Sitaram
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One morning, I began to think about "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus.
Albert Camus (1913–1960) is not a philosopher so much as a novelist with a strong philosophical bent. He is most famous for his novels of ideas, such as The Stranger and The Plague, both of which are set in the arid landscape of his native Algeria.
Like existentialism, phenomenology influenced Camus by its effort to construct a worldview that does not assume that there is some sort of rational structure to the universe that the human mind can apprehend.
Camus, when he first wrote about exile, was a man, far from his home, who was struggling against a seemingly omnipotent and senselessly brutal regime.
The central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus is what Camus calls "the absurd." Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (whether it be meaning, order, or reasons) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos). We will never find in life itself the meaning that we want to find. Either we will discover that meaning through a leap of faith, by placing our hopes in a God beyond this world, or we will conclude that life is meaningless.
Camus opens the essay by asking if this latter conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads one to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, does that mean life is not worth living? If that were the case, we would have no option but to make a leap of faith or to commit suicide, says Camus. Camus is interested in pursuing a third possibility: that we can accept and live in a world devoid of meaning or purpose.
Sitaram wonders if our purpose in a meaningless universe is to find meaning in the meaninglessness, create meaning where there is no meaning, and impose meaning upon that meaninglessness. Perhaps meaninglessness is a necessary ingredient for freedom. If there is a pre-existing meaning and order, then that which pre-exists becomes law for us, and law constricts our freedom.
If we reject conventional theology and philosophy, then what remains for us?
Perhaps Camus had the answer!
Stop and think how even the omnipotence of God is threatened by laws and order. There are two verses in the Bible (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18) which state that "God cannot lie."
Allah of the Qu'ran, on the other hand, is more free and potent than such an honest-Abe Jehovah, for Islam states that Allah has the power to abrogate and overturn any and every established rule or command.
Sura 2:106 "Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?"
Plato presents us with the famous "Euthyphro Dilemma" which asks: "Is what you're doing pious because it is loved by God, or does God love what you're doing because what you're doing is pious?"
Honest-Abe-Jehovah is forbidden to lie because of the pre-existing absolute standard of good and evil to which even God is subject. So Jehovah loves virtue because of its intrinsic objective absolute nature as something good. Allah on the other hand, is more powerful since Allah is free to designate whatever Allah pleases as pious and virtuous, and is not even bound by Allah's own judgment, but may abrogate that judgment at any time and designate something completely different as pious and virtuous.
Confronted by meaninglessness, we seek transcendence to rise above and escape.
Sisyphus must struggle perpetually and without hope of success. So long as he accepts that there is nothing more to life than this absurd struggle, then he can find happiness in it, says Camus.
Camus gives four examples of the absurd life: the seducer, who pursues the passions of the moment; the actor, who compresses the passions of hundreds of lives into a stage career; the conqueror, or rebel, whose political struggle focuses his energies; and the artist, who creates entire worlds. Absurd art does not try to explain experience, but simply describes it. It presents a certain worldview that deals with particular matters rather than aiming for universal themes.
Camus discusses the very meaning of existence and life itself. Sitaram observes that to justify absurdity is to impose a measure of order upon it.
We can be certain of only two things: our "nostalgia for unity" and our inability to find an answer in the world.
Think about "unity." We study the "UNI"verse in a "UNIV"ersity where we constantly strive for a "G.U.T." (Grand Unifying Theory) Our various religions stress "MONO"theism, or the "UNITY" of the Trinity. Our government adopts the maxim "E Pluribus Unum" (From the many, one.) We preach a creed of one God, one faith, one baptism, one wife, one husband, one nation under God, indivisible, and so forth. My very deployment of the word "one" with such frequency becomes onerous to the reader. We even make "top ten lists" of novels and many other things, which implies that there is a NUMBER ONE at the top of the list. We speak of "the great American novel." It is amusing to note that, even though we have TWO eyes and TWO ears and TWO cerebral hemispheres, yet we experience only ONE unified field of vision and hear only ONE harmonious composition and have only ONE stream of consciousness. The number one seems to have a sanctity all its own. The sanctity of unity gives a new and different meaning to the one greatest prayer of Judaism, the Shema: "Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is ONE." Numero Uno is a god for us in many ways.
If the absurd man does not need to explain or justify his life and behavior, why did Camus write this essay, which is, essentially, an explanation and justification of the absurd worldview? The irony of writing an essay to justify the absurd reminds Sitaram of an episode from the Simpsons, "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming," in which the side-kick of Crusty the Clown, Sideshow Bob (voice of Kelsey Grammer), a frustrated Shakespearean actor, seizes control of all the television stations, in an attempt to censure and silence the very medium which enslaves him to the absurd role which he plays.
Albert Camus (1913–1960) is not a philosopher so much as a novelist with a strong philosophical bent. He is most famous for his novels of ideas, such as The Stranger and The Plague, both of which are set in the arid landscape of his native Algeria.
Like existentialism, phenomenology influenced Camus by its effort to construct a worldview that does not assume that there is some sort of rational structure to the universe that the human mind can apprehend.
Camus, when he first wrote about exile, was a man, far from his home, who was struggling against a seemingly omnipotent and senselessly brutal regime.
The central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus is what Camus calls "the absurd." Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (whether it be meaning, order, or reasons) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos). We will never find in life itself the meaning that we want to find. Either we will discover that meaning through a leap of faith, by placing our hopes in a God beyond this world, or we will conclude that life is meaningless.
Camus opens the essay by asking if this latter conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads one to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, does that mean life is not worth living? If that were the case, we would have no option but to make a leap of faith or to commit suicide, says Camus. Camus is interested in pursuing a third possibility: that we can accept and live in a world devoid of meaning or purpose.
Sitaram wonders if our purpose in a meaningless universe is to find meaning in the meaninglessness, create meaning where there is no meaning, and impose meaning upon that meaninglessness. Perhaps meaninglessness is a necessary ingredient for freedom. If there is a pre-existing meaning and order, then that which pre-exists becomes law for us, and law constricts our freedom.
If we reject conventional theology and philosophy, then what remains for us?
Perhaps Camus had the answer!
Stop and think how even the omnipotence of God is threatened by laws and order. There are two verses in the Bible (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18) which state that "God cannot lie."
Allah of the Qu'ran, on the other hand, is more free and potent than such an honest-Abe Jehovah, for Islam states that Allah has the power to abrogate and overturn any and every established rule or command.
Sura 2:106 "Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?"
Plato presents us with the famous "Euthyphro Dilemma" which asks: "Is what you're doing pious because it is loved by God, or does God love what you're doing because what you're doing is pious?"
Honest-Abe-Jehovah is forbidden to lie because of the pre-existing absolute standard of good and evil to which even God is subject. So Jehovah loves virtue because of its intrinsic objective absolute nature as something good. Allah on the other hand, is more powerful since Allah is free to designate whatever Allah pleases as pious and virtuous, and is not even bound by Allah's own judgment, but may abrogate that judgment at any time and designate something completely different as pious and virtuous.
Confronted by meaninglessness, we seek transcendence to rise above and escape.
Sisyphus must struggle perpetually and without hope of success. So long as he accepts that there is nothing more to life than this absurd struggle, then he can find happiness in it, says Camus.
Camus gives four examples of the absurd life: the seducer, who pursues the passions of the moment; the actor, who compresses the passions of hundreds of lives into a stage career; the conqueror, or rebel, whose political struggle focuses his energies; and the artist, who creates entire worlds. Absurd art does not try to explain experience, but simply describes it. It presents a certain worldview that deals with particular matters rather than aiming for universal themes.
Camus discusses the very meaning of existence and life itself. Sitaram observes that to justify absurdity is to impose a measure of order upon it.
We can be certain of only two things: our "nostalgia for unity" and our inability to find an answer in the world.
Think about "unity." We study the "UNI"verse in a "UNIV"ersity where we constantly strive for a "G.U.T." (Grand Unifying Theory) Our various religions stress "MONO"theism, or the "UNITY" of the Trinity. Our government adopts the maxim "E Pluribus Unum" (From the many, one.) We preach a creed of one God, one faith, one baptism, one wife, one husband, one nation under God, indivisible, and so forth. My very deployment of the word "one" with such frequency becomes onerous to the reader. We even make "top ten lists" of novels and many other things, which implies that there is a NUMBER ONE at the top of the list. We speak of "the great American novel." It is amusing to note that, even though we have TWO eyes and TWO ears and TWO cerebral hemispheres, yet we experience only ONE unified field of vision and hear only ONE harmonious composition and have only ONE stream of consciousness. The number one seems to have a sanctity all its own. The sanctity of unity gives a new and different meaning to the one greatest prayer of Judaism, the Shema: "Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is ONE." Numero Uno is a god for us in many ways.
If the absurd man does not need to explain or justify his life and behavior, why did Camus write this essay, which is, essentially, an explanation and justification of the absurd worldview? The irony of writing an essay to justify the absurd reminds Sitaram of an episode from the Simpsons, "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming," in which the side-kick of Crusty the Clown, Sideshow Bob (voice of Kelsey Grammer), a frustrated Shakespearean actor, seizes control of all the television stations, in an attempt to censure and silence the very medium which enslaves him to the absurd role which he plays.
