The Myth Of Sisyphus And His Punishment: The Torture Of A Meaningless Life
Sisyphus is a famous character from Ancient Greek mythology belonging to the Homeric tradition, created around the 8th century BC. C. However, its story has transcended the sociocultural context of Hellenic history, because it has reached our days as one of the most important narratives linked to the importance of finding meaning in the things we do and, in general, in our lives. lives.
In the following pages we will briefly review what is the myth of Sisyphus and the stone and how it can be interpreted from existentialist and humanist philosophy.
Sisyphus was, according to Greek mythology, the first king of the city of Ephyra, currently known as Corinth He appears characterized in the Odyssey and the Iliad as an ambitious and cruel ruler, who did not hesitate to use violence to stay in power and avoid losing influence to his adversaries, which led him to kill several people. Furthermore, he did not feel ashamed when deceiving people and, in general, he was described as fulfilling the characteristics of classic tricksters.
Certainly, having almost complete control of a large territory and governing it was not unusual at that stage in Hellenic history, but Sisyphus had the misfortune of imposing his will by breaking the rules that Zeus imposed on mortals. According to some versions of the myth, Sisyphus accused Zeus of kidnapping a nymph, while others point out that he crossed the line by killing several travelers. At the time when Thanatos, death, went to look for the Greek king by order of Zeus Sisyphus tricked the one who was to take him to the underworld by placing the chains and shackles that were intended to be used on him, so that he could not die until Ares intervened.
When the time came, the story did not end with Sisyphus staying in the underworld. True to her perverse and deceitful nature, the Greek king had asked his wife not to perform the typical rituals in honor of the dead, so that Sisyphus would have an excuse to ask to return to the mortal world to punish her. . This wish was satisfied by Ares, but Sisyphus refused to return to the domain of death, so bringing him back meant causing new inconvenience to the gods. That’s where the famous punishment of the big stone began.
The punishment of the Greek king: dragging a stone
The sentence that Sisyphus had to serve was not based on physical pain, nor exactly on humiliation. It was based, in any case, on the fact of experiencing meaninglessness firsthand.
The punishment consisted of push a large rounded stone from the base of a mountain to its top to, once there, see how it rolled back to the starting point. According to some versions of the myth of Sisyphus, this punishment was (or, rather, is) practically eternal.
The pain from the lack of meaning in life
As we have mentioned, Sisyphus is a man who did not exist beyond the network of narratives that structured the belief system of a large part of the society of Ancient Greece. But although he only belongs to the realm of myths and fictions, his figure has something that is easy to identify with even in the contemporary era. Because his story tells us about the tragedy of living an absurdity something that leads to nothing.
The story of Sisyphus connects very well with existentialist philosophy, which in turn has greatly influenced the humanistic paradigm of psychology. This group of philosophers is characterized by being concerned with the phenomenological aspect of experiences, that is, what is subjective, private and non-transferable to other people, linked to the consciousness of each person and the sensations that cannot be fully expressed by words. .
That is why the way we give meaning to life, which is an aspect of life that cannot be exhausted by naming it through language, is something greatly explored by existentialists. And that is why one of the most important existentialist thinkers, Albert Camus dedicated a book to that piece of Greek mythology: The myth of Sisyphus.
Camus and the myth of Sisyphus
For Camus, the main philosophical question that must be addressed is: what is the aspect of life that makes it worth living? Or, more briefly: What is it that makes suicide not the option that most seduces us?
Circumstantial pleasure may invade our consciousness at a given moment, but in itself it does not make our lives worth living. What can make it worthwhile, however, is making our actions framed in a vital project that makes sense.
But another of the common premises that existentialists start from is that life in itself has no meaning. This is because assuming that it does have it would also be accepting that beyond the nature of things there is something else, a story that structures and structures reality; but this does not happen. Reality simply is, exists, and nothing more Therefore, for Camus, it is oneself who must embrace the project of giving meaning to life, and not fall into the trap of adopting an existence like the one Sisyphus had when dragging the stone up the hillside again and again.
