A refutation of the myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Albert Camus: Myth of the Sisyphus is an all-time philosophical and aesthetic work that emphasizes the theme of the absurd. In this essay, I would love to refute Camus’s absurdity, although I have great reverence and love for his writing. The refutation grounds used are literary, metaphysical, ontological, psychological and materialistic.

What is the myth of Sisyphus in Greek mythology? Sisyphus was a man condemned by the gods to climb a rock all the way uphill only to find it rolling down again. Then he is forced to repeat the task. Through the myth of Sisyphus, Camus brings up the theme that life is absurd, it has no purpose or meaning. At the same time, Camus contradicts himself by saying that the absurd man must avoid suicide and live a reckless and wasteful life, a life in perpetual rebellion. That makes Camus an aesthetic anarchist.

An etymological definition of the word absurd dates back to the 16th century, where the word is referred to as “out of tune”. First of all, I would like to use the literature to refute Camus’s argument. The common of life, that is, everyday life, such as waking up 6, having breakfast 7, working 8, etc. Camus is presented as a difficult task. The rhythm of daily life can be a pleasant stimulus experienced within streams of consciousness. For example: I enjoy my life, I wake up having tea, I read, I exercise, I smoke and then I go to the school where I teach. Everyday life for me is a myth-poetic experience tinged with the purple robes of mysticism. I do not understand in what sense my daily life is absurd. Sisyphus’ very task can be existentially significant. I met a lady whose husband was a missionary doctor in Liberia, who contracted the virus there and died. She didn’t even see her husband’s body. However, she is happy and content. Camus says that God is not there and yet he contradicts himself by saying that God is absurd. Ordinary human beings can indulge in a poetic life and find satisfaction in the little things in life. Honestly speaking, I don’t understand the denial of Camus’s life. Even a person going through a depressing phase of life affirms it negatively. Denial is an illogical concept in existential philosophy. We have to represent a living narrative of everyday life.

Second, I would like to take metaphysics as the subject of discussion against Camus’s absurdity. The emotional content of life, such as need, desire, love, ambition, desire, etc. they are not rational, deterministic, or naturalistic. How can they be treated as absurd? When I am sharing and giving and receiving love, how can it be absurd? The experience of love is metaphysical and transcendental. As a Christian, I find comfort in the gift that my love for God is reciprocated with grace and mercy. For example: my daughter wants to enter a medical school. How can your aspiration be absurd? The metaphysical intimacy of life as a subject is not Camus’s absurdity, but cathartic as Aristotle advocates. Hatred, envy, greed, and lust are underestimated subjects in a Christian worldview. These feelings are also inherent in catharsis, albeit in a negative sense. We live a life that has language and signifies the methodology of presence that the school of deconstruction uncovered in its rebellion. Camus deals with the theme of death in the Sisyphus Myth. I should ask Camus, are we sentenced to death? For example, in Christian weltanschauung, giving Holy Communion as the last rite to a dying person will uplift the person spiritually. I would like to ask Camus the blunt question of whether a dying person would rather listen to the AC / DC song Highway to Hell. A metaphysical transcendence is significant and cathartic. I am using the word cathartic in the broad sense of the term.

Next, I would like to use the ontological argument. Ontology in philosophy refers to being. The word present in Logos has an inescapable presence of meaning. To be so absurd would be incoherent and incongruous. For example, making love is a process of creating the poetry of meaning. How can it be absurd? Orgasm is pleasant, not absurd. A being in the process of interaction creates meaning. Meaning is a ritual in the process of the meaning of being. Meaning is a doing of a becoming. I would also like to argue against Sartre’s being for himself. There is no pure existential self. The meaning is reciprocal and referential. For a Christian worldview, the direct ontological reference of meaning is a being with God, a being for God. If I pray to God, how does it become absurd? The various pretenders of the absurd are taking a hard-line stance and engaging in the fascism of thought. When we help another person, in Sartre’s term we are a being for the other. It would be unwise to say that Mother Teresa’s love for the poor, the afflicted, and the oppressed is absurd. The ontology is permeated with the meaning of self-referential reciprocity.

To look at Camus’s notion of absurdity from a psychological framework is to acknowledge its anomaly. ID feelings, like wanting and wanting, are primary affective feelings and cannot rest on the laurel of absurdity. How can the absurd address claims of emotional and physical satisfaction? Even Mike Jagger’s song, ‘I Can’t Get Any Satisfaction’ is selfish and born with a fetish appetite for a philosophical craving for desire. An emotional being is always in a state of being possessed by the notion of making sense. The need for the Ego cannot be neglected in a creative society that adheres to the dialogue of being a democracy. How can an Ego State be absurd? Never!

To look at the absurd in a materialistic way is to see the operation of an economy of need and desire in human actions. I have to work to earn money to run my daily life. How can that be absurd? It is the natural human tendency to be lucrative and profitable. Here we find the only worldview that affected materialism was communism. And communism is a failed God. China and Russia have opened their doors to capitalism. China is the contradiction being ruled by hegemonic autocrats and leaving the economy to the free market.

The absurd as a philosophical notion is madness. We do not drive our lives to suicide nor do we live life in anarchy. There is a purpose, a meaning, and a destiny that make life. Life can result in the meaning of being prone to a catharsis of experience.