And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness.
Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, lead him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him. You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture.
His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.
This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands.
At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward tlower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit.
He goes back down to the plain. It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate.
He is stronger than his rock. If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd.
But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much.
Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind a nd desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl.
Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism. One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted.
It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go.
The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.
Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Simone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher.
Simone de Beauvoir was also close friend and lover to Jean-Paul Sartre and was a frequent editor of his works. In addition to Sartre, de Beauvoir had a great interest in the works of many other philosophical thinkers of her time, including Albert Camus.
Heidegger made contributions tophenomenonology and existentialism. Being and Time Heidegger spent most of his career dealing with the concept ofbeing, and his most famous work, Being and Time, is an exploration of the nature of being. Being, Heidegger thought, has been neglected since the birth of Western philosophy. The ancient Greek philosophers began a tradition, according to Heidegger, by describing being only by objects that are beings, rather than attempting to understand the nature of being — that is, what it means to be.
Heidegger explains that being, unlike other verbs which are, in language, treated equally, is something entirely different. Heidegger rejects the objects and subjects of previous philosophers, such as Kant and Descartes, and describes Dasein as being-in-the-world, In-der-Welt-sein. Heidegger explains that previous philosophers have mistakenly viewed the concious thinker as a subject on its own. While his political actions may not be honorable or respected today, many of his philiophical works are valuable contributions when seperated from the man himeself.
AlthoughBeing and Time is dedicated to him, Heidegger eventually rejected the phenomenology developed by Husserl, mostly due to his Jewish lineage. Still, many of the concepts were shared between all of these writers. Even under pressure, man is still capable of choice, he explains, and outside influence cannot be blamed for the actions of an individual.
Heidegger can be credited for bringing attention to the works ofSoren Kierkegaard. He was also a friend of Karl Jaspers. Absurdity is the notion of contrast between two things. The universe will never truly care for humanity the way we seem to want it to. The atheist view of this statement is that people create stories, or gods, which in their minds transcend reality to fill this void and attempt to satisfy their need. Get Access.
Educational Philosophy Essay Words 6 Pages Educational Philosophy I did not spend my adolescent years contemplating what career I was going to choose and changing my mind every other week; I have wanted to be a teacher my entire life.
Read More. Popular Essays. Biology is the organization and interpretation of life through storylines and observations based on empirical data. Similarly, literature is the organization and interpretation of life through storylines and observations based on human experience and culture.
The two disciplines even give birth to similar concepts: essentialism and existentialism. The biological concept of essentialism is highly comparable to the existentialist movement that was so influential in the realm of literature. Essentialism claims existence is determined by a set of characteristics and properties that make something what it is. For existentialists, a set of individual actions determines existence. So, in the same way that essentialists believe a set of properties render existance, existentialists believe a set of actions render existence.
In this way, the concepts of essentialism and existentialism help to bridge the gap between science and humanities because they propose such similar views. However, there are not only similarities between these two concepts, as many differences exist between them. Although these notions of essentialism and existentialism seem to parallel in many ways, there are still serious differences regarding core ideologies. Existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, go completely against this notion as they claim that people are born with no purpose or definition and must act through choice and free will to bring meaning to an intrinsically purposeless life.
Essentialists also believe that life has an intrinsic meaning and purpose, but it is up to the individual to find that purpose. Existentialism is the complete opposite. Existentialists claim life is intrinsically meaningless and the individual must work to bring meaning or purpose into their lives. To further the differences between these two concepts is to examine what they are calling for.
There must be a fixed, absolute trait that the individual has within him or herself to exist. Thus, essentialism ultimately claims that there is an essential meaning to life that must be discovered while existentialism renders life meaningless and only potentially meaningful through individual acts of free will. Also, essentialism determines the set of properties as significant in defining what something is whereas the theory of evolution points, not to properties, but to common ancestors as the defining trait of a species.
Darwin himself recognizes the need for a struggle to render existence. Here, Darwin recognizes the need for struggle and existence to be contingent upon one another. Existence is dependent upon the struggle for life and competition among species for the availability of resources and ultimately survival. Conversely, the struggle and competition for survival among species is what defines existence. To me, this could easily translate into existential thought, as it requires the individual to act in order to exist.
These two concepts also work to bridge the gap between science and literature as essentialism, a largely biological view, and existentialism, a view mostly applied to literature, can come together with ease to find a common ground.
In this case, essentialism and existentialism both rely on s set of properties or actions to render meaning or existence in life. Yet, when applied to the biological theory of evolution the more biological and essentialist viewpoint contradicts the theory while existentialism, the more literary of the two, actually works to support the claim with its similar notions towards life. Therefore, science and literature are both necessary when attempting to observe the meaning of life. Perhaps one cannot exist without the other when it comes to understanding existence.
The overuse of the term existential makes a mockery of both choices.
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