> One must imagine Sisyphus happy
Notice that Camus doesn't say HOW to imagine Sisyphus happy. How do you?
I imagine that he's happy because he takes pride in the quality of his work pushing the stone.
Notice that Camus doesn't say HOW to imagine Sisyphus happy. How do you?
I imagine that he's happy because he takes pride in the quality of his work pushing the stone.
The gods controlled the ascent, but they forgot to regulate the walk back down. In those brief, unburdened minutes descending the slope, Sisyphus is completely outside their authority.
You can imagine him however you like, laughing at the absurdity of it, studying the mountain, or simply enjoying the breeze. It almost doesn't matter. The walk down belongs to him.
The gods imposed the sentence. Sisyphus decides what it means.
This is Camus' idea of the universe and how to rebel against it by owning and enjoying the small freedoms.
Personally, I believe how you see Sisyphus happy reflects how YOU would enjoy your small freedoms, and this shows how Camus often wanted people to do philosophy on their own.
I wonder if Camus had his own answer to that question. Could Camus imagine Sisyphus happy?
I don't think rebellion or ownership are enough. Rebellion is meaningless when you're alone with nothing to rebel against, and ownership is not inherently positive.
Gods not regulating the decent is an interesting take. Can one learn to smile while falling?
I've never seen an unhappy astronaut on the ISS :P
fwiw, I largely agree with mkovach's interpretation because of the direct analogy to modern work culture. But I do admire your view as well, I get a lot of satisfaction from deep cleaning and maintaining things, and there's a commensurate amount of pride watching the item transform back into something clean again.
Basically embracing life with full knowledge that there isn't some final transcendent epiphany or rapturous endpoint
And yet the homonculus presses me forward and I want this, need that, think about this, touch that, stare at those, wonder, get frustrated, click my teeth and tap my desk, build this, build that, not good enough, start over...
I'm well aware that meditation and just calming the fuck down now and then are salves for the insanity, it's just wholly and completely weird that I can be aware of these things and still, reliably, also something resembling crazy.
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
There's a sort of pride in fully knowing, accepting, and disengaging with some rational proof, and still "living your life anyways". In some sense, even though that might be irrational, it's one of the deepest forms of satisfaction.
Personally, this helped https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/03/14/camuss-new-yo...
>Forty-eight hours of pleasant euphoria
Such an epicure? So Epicurean?
(As well as the rest of the diary)
But you're right, it can also be easily used to justify horrible things. And in this case, you can still lead to authoritarian nightmares, or worse.
Maybe bad people are bad, and no matter what philosophy you adopt, one can twist it to be bad.
Huh? Do you mean that in a literal sense, that Camus doesn't give instructions on how imagination works? To me, the quote certainly does explain how Sisyphus could be happy:
His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing [..] The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart
Struggle alone doesn't do it for me personally, but taking pride in how well I struggle does.