There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that
is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts
to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the
rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether
the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These
are games.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurdity and Suicide, opening lines of
essay. |
I see many people die because they judge that life is not
worth living. I see others paradoxically gettin killed for the
ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what
is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for
dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the
most urgent of questions.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurdity and Suicide. |
This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting,
is properly the feeling of absurdity.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurdity and Suicide. |
Great feelings take with them their own universe.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Walls. |
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any
man in the face.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Walls. |
The absurd is sin without God.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Walls. |
All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Walls. |
If I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try
to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping
through my fingers.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Walls. |
At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the
irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and
for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between
the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Walls |
I dont know whether this world has a meaning that transcends
it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is
impossible for me just now to know it.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Freedom. |
The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner
or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I
know is freedom of thought and action.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Freedom. |
The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point
is to live.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Freedom. |
There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have
seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every
day that integrity has no need of rules.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Absurd Man. |
All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action
has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued
with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be
considered calmly.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Absurd Man. |
The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize
all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean
that nothing is forbidden.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Absurd Man. |
Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this
field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything
to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him.
What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order?
The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal:
it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot
so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as,
rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Absurd Man. |
A man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but
of himself.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Absurd Man. |
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Philosophy and Fiction. |
In that daily effort in which intelligence aqnd passion mingle
and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline
that will make up the greatest of his strengths.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Emphemeral Creation. |
Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy
or happiness, is liberty.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Emphemeral Creation. |
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock
to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of
its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there
is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus. |
Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile
laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a
certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus. |
Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus. |
There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus. |
"I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and
that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe
of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus. |
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds
one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity
that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that
all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems
to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone,
each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself
forms a world.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus. |
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill
a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus, closing words of
essay. |
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society,
even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic
creation is a gift to the future.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
The Artist and His Time. |