The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Assisted Living

It was that Jewish heretic Paul of Tarsus who gave us the idea that we are not in charge of our lives but are merely responsible for them to God who owns us. It was the English philosopher John Locke, a heretic to Pauline Calvinism, who casually pointed out that in fact our lives are the only thing we do have complete charge over, the only thing every one of us owns and can dispose of. And it was Albert Camus, a heretic to any and all sources of power, who took Locke entirely seriously by pointing out that how we dispose of life is the central issue of not just life but philosophy. The result is Sisyphus.

The followers of previous heretics - evangelical Christians, PC and wet liberals - don't like Camus. But they can't fault his conclusions. They may not approve of his marketing of suicide as a universally available option for disposing of life, but these are the same people who don't approve of gay sex or the discussion of religion in public. So hardly credible. Clearly Camus's analysis includes both Paul's and Locke's as special cases, and is therefore superior to them both.

Camus doesn't advocate suicide; he does advocate its importance to life and thought. Without it we are dead, as it were, all but physically. Habit and chance rule. Life is not inherently absurd but becomes so when death, specifically self-inflicted death, is not on the table. Evasions - illusion, after-life, hope, consuming, power, sex, reputation - become the norm that is socially enforced. Eliminating evasions is what Camus is trying to do.

There is rarely a page in Sisyphus without a phrase to savour and as memorable as anything in Montaigne. Just for openers:

p2: "I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument."

p3: "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined."

p4: "A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world."

So even if the logic gets you down, you have some rather sustaining prose to exchange with the spouse or functional equivalent over breakfast.

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