Here are some or my beefs with Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus
1, He says the universe gives us no ultimate meaning, which is what everyone wants the answer to. That gap generates absurdity. Why therefore is life worth living? Why don’t we just kill ourselves? But what’s the basis for saying life is absurd given that gap. He just asserts it.
2, Who’s to say that life short of ultimate meaning is meaningless? Who’s to say, for example, the satisfactions we get from the less than ultimate events in out lives, love, family, children, a job well done, not to omit to mention great accomplishments aren’t enough to satisfy us as to meaning.
3, And why does it follow from his unproven assumption that life is absurd, meaningless, that it’s imperative to rebel, live freely and passionately in the lucid understanding of our condition.
4, And I have a terrific problem with his central conceit, Sisyphus forever repeatedly pushing a rock up a hill as exemplification of how we all live lives of pointless repetition. While repetition is an inexorable truth about life: 1, there is no case made that it is all necessarily pointless—that’s just asserted; and 2, there is no case made, nor could it be, that it comprises the sum of our existence.
5, Therefore, for him to fault us for evading these truths is a perverse move. For he’s accusing us of shirking what he asserts as true but can’t establish and which out common experience persuasively counter argues.
6, His grand theory of absurdity really discloses a different analysis following from the premise that universe offers no meaning. Granting that for argument’s sake, existentialism via Sartre, for example, says we must choose and work consciously on meaningful projects in order to give our lives meaning in the face of that emptiness. Those projects are qualitatively different from pointless repetitiveness.
7, Camus’ own trio of rebellion, freedom and passionate living are also at massive odds from pointless repetitiveness.
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