don’t know my shit just because I couldn’t will myself out of depression. It was so fucking annoying.
I think sisyphus was a bad example for this idea tbh