In this blog post, I will reflect on the meaning and meaninglessness of life, the essence of absurdity, and the significance of rebellion, freedom, and passion—the responses humans can adopt in the face of absurdity—through the lens of “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
Meaning, Meaninglessness, and Absurdity
While reading ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, the first thing that catches one’s attention is the work’s place within Camus’s philosophy. Camus divided his body of work into two phases: negation and affirmation. During the phase of negation, he produced the novel ‘The Stranger’, the plays ‘Caligula’ and ‘The Misunderstanding’, and the philosophical work ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’. He then moved on to the stage of affirmation, conceiving the novel ‘The Plague’, the plays ‘State of Siege’ and ‘The Just’, and the philosophical work ‘The Rebel’. Considering this progression, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ feels like the starting point where Camus’s thought truly begins to unfold.
What is particularly striking is that, through the theme of “absurdity”—which became a major turning point in modern thought—Camus examines the lives we lead unconsciously in our daily routines and the world that suddenly feels alien to us at a certain moment. He traces the wear and tear of life within the mundane and the strangeness of the world that exists outside of oneself in a style that is both beautiful and passionate. Therefore, I believe ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ should not be read merely as a book dealing with a single metaphysical concept or philosophical logic. What is most important in this book is, above all, “the sensibility of the absurd.” In that it seeks to grasp the theme of the absurd not through rigid, conceptual discourse but based on living, concrete experiences, this book gives the impression that philosophical reflection and aesthetic thought are closely intertwined.
To understand the absurdity Camus speaks of, one must first examine “absurdity” as a concrete state rather than the abstract concept of “absurdity.” The absurdity—which Camus regarded as akin to Descartes’ methodological skepticism—begins, above all, with a fundamental question about the meaning of life. What is important here is not suicide as a social phenomenon, but the essential question: “Is life worth living?” For Camus, the true problem of philosophy lies precisely here. Determining whether life is worth living is the most important issue, and committing suicide for any reason ultimately amounts to an act of acknowledging that life is not worth living.
So what lies at the root of suicide? There, the absurdity of everyday life takes hold. When we live buried in habit and boredom and suddenly realize the meaninglessness of life, a sense of absurdity arises. Ultimately, absurdity can be described as an awakening of consciousness that comes when, one day, a crack suddenly appears on the surface of life.
The Awakening to Absurdity in Repetitive Daily Life
We generally live by repeating similar days over and over. We wake up in the morning, take the train, work for a few hours at the office or factory, eat a meal, take the train again, work, eat another meal, and go to sleep. And this nearly identical rhythm repeats from Monday through Saturday. Unless there are any particular problems, this life continues without a hitch. But one day, when the question “Why?” suddenly rears its head, everything begins to change. The absurdity Camus speaks of begins precisely with this question.
When a sense of absurdity takes root amid these repetitive days, a disconnect arises between the human being and life, between the actor and the stage set. The world we had previously accepted as familiar and self-evident suddenly appears alien. Human consciousness—the subject that perceives things—realizes that the world no longer exists as a familiar entity but as something “thick.” A single pebble, a single tree, even the landscape of the sky—all take on a hollow meaning, different from before. At that moment, we sense the world’s primordial hostility.
This strangeness does not appear only in the relationship between humans and objects. It is also discovered with absurd clarity in the relationship between myself and others, and between myself and myself. At times, it feels as though the mechanical repetition of human behavior and meaningless gestures render everything around us absurd. For example, imagine someone making a phone call from behind a glass partition. We cannot hear their voice; we see only their gestures. The moment we observe this scene, we suddenly ask ourselves, “What is the point of their life?”
The immeasurable anxiety and strangeness a person feels in the presence of others, as well as the sense of disconnection that comes from viewing one’s own reflection in a photograph or mirror as if it were someone else, can also be described as an awakening to the absurd. It seemed a natural connection that the novel ‘The Stranger’, published in the same year as ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, is a work in which this fictitious creation of relationships is almost perfectly embodied.
However, the absurdity Camus speaks of does not end with the superficial strangeness between humans and the world. It originates from a more fundamental function of consciousness. Absurdity is born at the point where the irrationality of humans and the world, humanity’s longing to unify the world into a single whole, and the human desire for clarity collide.
We often assume that life, external reality, and objects belong to “my world.” In reality, however, objects are simply objects in and of themselves, having no connection whatsoever to our system of meaning. Nevertheless, humans strive to understand the world around them within a unified system of meaning and a logical order of reason. This is because they feel that only by organizing the world into a unified, human-centered value system and grasping it as clear truth can they justify their own existence and life.
However, completely independent of this rational human desire, the world’s irrationality exists outside of humanity in the form of primordial silence. Humans attempt to understand this utterly indifferent external world through a clear perception of the world that wells up from the depths of their consciousness. It is precisely at that moment that a bewildering relationship is formed between humanity and the world. This is the relationship of absurdity that Camus speaks of.
Ultimately, the relationship that binds me to the world cannot be one of harmony or unity, but must be one of absurdity. What I can truly grasp and believe in are the conflicts, disconnections, contradictions, chaos, and strangeness that emerge within that very relationship. In this regard, I felt that absurdity is not merely a declaration that the world is strange or that life is meaningless, but rather something that arises from the gap between humanity’s desire to understand the world and ascribe meaning to it, and the world itself—which exists entirely independent of human will.
Refusing Suicide and Living with Absurdity
The skepticism that arises from the desperate question, “Is life worth living?” does not ultimately end in mere negation. Rather, at the end of that intense negation, a new logic of affirmation emerges. Absurdity is both the primordial foundation that sustains human thought and life, and the endpoint that makes the ultimate logical and aesthetic meaning possible.
That is why Camus rejects suicide. To commit suicide is to acknowledge the habitual nature of life, the absence of any profound reason for living, the recklessness of everyday existence, and the futility of human suffering. In other words, suicide is a melodramatic confession of one’s defeat by life, and an act that simultaneously shatters even the most obvious truth discovered through the awakening to the absurd.
Suicide is also an act of surrender that eliminates “I”—one element of the antagonistic relationship between “I” and “the world.” Camus argues that once one realizes the relationship between the world and the self is absurd, one must not end that relationship but rather consciously endure the conflict. Therefore, suicide is a cowardly escape from life and cannot be a true solution for a human being confronting absurdity.
Camus also rejects idealistic notions that place hope beyond the boundaries of life. He criticizes the ideal of transcendence reached by Jaspers as a humiliating line of thought and views Shestov’s attitude of accepting contradiction as God as akin to a magician’s tragic acrobatics. Furthermore, he criticizes Kierkegaard’s faith—that “the believer finds victory in his defeat”—as a didactic treatise, and he also criticizes Husserl’s phenomenology as a metaphysics of consolation that serves an additional god.
Thus, the “philosophical suicide” Camus speaks of refers to a philosophical leap that attempts to escape the absurd through transcendent faith or religious consolation. It is a way of evading the absurd itself by seeking answers beyond it, rather than facing the absurd to the very end. Camus rejects not only suicide but also any attempt to escape the absurd through absurd hope or transcendent ideas.
What, then, remains for a person who has come to realize the absurd? Ultimately, it is to live by facing, with transparent consciousness and to the very end, the tension and disconnection that lie between “myself” and “the world,” relying only on what I know with certainty. It is at this point that the figure of the passionate human being who “lives the absurd” emerges. The theater actor, Don Juan, and the conqueror all embody this human figure.
To live the absurd is to not flee from life. Living with absurdity means, above all else, observing it. I believed that the ideal of the absurd human being is a succession of moments in the present—moments in which one does not flee the stage of life, but looks absurdity squarely in the face without clinging to illusory hopes, and constantly confronts the darkness within oneself and between oneself and others.
Living Life with Rebellion, Freedom, and Passion
Camus derives three outcomes from absurdity. These are rebellion, freedom, and passion.
First, rebellion is not about accepting the limits—as in suicide or a philosophical leap—but about persisting within those limits. Rebellion is the integrity that maintains the constant conflict between human rational desire and the world itself. It is not about trying to eliminate or replace the absurd simply because one has recognized it; rather, it is an attitude of living while remaining fully conscious of that fact to the very end.
Freedom, too, does not refer to metaphysical freedom. It is the freedom of the mind and action; it is freedom as human agency, unbound by hope or the future. The principle of this freedom lies in becoming indifferent to anything other than the pure flame of life. I felt that the freedom spoken of here is living the life given to us in the present as our own, without relying on any future guarantees or transcendent meanings.
And passion is the exhaustion of all that is given. In other words, it is the act of living as fully as possible while desperately burning through life. Camus’s statement—that living to the fullest means feeling one’s life, rebellion, and freedom to the utmost—most clearly illustrates his attitude toward an absurd life.
It is not a matter of giving up on life itself simply because it seems futile and meaningless; rather, it is a matter of drawing out the full extent of the life allotted to oneself to the very end. Sisyphus is the symbol that best illustrates the human destiny of living out one’s life with rebellion, freedom, and passion until there is nothing left.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is the figure condemned to endlessly roll a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down again. His task is endless, and the result is equally futile.
However, after reading ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, one can no longer view him merely as a tragic figure repeating meaningless labor.
This is because Sisyphus embodies the human spirit that continues to live out its destiny even in the face of absurdity. He is not unaware that the boulder will roll back down; he knows it, just as he knows that his fate is futile. Yet he pushes the boulder up again. It is precisely at this point that Sisyphus transcends his status as a mere mythical figure and emerges as the true embodiment of a human being living with an ever-awake consciousness.
Ultimately, what I came to understand most clearly from ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ is that eliminating absurdity is not the goal of life. Humans may not be able to discover complete meaning or a unified order in the world. Rather, the disconnect between humanity’s desire to find meaning and a world that offers no answer to that desire may be the only relationship we can truly experience. If so, what matters is not avoiding that disconnect but living while consciously facing it.
Instead of fleeing absurdity through suicide or transcendent hope, it means rebelling, living freely, and passionately exhausting the life we’ve been given. I believe that is the image of the absurd human being Camus speaks of, and the image of humanity embodied by Sisyphus as he rolls the boulder back up the hill. Realizing the meaninglessness of life does not necessarily mean giving up on life. Rather, I felt that the most important insight offered by ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ is that it is only when we look squarely at that meaninglessness that we can live our own lives with even greater intensity.
