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  • Essay / Albert Camus' Interpretations of Absurdity in The Myth of Sisyphus

    The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is a philosophical essay written in 1942 that addresses the question of whether life is worth living lived. From the author's perspective, people share a path similar to that of the Greek hero Sisyphus, moving a boulder up a mountain only for it to come back down and repeat the process indefinitely. Camus' essay represents a metaphor for life having no meaning, through his interpretations of past constructs. With the principle that all living beings, including humans, are organisms descended from the smallest bacteria, a collection of atoms without a purpose in life or even a set of orientations. Camus recounts human constructs of choice, religion and purpose to emphasize the incompatibility of human existence in the universe but ultimately, unlike other philosophers, Camus believes that people should accept this in order to live better and accept the desperate situation to make the most of it. out of life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay Albert Camus was a French writer, journalist and philosopher, whose mother was illiterate and whose father died from his injuries during the Great War. As a human rights defender and Nobel Prize winner, Camus' words carried great weight and undoubtedly contributed to the philosophy of absurdity and existentialism. So, to examine Camus's ideas and opinions, one would need to take a look at his past work. In his previous work, The Stranger, it was shown that people may not express or feel emotions when another person dies. In this case, the main character, Meursault, feels no emotion towards the death of his friend or towards the man he shoots and kills during an altercation. Meursault feels neither sadness nor remorse. Only when he is sentenced to death does he speak out, declaring before his death that he would not take the opportunity to turn to God, which Rubin believes indicates that life Indeed, it has no meaning when death is insignificant. Additionally, the absence of a god or higher figure is linked to his work with The Myth of Sisyphus in which without God there could be no choice or purpose in life. Rubin finds an interesting distinction between the two, in which it is not a pointless futility to despair about, but a futility to be recognized and celebrated. Like Sisyphus, Meursault has achieved a strange peace between his predicament and himself, silencing faith and hope and finding happiness in the absurd and recognizing the absurdity of life. In Camus' writing on The Myth of Sisyphus, the main idea can be interpreted towards life. being absurd. People are born into a world in which they have no choice in the matter, “limited by conceptions of society, resources…and the environment” (Whistler 52). Considering the vastness of the world and the universe, Whistler explains how humans find themselves in the "borderline of nothingness", meaning they have no real choices to make and therefore no purpose. Camus presents the myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor that explains how meaningless and absurd life is through his interpretations of purpose. It can be seen that the repetition of what Sisyphus does symbolizes the fate of humanity, representing what people do every day of their lives without an alternative. Constrained by the environment and surroundings which do not offer the choice to live differently. Camus establishes that human lives are aimless, believing that the rest of humanity also understands but makes an act offaith to believe that human existence has a justified purpose. However, Elif describes Camus as someone who "doesn't want to take that leap", because purpose emerges from choices, and since there is no one to choose to give life to people (no God), humans would therefore lack purpose. must look at the state of being lost. Lost to God and lost to life, given that Camus's writing about Sisyphus seems to advocate the rejection of what we are bound by. Sisyphus, like the rest of humanity, is condemned to perform thoughtless tasks, symbolizing the absurdity in which humans live and, as Camus believes, the absence of purpose. For nothing anyone does is attributed to a progression in which “progression means goal.” and things made by humans, like money, possessions, and love, are simply constructs meant for progression, which means that in the grand scheme of things, it makes no sense for the universe (Waldo 18). The rock also represents the fact that humanity has been condemned to a curse – as Whistler argues, the drives and false constructs of humanity, and the things one needs to satisfy them. Additionally, it is important to remember that Sisyphus is not moving the rock indefinitely. Sisyphus is tricked into rolling the boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down due to its weight, but at that point Camus expresses that "during this return, this pause, Sisyphus should s 'interest'. According to Elif, it's not the act of pushing the rock itself that's most important, but rather the brief intervals before and after each climb up the mountain. Camus places the real cause of Sisyphus' suffering not so much in physical tension as in the knowledge or awareness that the futile task entrusted to him is all he has to hope for or hope for eternity or the rest of his life. life. For Camus, the suffering of humanity would not be the pain suffered which would be unbearable, but rather the conscious understanding that pain and suffering would be all that people would ever know, without ever leading to anything more fruitful. Camus compares this awareness to the human condition, as each arc completed in life represents each time Sisyphus reaches the top with the rock, which inherently makes no sense to the universe. Each test and exam passed to move on to the next, in a broader perspective from primary school to high school to university, the perspective broadens just like the daily grind to end in death and nothingness . Why then, leave no impact on the universe, continue to live longer when we could put an end to it much more quickly? In Camus, Elif asserts that suicide is one of the only real problems in existential philosophy. One of the major problems presented by Camus is that, in a meaningless and absurd world, the goal of living in suffering seems incompatible to many. The point being made is that there is no solution to the problem of living in an absurd and meaningless existence. Camus's argument is that the only solution to deal with it is to live in the absurd, thus confirming the incompatibility of human existence, or life in general. Committing suicide does not provide the solution to eliminating absurdity, which is why Camus says that we must “imagine Sisyphus happy”. According to Whistler, all solutions to absurdity have been attempted or tried before, which Camus refers to as "honest" and "dishonest" paths, such as the use of religion in order to erase or distract oneself from its life. The honest path recognized by Camus is to live with and be aware of the absurd. In any case, to avoid what Camus calls "philosophical suicide.