西西弗神话 摘抄Myth of Sisyphus书评

The Myth of Sisyphus

An Absurd Reasoning

1. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.

2. I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying. I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

3. "The only true solution," he said, "is precisely where human judgment sees no solution. Otherwise, what need would we have of God? We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice."

4. Perhaps this notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God.

5. But the most paradoxical and most significant is certainly the one that attributes rational reasons to a world it originally imagined as devoid of any guiding principle.

6. Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is above all contemplating it.

7. You know the alternative: either we are not free and God the all powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all powerful. All the scholastic subtleties have neither added anything to nor subtracted anything from the acuteness of this paradox.

8. Death is there as the only reality.

9. To the extent to which he imagined a purpose to his life, he adapted himself to the demands of a purpose to be achieved and became the slave of his liberty.

10. The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future.

11. But they knew that freedom which consists in not feeling responsible. Death, too, has patrician hands which, while crushing, also liberate.

12. Obeying the flame is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do. However, it is good for man to judge himself occasionally. He is alone in being able to do so.

13. The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live.

The Absurd Man

14. “Everything is permitted,” exclaims Ivan Karamazov.

15. Barely: that necessary imperfection that makes happiness perceptible!

16. People beautify only what they love and death repels us and tires our patience.

Absurd Creation

17. In this universe the work of art is then the sole chance of keeping his consciousness and of fixing its adventures.

18. The true work of art is always on the human scale.

19. If the world were clear, art would not exist.

20. Expression begins where thoughts ends.

21. “If God does not exist, I am god.” To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being,

22. Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

23. To create is likewise to give a shape to ones fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: there is no frontier between being and appearing.

The Myth of Sisyphus

24. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins.

25. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth.

26. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing.

27. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.