#7 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Albert Camus

28 Jan, 2025

a collection of essays by camus, following several vaguely related themes. i listened to this one as an audiobook so i didnt grasp 100% of whats going on but i think im familiar enough with his work and that of his contemporaries that i didnt miss much.

his style is one that tests the borders between a philosophical text and writing fiction and is very aware of doing so, with one of the essays explicitly discussing the difference between the two. is a work still fiction if it exists for the sole purpose of asking the reader a question about the world? is a work philosophy if it uses a common question as its guiding theme? IS FATE/STAY NIGHT PHILOSOPHY? well never know. lets argue about it in the comment section below.¹

the places he inhabits and his thoughts about the human world influence eachother, his philosophical thoughts feel like they come almost equally from his walks around algiers as they do from reading the works of other writers and philosophers. the village in his essay on kafkas 'the castle' is almost as physical as oran, goethe and sisyphus bear the same burden of mans absurdity on their back. he is not the sole philosopher who does this, but it feels like a distinct trait of french (and its colonies) writing of the era, which is probably why i keep being drawn back into it. i have to admit that i have a bigger fondness for sartre, but maybe if i reread the stranger and the fall my opinion would flip.

the myth of sisyphus is the titular text and the one which has entered popular consciousness (not accurately, but the numbers of works that are part of popular culture in a form equal or superior to their original can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand), but by itself it doesnt seem to hold as much value as it does following behind the other essays in the book. only when the artist, the philosopher, the actor and the conqueror can be proven to be one and the same, guided by the same impulse to leave a mark in the absurd world which will one day erase them and all theyve created, can man as a whole be compared to sisyphus himself. if we are to be happy creating things that might not matter in the end, that we have no way to tell if they will matter to anyone outside of us, that they will last even a second after the moment theyre created, we have to accept that the only thing that holds meaning is not the act of having created something, but the act of creation itself. its the fundamental point of the essay that almost everyone has heard of, and yet very few people actually take to heart.

philosophy feels masturbatory as hell to read because of the world we live in where being smug about caring and knowing about things is considered a bigger sin than being confidently unconscious of the world around us, but thats exactly why its worth engaging with. its easy to treat philosophers like smirking Übermensch looking at the rest of us with mockery for not instantly grasping the meaning of their 20-character long german words, but most of the works are written out of a desire to be understood and to understand the world around us, which feels as good of a goal as is possible to have.