> Notice that Camus doesn't say HOW to imagine Sisyphus happy. How do you?
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.
Yeah, it's a question with a personal answer, not an absolute answer. My answer works for me, for now, and I enjoy learning what answers work for other people.
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.
I don't know if Camus and/or people who're very familiar with his essay would approve but maybe the Pixar movie Soul (2020) has something similar to what he was gesturing at. The protagonist finally gets a big break as a performer and says: "It's just I've been waiting on this day for... my entire life. I thought I'd feel different." The woman replies: "I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to this older fish and says, 'I'm trying to find this thing they call the ocean.' 'The ocean?' says the older fish. 'That's what you're in right now.' 'This?' says the young fish. 'This is water. What I want is the ocean.'"
Basically embracing life with full knowledge that there isn't some final transcendent epiphany or rapturous endpoint
Regarding the water thing, David Foster Wallace once said this:
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?”
It's so strange in that I recognize that I'm in the ocean and by all means, this is pretty incredible, even when it's not. It's so strange and amazing to be anything at all.
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.
I don't directly interpret Camus, but I think to my interpretation of Dostoevsky's underground man. He knows he's irrational, can "rationally prove" he's irrational, yet still lives on anyways.
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.
I personally think that this kind of behavior is necessary, unavoidable, and actually good for society, precisely because no one has access to this thing called "rationality", if it even exists. The alternative is variants of authoritarian nightmares where one can't even begin to speak in opposition, because of course they're not rational.
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
Sisyphus was a stone carver. I use that idea in my game Bouldering. The joy of wearing out these stones until they are small enough to carry in a pouch - the size of marbles. Only to be given another boulder. For free. And, he gets to live forever! Meh. There are worse fates in the myths.
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.