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Essay: Behind The Myth Of Sisyphus

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Essay: Behind The Myth Of Sisyphus
Professor D’Anca
English 102
4 December 2013
Behind the Myth of Sisyphus

The philosophical essay of “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus was written in France, in 1942. Obviously during a very historical time of war in which had a lot of people on the edge. The piece of work written was motivated by what Camus thought about the situation during the time; such as suicide, absurdity and happiness. The meaning of life was defined in many different ways, and with that being said Camus had seen so much that he had different values and searched for the truth about life and its purpose, plus what motivated a modest philosopher. Society took this essay as something very absurd and really didn’t know how to react to it but wonder how meaningful is life and what is to be valued and what shouldn’t be. People were on the edge just thinking about these kind of things. Especially during
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“Like Sisyphus, we are our fate, and our frustration is our very life: we can never escape it.” (Satre) As a society that’s why we all must accept the truth in life and that is our fate as well. No matter if it has value, you must continue living, committing suicide is not the answer and by doing so you will prove to others that there can be meaningless lives. You can’t escape it and you can’t be absurd in Camus’s philosophy either. Camus even detects a level of absurdity in Nietzsche’s philosophy as well. Truth is that Camus is absurd, maybe he is searching for meaning of life so much that it becomes irrational. Which in that case leads to him believing about suicide but knew he was never even going to find meaning that way at all. He would be never be able to tell how valuable life is. Therefore, Camus must be happy about life and its meaning so he can actually live life as it is. The only problem philosophers have is that they can never admit that absurdity in their thoughts, so they make a reason and figure out a way out of

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