In Spite of Absurdity
Living with Sisyphean Resolve
Absurdity
A Sisyphean task is one that is both laborious and futile; a chore that requires great and extended vigor but accomplishes precisely nothing at all. This sort of task derives its name from the Greek myth of Sisyphus, a king sentenced by the gods to push a boulder up a hill for eternity.
This myth has defied the erosion of time because it illustrates something fundamental about the nature of our reality. The connection is explored in Camus’ classic existentialist essay The Myth of Sisyphus.
The problem is as follows. If one assumes that Sisyphus’ has a reasoning capacity, it becomes clear that the futility of his chore renders his situation absurd, then the only reason to continue to push the boulder up the hill is that his fate has left him with nothing else to do.
As such, Sisyphus is a character trapped in a constant search for meaning along a path devoid of it — a search that can only terminate again and again in absurdity.
Camus observes a similar farcicality in the human condition. Given the inescapable reality of our mortality, our lives themselves are, ultimately, Sisyphean tasks. This is because every day of human existence is a day spent building for a tomorrow that will eventually see all razed back to the ground.
When disillusioned, man and his pesky reasoning faculty find themselves thus forcefully confronted with a reality that cannot on its own supply a fundamental need for purpose. In this light, the human condition itself is absurd. In fact, it is the ultimate absurdity.
This is problematic.
As outlined in the fundamental problems, an inability to quell our impulse towards teleological thinking results in a formidable barrier to engagement. If one allows that quality engagement is the key to positive experience, it is clear that this inability further relegates our condition to one of suffering — which, in turn, only sharpens the absurdity.
Since a life filled with suffering is not a worthwhile one, Camus sets out to confront what he calls the only serious philosophical question: if one is forced to truly contend with reality, and reality is, at base, a chaotic, infertile place for reason, is there a reasonable alternative to simply exiting existence? In a cold vacuum of meaning, what can be gained from continuing to push the rock?
More bluntly — why not just die?
From Camus:
Here 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; one must first answer.
One way or another, we as reasoning and mortal beings must come up with a convincing response to this question — a robust solution to the problem of why we should do anything at all.
This post explores one such solution, which borrows from Camus’ absurdist remaking of existentialism.
Illusion
We can begin by assuming that a healthy human reason is such that the need to operate with a sense of meaning must at least be addressed (if not legitimately answered).
This can be done in one of two ways: in the harsh condition of absurdity or in the comfort of illusion.
As Camus puts it:
On all essential problems (I mean thereby those that run the risk of leading to death or those that intensify the passion of living) there are probably but two methods of thought: the method of La Palisse and the method of Don Quixote.
Don Quixote is the protagonist of the Spanish classic of same name. Unhappy with reality, he resorts to fantasy, becoming (in his mind) a chivalrous and valiant knight errant, styled after medieval chivalric romance literature.
I must admit that the method of Don Quixote is an intriguing one, then, if it is allowed that ultimate victory in the face of absurdity is “happy” life in spite of it, it seems at first glance that a logical strategy would be to simply go around it.
Indeed, one rather easily imagine Quixote taken in by a belief that delivers a veneer of purpose without also demanding behavior that infringes on the quality of his (or others’) experience. Were such a bubble to remain intact, I can find no issue with him having resided in it.
The problem, however, is two-fold. For one, illusions that consistently result in good outcomes are scarce, where they exist at all. Don Quixote’s many unfortunate adventures, the first of which involved a sound beating at the hands (blades) of a windmill, are predictable given an untethered, ingenuous disposition.
For another, reality is simply too full of possible events (or, perhaps, insights) that can pop the bubble. In a reality where any one of us could, at any time, fall victim to something so senseless as terminal cancer, say, illusions are difficult to maintain.
So no, despite the temptation, upon honest inspection it becomes all too clear that one who placates their reason with illusion is much too vulnerable both to poor decision-making and the likely prospect of needing to face the absurdity at some point, anyway. Given the opportunity to choose otherwise, illusion is, at best, a suboptimal solution.
After conceding this, we must now weigh the alternative: facing the abyss and striving to conclude all is well in spite of it. One who undertakes this effort is dubbed by Camus as an “absurd man.” An absurd man recognizes first and foremost that, if pain is likely to be confronted eventually, we are best off facing it on our own terms.
A much thornier, and yet also more promising, path now appears. It may be observed that the absurd man who is able to make peace with the absurdity is untouchable, for he must no longer fear being brought to his knees by the unexpected.
Such a man lives with the clarity that comes from truth and, as in most cases, is much surer of living well because of it.
Pain
As with most worthwhile things, this path to well-being is not an easy one. The pain of disillusion — of reconciling our reason directly with a privation of reconciliation — is sharp, and, for most, probably unavoidable.
Camus sees the insight of absurdity as a parallel to Sisyphus’s opportunities for contemplation of the futility of his task:
At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain. It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me.
Our instinctual reaction to watching that stone roll down the hill again is desperate, angry and confused. Here, at the beginning of his journey, the absurd man must contend with a suction of dread that disrupts his attention and claws at his equanimity. One might compare it to surfacing into sunlight after spending a lifetime in darkness.
This experience has been described by many who have tackled the problem of absurdity.
From Camus:
At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’ s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this “nausea,” as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd.
From Robert Solomon in From Hegel to Existentialism:
The existential attitude begins with a disoriented individual facing a confused world that he cannot accept.
From Nietzsche in The Will to Power, as he contemplates the fate of a post-enlightenment world which had turned its back on God (in his view, the major divider separating us from absurdity):
What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism… For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe.
From Jean-Paul Sartre:
Life begins on the other side of despair.
Nausea, disorientation, nihilism, despair… these are all different ways to describe the pain of waking from illusion and taking a proper account of our circumstance. It should be of no great surprise that many who have glimpsed this barren landscape — whether it be in the form of a brief existential crisis or a prolonged state of depression — have been desperate of only one thing: relief from it.
Indeed, a common method for dealing with the pain of absurdity is to hold it at bay; to find ways to engage without addressing it; to pantomime a life of meaning without any real conviction and with a constant fear of crisis.
One may be thankful, however, that this path is not the only one. The philosophers who recognized the likelihood of suffering also point us to a better solution than simply seeking relief from it. Whether it be Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Camus’s absurd hero, or Sarte’s proposition that existence precedes essence, all indicate that there is good reason to hide not from absurdity, but rather reside and thrive in it. The answer is, in this sense, a non-answer — a solution that incorporates the existence of an intractable problem.
But yes, at first, there is pain. There is probably no way to soften the blow without prolonging it, and so I believe that one should not try. Should the absurd man wish to ascend to the absurd hero, he must accept the pain as part of the journey (or even better, as a positive signal that he is going in the right direction) and resist the temptation to head back to calmer waters.
In this resistance, essential is a faith that they who stare unblinkingly into the light despite the burning of their eyes will eventually perceive a new world.
Peace
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning…
Pain of most sorts is transient. So too is the pain of the absurdity. The resistance of our reason is forceful, and yet relenting. And then, when this most essential aching fades away, the absurd man finds himself, rather strangely, almost giddy at the newfound fortitude of his disposition. This is the metaphysical graduation that Camus seeks.
In it one finds the means not only to exist, but to truly live; to measure themself against the universe and compose a rich symphony of subjectively meaningful experience tainted by no illusion that it must also be objectively so.
Indeed, one perceives that, in the embrace of the absurd, the reasons for our toils must not constantly fall into question through failures of illusion. This allows us to reach a final and lasting acceptance of our circumstances and, subsequently, an earnest and uninterrupted engagement with our task.
It should be emphasized again that true acceptance is not realized through reconciliation of what cannot be reconciled; it is not a resolution of the absurdity. Rather, it is a defiance of it … a vigor of action in spite of it that rebelliously creates joy from emptiness.
The Greeks had a rather beautiful word, Eudaimonia, to describe such an existence. It is defined as:
happiness, esp (in the philosophy of Aristotle) that resulting from a rational active life
The peace on the other side of pain stems directly from this essence of rational activity. While it may differ from the naive joy of a child or the drunken bliss of the convert, it is deep and enduring in a way they are not.
To return finally to the Greeks, we may understand our fate as similar to that of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae who faced an unending sea of Persian forces; our lives being the warriors and the universe’s entropic march forming the Persian hordes.
In the face of such odds, we have several options:
- to lay down our weapons and be overrun
- to fight with hope founded in treacherous alliances, accepting the risk of battling unskillfully under their terms or eventually being betrayed
- to fight hopelessly, lament injury, and ultimately yield in fear
- to fight skillfully and defiantly so long as we have the means to
Many of us will choose one of the first three options. I will neither deign to judge those that do nor condescend to demand others pick a certain path. This is a decision everyone must make for themselves.
I know only that I cannot do other than to follow in the example of Camus, and Sartre, and Leonidas, and forge my way with the last option [1]. I do this in peace, having answered, and yet also in anticipation; for in battle is honor, and glory.
Camus concludes:
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 struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
And with that, having also left him there, we should be free to move on to a more interesting question than whether to live: how to?
Footnotes
[1] It should help that Camus’ analogy fails in at least one important way, and that is in the intelligibility and fidelity of the task we have before us. But that is a topic for another post.
