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Myth of Sisyphus
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>bla bla life is absurd
>so just don't kill yourself

He never actually answers the question. Okay, so life is absurd. Why not kill myself?
Sisyphus was destined to roll the rock for eternity: but we can quit rolling ours whenever we want (suicide).
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>>7620629
To be fair, you don't know if suicide means you get to stop rolling the rock
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Suicide is the negation of struggle, the myth is just a way to conceptualize the universal process of effort
Basically a lazy Frenchman makes a big deal out of everything
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>>7620629
>>>/his/
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>>7620637
...It's Camus, it's literature.
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>>7620629
Camus explicitly said you have to either:
1) Find meaning through religion
2) Kill yourself
or
3) Embrace the absurd
So go ahead and kill yourself. You have our permission to die.
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>>7620640
Why can't I recognize the absurd and from that decide to kill myself?
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>>7620647
you may kill yourself because you recognize the absurd, but that wouldn't be 'embracing the absurd'
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>>7620668
>>7620647
All this really reduces to trite platitudes, or, rather, Camus made a 'philosophy' (so to speak) out of trite platitudes re: suicide. He was a sad man.
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albert camus was a retarded faggot who got famous 'justifying' his choice not to suicide even though he never had the balls to do it in the first place

suicidal people don't sit down and write novels

and people don't kill themselves becuse muh lack of objective meaning

his works are just intellectualized bullshit. a shallow pretentious french piece of shit pretending to grapple with hard questions

the little bitch was never suicidal, not once in his life. he doesn't know a fucking thing about it, just forget about his shitty work
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>>7620668
>'embracing the absurd'
And why should I?
If nothing has meaning, all is absurd - it doesn't matter.
I feel "embrace the absurd" is like saying "embrace the pain of living", and why would I do that if there's no intrinsic value in suffering (embracing the absurd)?
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>>7620629
Because you have just as much right to feel contented as hopeless. There really is no reason to prefer being an angsty little shit over being a happy productive member of society, so why not choose the most enjoyable road in the long term? Just because there's no inherent meaning in anything doesn't mean I can't derive meaning from the pleasure of a good book or a nice risotto.

One must imagine Sisyphus as happy.

full disclosure I'm a filthy hedonist
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>>7620673
spotted the emo
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>>7620629
Camus wasn't very smart, I hope people don't live by his petty thoughts.
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>>7620682
Nobody said you should. Do you even know what the conversation you're having is?

Killing yourself and Embracing the Absurd are two options that are mutually exclusive.

You can do either, but not both.

So go ahead and kill yourself, if you want.
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>>7620629
Read the last paragraph again and then slap yourself for being a fucking illiterate retard.
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>>7620635
it probably does though to be honest, assuming theres no after life (a relatively safe assumption)
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>>7620682
you shouldn't just forget him dude

like, why are you trying to justify your decision to say his work is bullshit?
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>>7620694
>Killing yourself and Embracing the Absurd are two options that are mutually exclusive.
>You can do either, but not both.
Yes. And why would I pick the latter?
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>>7620701
Because you want to.

Nobody said you should.
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>>7620684
see this is the type of person who camus appeals to

he's like the fortune cookie of philosophers
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>>7620698
Safe on which basis?
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>>7620668
>>7620629

Agreeing with OP here, Myth of Sisyphus is shit tier philosophical investigation.

The line "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" is the argumentative equivalent of Deus ex Machina.
Camus pulls a rabbit out of a hat and determines that we should smile.

But it's also clear that the book isn't meant as a serious investigation. It leans on the pathos of its archetypes.

>The actor
>The seducer
>The conquerer

These are not existential answers, they're wish fulfilment for the existentially depleted man.
Their revolt is no less pathetic, Camus merely props them up as aspirational figures.
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>>7620702
Yes... That's the entire point of Camus essay: to point out that suicide isn't the way to go.
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>>7620647
Embracing the absurd is coming together with the realization that you have to create your own meaning in life through your actions. It's supposed to free you and empower you, but if it makes you want to kill yourself then hey, who's to stop you. Just know that this life is the only one you got so why not just live it to the full. So it's basically YOLO, but not as in the way the kids see it.
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>>7620673
Are you fucking 15? Because you write and think like you're barely in highschool.
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>>7620710
See >>7620708
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>>7620706
Dualism pls go
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philosophical suicide =! boohoo suicide


the answer to your problems if your life is shit enough is always suicide.
he's not refuting that.

he's refuting the idea that suicide is a solution to the meaning of life.
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>>7620719
I'm not a cartesian dualist if that's what you are asking.
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>>7620749
Well then the notion of an afterlife isn't just wishful, it's illogical.
Sorry bro but an afterlife is necessarily dualist, and dualism is straight up wrong. Emotions are chemical reactions, and chemical reactions stop in your brain when you die.
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>>7620673
>suicidal people don't sit down and write novels
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I think people criticize this work so much because it is so accessible. It's an emotionally driven attack in the vein of the hipster movement.

I know because I went through those emotions and finally looked back on them to see the error of my ways.
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>>7620805
Or he doesn't offer anything.

>muh moralizing
>muh absurdity society is against you
>muh suicide or religion, or the third option
>muh look at me pretend to be an authority on Basic intelelctual thoughts
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>>7620673
xD
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>>7620805
He offers some interesting thoughts in an accesible way.

If you want to go deeper in to the existentialist movement from there then you can.

Nothing to shit your pants over.
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I feel like everyone have felt that life is absurd. Maybe they wouldn't choose that word, but what it represents is something so basic it's ridiculous Camus gets to build his own philosophy on stating the obvious and just putting a name to it.
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>>7620826
Meant for >>7620817
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>Why not kill myself
Because it's just as meaningless as being alive. Go ahead lad.
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>>7620829
Agree, this is something you come to independtly when you're fourteen or fifteen.
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>>7620826
>Nothing to shit your pants over.
Pants have to be shat, new pants have to be bought. It's teh way of life.
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>>7620837
Only thing that makes it more likely you won't kill yourself is the biological imperitive built into your nervous system to keep you alive.
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>>7620850
>biological imperitive
Prove it.
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>>7620829
That's existentialism for you. Phenomenological Ontology.

It is what we experience.
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>>7620629
no, you eventually reach a plateau where you can basically prestige. always, any constant effort become as second nature as breathing which you can become an expert in.
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>>7620774
But has the substance of consciousness ever been measured?
And are not our atoms permanently trapped on this plane; forever dispersing and combining?
Does the substance of creation ever fully die?
And are we not made of that very substance?
Who is to say, though the form may change, and all memories fragment and disperse, that we ever cease to experience something.
If it is possible that you were born and your vessel endowed with consciousness, then what makes impossible to happen again? and again, and again.
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>>7620774
Chemical reactions recognizing that they are chemical reactions.

Such a view falls foul of Leibniz's Law of Identity, which says that if things are identical then they must share identical properties. Having a suicidal thought (mind) is not the same as having a wicked body state (brain).
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>>7620829
>everyone have felt
but Camus wrote it down.

This is a literature board for literature. not a feelings board for feelings.
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>>7620896
Like >>7620845 too implies: every fifteen yo has written it in their emo diary

Maybe not everything needs to be written down as a serious piece of philosophy.
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>>7620900
>Maybe not everything needs to be written down as a serious piece of philosophy.
Then tell the fuck not to take himself so seriously if he's gonna pander to late teens.
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>>7620710
YOLO?
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>>7620852
ok, it's obvious you have autism.
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Embrace the absurd because in the end its just as gratifying and funny as it is depressing.
Basically, the absurdity of the world is not instrinsically bad. Its whether of not you affirm or deny it that makes it good or bad. Basically regurgitating Nietzsche's views on life and eternal recurrance.
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>>7620682
dont listen to those exoteric drone plebs.
there is meaning in life... and it is what you make of it.
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I cannot glean any information from this thread. I feel like shit and have no passion or desire in life. What will help me?
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>>7621302
find one or kill yourself
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>>7620635
Well, presenting this as a Pascal's wager, let's say there's a 50/50 chance you get to stop vs. you have to keep pushing. If he has to keep pushing, then he's no worse off than before, while if he gets to stop, he's better off, so it's a win-win situation. (Even though this is 50/50, any non-zero chance of suicide letting him stop pushing the rock will still favour suicide.)
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>>7620673
>suicidal people don't sit down and write novels
Lmao
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>>7621347
Will reading camus help me?
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>>7621365
No, but reading might.
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>>7621365
no. in fact, he might actually make it worse.
>>
Suicide should never be ruled out, I even want assisted suicide to be legal to people who are not terminally ill. But suicide should be only considered if you are the edge of death, if existing is an excruciating experience, because once you commit suicide, there is nothing, you are gone, complete void.

This means that if you are to scared or scared to commit suicide is a reason in itself to not commit it.

Life can always get better, you could write the next HP series, you could find the love of your life. You just got to find your own purpose, even if that would be to have a happy average life, and work towards it.

Even if you think you can't achieve that, you don't know what could happen in your life, maybe we find contact another life form in space, maybe you win the lottery from a ticket you found on the ground. Maybe you won't have the happiest life, but you could have a interesting one out.

Killing yourself would mean you will never experience all the endless possibilities that could happen.

Sorry, not native english
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because life is a beautiful struggle, and you can change your name from Sisyphus to whatever you want and live freely
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>>7620673
>suicidal people don't sit down and write novels

Has anyone ever been more wrong?
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>>7621370
>>7621371
Good to know
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>>7621393
The purpose of life experiences beyond the temporary immediate emotional response is to improve future conditions and to create memories that can be reminisced on and recreated in the future. These experiences are pointless if consciousness is totally annihilated upon death as, then, these experiences, stored in the mind, will cease to exist. For the performer, it will be as if they never happened.
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this thread gave me cancer

it's so obvious that so many of you either haven't actually read it or have only gotten your opinions camus from /lit/
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>>7621615
>thinking u're deep for reading the short story version of a book assigned to high schoolers
>>
>2016
>not being a catholic

atheist nihilist btf0
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>>7621639
i never claimed to be deep, only that everybody here is misunderstanding and misrepresenting the work

it's clearly an essay and not, in fact, a short story

is the stranger assigned to high schoolers? i read it in college and would be impressed and shocked if you can find a high school curriculum in which the stranger (the book i assume you're referring to) is assigned

and to top it all of, sisyphus is very different from the stranger in a number of ways. there are connections for sure, but not in the way you seem to be thinking that would constitute exact similarity
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>>7620963
it's obvious u r dileintatne
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>>7620647
I get the sense reading Camus' philosophy that he wasn't really trying to promote his views so much as he was trying to explain them. Its more an explanation as to why he didn't commit suicide that it is an argument as to why you shouldn't. It feels more like he's answering the question for himself rather than anybody, but he certainly is against suicide in general from the outset.
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>>7620682
To embrace the absurd would be to live life in a constant awareness that all of your actions are probably meaningless. To turn to religion would be to reject the absurd by insisting that life does have meaning and to commit suicide would be to reject the absurd by refusing to live a life that has no intrinsic value.
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>>7621667
I read the stranger in High School. But it was for an AP class, so it technically was a college class.
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>>7620804
He was on anti-depressants when he wrote his books. He killed himself while off anti-depressants due to the side effects of the medication.
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>>7621615
>myth of sisyphus is now assigned in high-school
ok
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>>7622056
excuse me
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>>7620629
life is absurd only if you choose to be a rationalist and choose to notice the perpetual sterility of any rationalism so far.

suicide is acceptable only if you disengage yourself form your previous engagements.
AND
after you understand that there is no reason to die, just as there is no reason to live.

suicide is the faith of the hedonist [=the one who takes seriously the idea of self through emotions, ideas, conciousness...] in the cessation of life, but the suicidal person despises life much, only because he cannot get what he wants. suicide expresses greatly the faith in an ego. this is nice, but before your suicide, attempt to abdicate before your misery, it might change your perspective and anyway, if you really have faith in your future death, then you can endure a few years of pains, but then you equally understand that resentment, hate, greed are pointless.
abdicate before your misery. life does not matter, death does not matter.
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>>7621393
this is what normies believe. since you have so much faith in induction, why do you reject the fact that most of your life has not been satisfactory in not getting what you want again and again ?
you even admit that you age and get sick, whereas you admit that you do not want this....

euthanasia is a false problem, because hedonists know that they are wrong and normal suicide would attract too many hedonists...
Let's recall that to live in time is to live in predicament, to live in worry: this is what hedonists do since they always think and do things to get benefits in the future, in taking seriously their emotions and ideas and trying to establish what they see as good emotions. but they fail precisely because they identify and cling to their pleasures, which are always fading.

the euthanasia is a diversion, by the liberals, from the question of suicide. the quesiton of suicide has two facets
-the suicide from depression
-the suicide from philosophy

suicide form depression is dealt by the liberals in giving people drugs, because liberals reduces everything to pain, suffering[=identification of the willing agent with the pain]. liberals are always hedonists: this is why any person who want something in democracy must express a (physical) suffering to attract liberals.

suicide form philosophy is not dealt by the liberals, therefore is the most dangerous to the human rights, precisely because the perspective of the philosophical suicide lies outside of the doctrine of the human rights: this perspective says that human rights are nothing but conventions and makes the liberals standing before their contradictions: the one where they are not able to justify their authority, just like the liberals complained that kings were not able to justify their authority
[in fact, kings justify their authority by their lineage, which pisses off the liberals'; the liberals justify their authority poorly in saying that ''the people wants us, the liberals, to be in power''; the trick then is to carefully select what they call ''the people'']
the nice trick by the liberals is to obfuscate their authority into an implicit one, more compatible with their hatred of explicit authority [=tyrannies] : they claim thus that the human rights are natural, that any humans think that the human rights make sense [with the faith that they will be backed-up by their faith in what they call science] and anybody disagreeing on this is not a human, but an animal [=a reactionary].

so the suicide outside of depression is dangerous, because it shows that liberals cannot counter the lack of motivation to live. the liberals prefer to focus on suicide from pains: this one enables them to say that ''the human suffering'' must be answered by... science and faith in the human rights, in one word, the occidental humanist doctrine. pain/suffering is always the decisive motivation to get things form the society, in a liberal society.[as minorities, workers...]
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>>7620687
>>7620712
>>7620804
>>7620821
>>7621352
>>7621413
Great arguments guys..

Like I said Camus is just philosophical posturing. Nobody kills themselves because life lacks an objective meaning. He was just a french faggot posturing like it was ever an option for him.

Truth is it's the other way round. He wasn't suicidal and found a reason to live. Rather he was always going to continue living regardless, suicide was never actually on the table. The myth of Sisyphus is just a post-hoc justification of the life-affirming conclusion he never strayed from.

You guys really think people lethally harm their bodies because life lacks a clear objective purpose? Get real, educate yourself. Stop posturing like a fucking faggot trying to justify your 'decision' to keep living when dying was never an option to begin with.

Bunch of fucking posers. People kill themselves as an end to severe mental and physical distress. Nobody caves their fucking skull in and paints the wall behind them with their brains because muh absurd world lol xD

I know it seems cool to you losers, to pretend you're this brooding and edgy kid, smoking djarums and pondering suicide. But it's not. It's pathetic.
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>>7621667
Stranger has been hs reading here for generations and not even francophone.
It's just that your hs was shit and mine was shit but at least not tailored for plebs.
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>>7621302
>I cannot glean any information from this thread
No shit, it's a thread on /lit/. You could try reading the actual book people are talking about, and/or serious academic discussions of it.
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>>7620673
He was just a big phoney, he was really was.
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>>7620927

You Only Live Once
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>>7623666
>666
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