Living with the absurd
Follow the essay from the question of suicide through the critique of philosophical leaps to the image of Sisyphus walking back down to his rock.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Situating the text
Subtitled an essay on the absurd and dedicated to Pascal Pia, the book was completed in February 1941 in Oran and published by Gallimard in October 1942, a few months after The Stranger, which it accompanies as a philosophical counterpart. Its study of Kafka, left out of the first edition under the Occupation, was restored as an appendix after the war. Camus presents it as a description of a sensibility of the age, not as a philosophy of the absurd. The essay opens by declaring that there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, suicide, and asks whether the absurd demands it. Camus answers no: lucidity calls instead for revolt, freedom and passion, embodied by Don Juan, the actor, the conqueror and the artist, and the book ends with Sisyphus, condemned to push his rock forever, whom we must imagine happy.
Following the arguments
Suicide as the question : Judging whether life is worth living is the first question, because every other answer depends on it; Camus starts from that judgement rather than from metaphysics. Absurd man : Don Juan, the actor and the conqueror live without appeal, preferring the quantity and intensity of experience to the promise of an eternal meaning. Happy Sisyphus : Walking back down toward his rock, Sisyphus is conscious of his fate; that lucidity, which crowns his punishment, makes it his own and sets him above his destiny.
Continuing the reading
Read the first chapter on absurd reasoning closely, skim the gallery of absurd men, then take the final four pages on Sisyphus slowly, comparing their tone with the opening of The Stranger. Subtitled an essay on the absurd and dedicated to Pascal Pia, the book was completed in February 1941 in Oran and published by Gallimard in October 1942, a few months after The Stranger, which it accompanies as a philosophical counterpart. Its study of Kafka, left out of the first edition under the Occupation, was restored as an appendix after the war. Camus presents it as a description of a sensibility of the age, not as a philosophy of the absurd.
The absurd is not a reason to die but a condition to keep in view: lucidity without hope can still sustain revolt, freedom and passion.
Your turn to think.
- Why does Camus treat suicide, rather than the existence of the world or of God, as the first philosophical question?
- What exactly makes Sisyphus happy, and could that happiness exist without his awareness of the punishment?
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