The Myth of Sisyphus

This was the first book from the very first philosophy class I took in college (at Bucknell University in 1981), and it had me from its very first sentence: “There is only one truly important philosophical question, and that is suicide.” You know, the big stuff: Is life worth living? What gives it meaning? How ought we to engage the world and others, especially in the face of the apparently meaningless universe in which we’ve been thrown. Existentialist Camus served in the French resistance against the Nazis in World War II and would win the Nobel Prize for literature in… show more.

A rather short, yet rich reading experience. Albert Camus comes right out of the gate by condensing all of philosophy to one single problem: suicide. “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy,” he writes. Everything else comes second. He engages some of the existentialist philosophers that came before him, but distinguishes himself by avoiding to take ‘the leap of faith’. He seeks for answers in the here and now, in the things we know without having to appeal to some higher power or higher source for meaning, which… show more.