One of the essential philosophical questions is undoubtedly this: what is the meaning of our existence? This question troubled Camus in many of his works.
One of the best philosophical works of Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, exhibits a vibrantly optimistic attitude towards this enigma and presents a significant contribution to the world of philosophy. Such images have long been debated and initiated interpretations from Homer to Camus. The image of Sisyphus rolling the hill and the rock has found acceptance in popular culture and is often used to describe an incessant and compulsive work, known as a Sisyphean task. Homer ( Odyssey 595-600) describes Sisyphus’s suffering in great detail:Īlbert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Absurdism Albert Camus, 1954, via Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Sisyphus had to begin his duty afresh, knowing that he was indefinitely bound to this fruitless task. As soon as the boulder reached the top, it rolled back down. He was condemned to push an enormous boulder to the top of a hill in the underworld. Outraged with his deception, Zeus had inflicted an eternal punishment on Sisyphus. While in the underworld, Odysseus met the sinner Sisyphus.
Unable to return home, Odysseus travels to the underworld to consult a blind poet named Tiresias, who had the wisdom to guide him back to his home. In the great Greek epic poem, the Odyssey, Homer writes about the famed hero Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. Sisyphus in the Odyssey Sisyphus in the Underworld, 510-500 BCE, via The British Museum, London
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Upon returning to Corinth, Sisyphus reunited with his wife, broke his word to Hades, and lived a full life once again, before dying a second time. Hades granted him the right to return to earth to punish his wife and arrange the funeral. When he died, he immediately went to Hades, the god of the underworld, and complained that he had not received a proper burial. Knowing that death would come back to ensnare him anew, he gave his wife Merope careful instructions to leave his body unburied once he was dead and forbade her from performing any funerary rituals. However, Sisyphus would not despair so readily. Ares, as the Greek god of war and the representative of the ghastly aspects of brutality and manslaughter, was highly qualified for the duty. Zeus, enraged that mortals had ceased to die now, sent Ares down to earth to release Thanatos. During the demonstration, the mortal Sisyphus was able to chain Thanatos and save humanity from death. When Thanatos, the Greek god of death, came to fetch Sisyphus, Sisyphus requested that the god displayed how the manacles he carried worked. Sisyphus was the founder and first king of Corinth, whom Homer described as “the craftiest of men” ( Iliad 6.153). 510-500 BCE, via The British Museum, London Sisyphus’s Sins and Punishment Two winged figures (Hypnos and Thanatos) lifting a dead body (Sarpedon), c.
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