The Show Must Go On
Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. The eternal question. When we come face-to-face with the unintelligibility of the world, the imminence of death, and the ultimate futility of existence, why don't we just kill ourselves? When we realise the unattainability of being able to reduce the world into axioms of rationality, when we come to understand that we are all, after all, bit-part players in the great theatre of the absurd, how can life retain meaning? Not in Plato and his divine forms, nor in Kierkegaard and his god. Camus' solution, which seems utterly meaningless to me, is to accept it, and by acceptance, conquer it. Sisyphus is somehow supposed to tell himself "all is well" when he's marching down that hill, and Camus would have us imagine that he is happy. For an essay that spends its greater volume expounding on the absurd, the pseudo-solution is perhaps the most absurd part.
Dostoevsky got it partly right. "Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth." But I don't think you need to have a large intelligence or a deep heart or be really great. The sadness comes out of the very activity of thinking. In the act of thinking, you understand that "man's greatest tragedy is that he can conceive of a perfection which he cannot attain." Yes, Byron saw it clearly. Childe Harold can scale the mountains and travel the world, but he carries the agony of rational existence with him. Manfred can surpass Faust in plumbing the secrets of heaven and hell, but he cannot live with the bitterness of his own mortality. There is no solution. Sisyphus is not happy. He goes on because he must. And so do we all.
Heigh-ho. That was a nice and cheery post, wasn't it?
Dostoevsky got it partly right. "Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth." But I don't think you need to have a large intelligence or a deep heart or be really great. The sadness comes out of the very activity of thinking. In the act of thinking, you understand that "man's greatest tragedy is that he can conceive of a perfection which he cannot attain." Yes, Byron saw it clearly. Childe Harold can scale the mountains and travel the world, but he carries the agony of rational existence with him. Manfred can surpass Faust in plumbing the secrets of heaven and hell, but he cannot live with the bitterness of his own mortality. There is no solution. Sisyphus is not happy. He goes on because he must. And so do we all.
Heigh-ho. That was a nice and cheery post, wasn't it?