Day 2059, Despair.

Slide film, 1996, Arnhem – the Netherlands

In many lectures about 20^th-century philosophy, you will hear about Albert Camus. I have always been interested in his work, and through these lectures, I know quite a lot about him, but I have never read his books. I started reading Myth of Sisyphus, and today at work, I also started listening to a good audiobook of that book on YouTube.

You might have heard of Sisyphus; he is the Greek God that had to push a giant boulder up the hill over and over. This feeling of an endless drag, of pushing that boulder up the hill over and over again, or in our case: of getting up, eating, working, eating, sleeping, and getting up again, is demoralizing. Many people feel the despair of this and seek relief from that feeling. According to Camus, we have three options: 1 believe in an improbable God not for relief now but a better life after death, 2 suicide and 3, except the futility of life and live with it.

This is where the book starts, and it elaborates on these three options. I am halfway now, and I wrote down two quotes that I liked and one that is well known for people interested in these kinds of questions.

This is the well-known one: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

These are sentences I liked: “One is used to living before one is used to thinking.” and “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”

This is the audio book.

This is a philosoher I follow on YouTube and he always does a good job explaining philosophy. This is part one of three where he dives deep in the (hidden) meanings of this book.