Natalie Feng

Once I did not know how much affectation is hidden within sincerity, how much baseness lies within nobility—or that even within evil one might still find virtue. Baseness and greatness, malice and kindness, hatred and love can coexist within the same heart without canceling each other out.

Let us speak of Sisyphus. No one has described his condition better than Albert Camus:

As for Sisyphus, one sees him straining with tensed body, exhausting every effort to lift the rock, to roll it, to brace it as it pushes up the slope, repeating the climb again and again. One sees his face contorted, his cheek pressed against the stone, one shoulder wedged beneath it, bearing the mass smeared with clay; one leg planted firmly, propping it from below; both arms wrapped fully around the rock, his mud-covered hands revealing a thoroughly human steadiness. Measured by a space without sky and a time without depth, this effort goes on and on until, at last, the goal is reached. Yet Sisyphus watches as the stone in a single instant rolls back down the mountain, and he must push it up again. So he returns once more to the plain.

Camus said: we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

If one had to choose a line from Camus destined to be forever misunderstood, it would likely be this: we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Too many have taken it as a light piece of encouragement, a sentimental slogan that no matter how bitter life is, one must remain optimistic. But the happiness Camus speaks of has nothing to do with spiritual consolation, nothing to do with a positive mindset, and nothing to do with happiness in the traditional sense. It is a posture of lucidity that humanity displays after the world has completely lost its meaning. Sisyphus is not happy because he enjoys pushing the stone, but because in the long stretch of hopelessness he maintains clarity, resistance, and freedom.

Camus’s philosophy is ruthless. He dismantles the foundations of all transcendental philosophies throughout history. The individual can no longer rely on a beyond or an afterlife for redemption. Perhaps the hardest thing in the world is this: knowing full well that what you do is futile, and yet continuing to do it.

Before understanding this sentence, we must first understand the problem Camus truly confronts: Does the world have meaning at all? What is humanity’s place in the universe? How does consciousness avoid being swallowed by immense silence?

Camus is called a philosopher of the absurd not because he constantly describes the hardships of life, but because he places philosophy’s starting point at a fundamental conflict: human beings long for order, yet live in chaos; they long for meaning, yet are born into a meaningless universe.

In other words, humans are born desiring that the world respond to them—but the world never answers. The tension between this longing and the world’s silence is the absurd. The absurd is not an external object; it is a product of consciousness, the irreconcilable fissure between human desire and the world as it is.

Camus drives the blade of philosophy into the center of this fissure: if the universe has no meaning, why continue to live in a world devoid of ultimate significance?

His answer is: do not escape the absurd.

One must lucidly see the world’s silence and maintain one’s stance within that lucidity. Camus rejects religion’s ultimate explanations and refuses philosophical systems that offer conceptual comfort. All attempts to evade the absurd are, in his view, forms of self-deception.

It is here that Sisyphus appears. In Greek mythology, his punishment is perhaps the most hopeless imaginable: each day he pushes a stone to the summit, and it always rolls back down—there is never a moment of success. Such a fate is not tragic; it is absurd. Tragedy at least has meaning. The absurd has none.

Camus chooses Sisyphus not only because his situation lacks meaning, endpoint, and success, but because of his enduring lucidity. He knows the world is hopeless, yet he continues to act. His labor will never succeed, yet he keeps pushing. What Camus sees is not punishment but consciousness. The one who recognizes the absurdity of fate does not collapse; instead, he gains freedom in hopelessness. Having seen through the ending, the gods can no longer control him through punishment. If failure is inevitable, then each action is no longer for success, but for the expression of one’s existence. The one who persists in action within the absurd is, in Camus’s eyes, free.

The happiness in Camus begins with lucidity.

Most people immerse themselves in illusions of meaning. They hope life will eventually reward them, that good will be repaid with good, suffering compensated, effort completed. They need systems—religious systems, moral systems, social reward systems, systems of success—to explain everything. When these systems collapse, they fall into nihilism. Yet Camus believes true freedom comes precisely from abandoning these false meanings. When Sisyphus realizes his fate will never change, he frees himself from illusion. The absurd may lead to despair, but beyond despair lies an astonishing calm. Freed from illusion, one gains a more primordial freedom.

Sisyphus’s happiness lies in this calm lucidity: he no longer expects, and thus no longer feels disappointment; he no longer longs to be understood by the universe, and thus is no longer wounded by its silence.

The second layer of happiness comes from revolt.

In Camus’s thought, revolt is the fundamental posture of the absurd person. It is not about changing fate—because the absurd tells us fate cannot be changed—but about declaring: I know the world has no meaning, yet I live. I know my actions will never succeed, yet I act. Revolt is consciousness’s final insistence in the face of meaninglessness. It does not reach meaning; it refuses to bow to meaninglessness. Camus’s hero is not one who conquers the world, but one who maintains dignity before being crushed by it.

Human dignity comes not from results but from process. To revolt is to remain a subject. Even if the world does not answer me, I answer the world. Each time Sisyphus pushes the stone, watches it fall, and begins again, he is saying: I am here. You may destroy me, but I will not stop. The absurd world gives no meaning, but revolt restores subjectivity. In revolt one finds a strange but genuine satisfaction: I have not been annihilated.

The third layer of happiness comes from the awakening of subjectivity.

For Camus, the absurd is not the world’s problem, but consciousness’s. The stone rolling down is merely a physical event; it becomes absurd only through awareness. When Sisyphus becomes conscious of his condition, he also becomes conscious of his unique position: he alone knows the truth. The gods punish him with meaningless repetition—but this punishment only works if he believes in ultimate meaning. Once he realizes he need not extract meaning from the stone, he transforms punishment into his own act. He is no longer merely punished; he participates in fate.

Having abandoned ultimate meaning, he reclaims ownership of action itself. He pushes not for the result, but because he chooses to push.

Conscious action, even without outcome, is closer to real happiness than unconscious bliss.

The fourth layer of happiness lies in Camus’s understanding of time. Traditional views of happiness rely on the future: effort will be rewarded, suffering compensated, life completed meaningfully. But the absurd person rejects the future. In a meaningless universe, the future is merely postponed death. What one truly possesses is only this moment: this action, this sensation, this freedom.

When Sisyphus stands at the summit, watches the stone fall, bends again to push—it is in these instants that he fully lives. Without illusions of ultimate success, without fear of future punishment, he exists entirely in the present. And it is only in the present that human freedom is possible.

Sisyphus’s happiness is happiness in the present, not at the endpoint.

The fifth layer concerns death.

For Camus, the core of the absurd is that death collapses all ultimate meaning. Death renders all processes equivalent: diligence and laziness, kindness and cruelty, success and failure—all reach the same end. If the end is indistinguishable, whence meaning? Camus answers: precisely because death strips away ultimate meaning, one must express one’s will within finite life. This is not nihilism but a reverse freedom. Meaning is not given by the universe; it is granted by us within our limits.

Sisyphus knows his action has no final end—his eternity is a metaphor for death. Yet this knowledge allows him to live more lucidly than anyone. In Camus’s characters, one finds a strange calm in the face of death—not because death is harmless, but because its absurdity renders each moment of life intensely real.

Thus we understand why Camus says that the struggle toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. Happiness is not reaching the summit, but striving toward it. Humans are not happy because of success, but because they can act. Happiness in the absurd is not a goal, but a process; not a result, but a posture; not the triumph of spirit, but the triumph of consciousness.

Sisyphus’s happiness reveals a profoundly modern proposition: in a world stripped of meaning, happiness may arise from total lucidity. After lucidity, one no longer relies on external meaning or ultimate explanations. One becomes the starting point of meaning. Sisyphus’s happiness is the most honest stance of the modern individual before an immense world: knowing there is no meaning, yet continuing to create it; knowing the ending will not change, yet still choosing to move forward.

When Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus happy, he is not urging optimism. He is urging lucidity. Happiness is not escaping the absurd, but confronting it; not receiving comfort, but maintaining freedom without comfort; not possessing meaning, but sustaining revolt after meaning disappears. For Camus, happiness is not a state but a force—a force that moves forward despite hopelessness. It preserves dignity in a suspended universe, selfhood in a fractured world, and the courage to say “I refuse” before a silent fate.

Perhaps what Camus most wanted to express is this: humanity does not need meaning in order to live; what it needs is subjectivity in the midst of meaninglessness. This subjectivity arises not only from revolt, but from an embrace of life. The absurd does not reject life—it rejects deception.

A lucid life, even filled with repetition, weight, and hopelessness, is more real and more profound than an easy life ruled by illusion.

Every step Sisyphus takes pushing the stone uphill declares to the world:

I know you make me fail, but you cannot make me disappear.

Behind this declaration lies not despair, but a will harder than hope.

When humanity realizes that meaning cannot come from the world but must come from the self, it attains true freedom for the first time. Sisyphus’s happiness is the happiness of such freedom: not given by the outside, but reclaimed; not a result, but a process; not tranquility, but persistence; not hope, but courage and strength, I call it bravery.