The Myth of Sisyphus Summary

Albert Camus opens "The Myth of Sisyphus" with a claim he treats as the founding problem of philosophy: judging whether life is worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of suicide. Published in 1942, the essay develops the idea of the absurd, which arises not from the world alone or from human desire alone but from the collision between our craving for meaning and reason and a universe that offers none. Camus rejects both physical suicide and what he calls philosophical suicide—leaps of faith that smuggle meaning back in through religion, ideology, or abstract systems. The book's central figure is the absurd man, who lives without appeal, lucid about the absence of transcendent purpose yet refusing to despair. Camus tests this posture through chapters on distinct "absurd" types: the seducer, the actor, and the conqueror, alongside critical readings of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Husserl, whom he accuses of evading the absurd. He also engages Dostoevsky, arguing that the novelist's characters flirt with the absurd before turning toward faith. The closing image gives the book its name: Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill forever, watches it roll back down each time. Camus asks us to imagine Sisyphus happy, since his fate is his own and the struggle itself suffices. The revolt he describes is not resignation but a sustained, defiant lucidity—one must imagine Sisyphus happy.