The myth of Sisyphus: the problem of meaning and the necessary absurdity

Abstract

The problem of meaning was addressed by Albert Camus from the exercise of thinking and the creation derived from thinking as a possible response to the absurd condition of life. However, the absurd does not find its determination either as hopeless resignation or as a happy or indifferent way out of the fact of living. In every systematic or methodical exercise of thought—philosophy, science, history or the art of the novel—the existentialist thinker finds, more than the possibility of an improbable answer to the dilemma of living, a path to plenitude. This plenitude does not mean consolation, evasion or certainty of transcending; It only represents a possibility of affirming life. This work reviews and contrasts positions derived from a position specific to the thinking of the absurd and proposes a reflection on the fact of philosophizing as living the concrete, beyond all transcendence.