Talk:The Myth of Sisyphus

From Academic Kids

Removed references to Tantalus. They belong on a page about Tantalus, and possibly even Sisyphus, but not on this page, which is about Albert Camus' essay "The Myth of Sisyphus". To my knowledge, Camus does not mention Tantalus in the essay. Graham Chapman

A fair and interesting point, Graham. However mythology and philosophy are both comparative disciplines. The fact that Sisyphus was Camus' chosen metaphor as opposed to Tantalus is, to my mind, revealing of Camus' use of the Sisypharean myth to explore the existential nature of human experience. user:sjc

I agree that mythology and philosophy are difficult to separate at times, but this page is about Albert Camus'essay (for example, notice that I don't expand on the philosophy of the absurd, I link to it because it is a separate topic). Now, the difference between the title of his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" and the Greek myth of the same name is only one of capitalisation, i.e. the Greek myth could be titled "The myth of Sisyphus". You could quite reasonably put such an article on the same page as this by separating it by a horizontal line - from what I have seen, this is the Wikipedia convention for handling alternative meanings of the same term.

If you were to put comparisons with Tantalus on such a page, OR if you put it on a page titled "Sisyphus" then it would help to explain the mythology and would make sense. However, IMHO, to preserve a NPOV for the part of this page describing Camus' essay as a page in an encyclopedia, this page is about Camus'essay, and references to additional characters from Greek mythology might shed light on the mythology, but only serves to obscure the essay. There's also the viewpoint that such discussion belongs in a philosophical treatise, but I'm inclined not to argue that one because I'm not qualified.

Graham Chapman

I'm not really disagreeing with you, Graham, otherwise I would simply have reinstated the Tantalus stuff without comment. However, you should be aware that a lot of academic criticism which deals with the ideistic nature of the Sisypharean torment is couched explicitly in terms of explaining this fundamental dichotomy between it and the holistic nature of the Tantalic torment. Like the stone, this Tantalus stuff will inexorably return, just mark my words... :-) sjc

Fair enough. I see from various sites on the Internet that they are often compared - http://www.mythweb.com/today/today03.html and http://www.zipcon.net/~parallax/tns.html, and presumably heaps more. Thus having shown my ignorance on this point, I'll stop arguing. Thanks for having given me ideistic and holistic to ponder on. I'll just go away for a few days until my head stops hurting...!

Minor point, but if Sisyphus was pushed by being blinded, how could he see the boulder roll down the hill as in the next comment? I'm a Wikipedia newbie, so I don't want to touch the entry, but could someone else please review that?

Perhaps a reference to Tantalus at the end of the article as it does seem to be integrated in literary comparisons and chit chat about Sisyphus. It's always good to see at least a few references to similar concepts in other works.

The explanation of who Sisyphus is on this page is different from the explanation on the Sisyphus page--here it says he was condemned because of his extraordinary wisdom, whereas on the Sisyphus page it says the reason is "obscure." Perhaps somebody with more knowledge on the subject than I should resolve this difference.

"Sisyphus was a character in Greek mythology who upset the gods with his extraordinary wisdom." Would a second look at the original myth, as Camus knew it, add depth to this assessment of the essay? BtW Camus calls Sisyphus "the absurd hero" not the absurd man. Is there any perceptible difference? --Wetman 06:02, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)