PHIL103: Moral and Political Philosophy

Existentialism is often associated with such themes as the absurdity of human existence and the worthlessness of our lives given our inevitable death.  One might well wonder what view of happiness could arise from such a view.  Sartre characterizes the human condition by (1) our forlorness at the loss of external values and determinants of our nature; (2) anguish at the resultant responsibility to create human nature ourselves; and (3) despair of finding value outside of ourselves and reliance upon what is under our own control.  Forlorness, anguish, and despair: Mr. Sartre, it would seem, was not a happy camper.  For another 20th century French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, however, the loss of any external source of value did not present quite such a dismal prospect.

Camus compares our situation to that of the mythical figure Sisyphus.  In his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" he explains that:

The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.  They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

It is easy to see the similarity between this situation and ours according to the Existentialist.  Just as Sisyphus can find no end to his activities, no final resting place where he has finally reached his goal or lived up to some set of pre-existing standards, so we find that all of our activities lead to nowhere. There are no external values that we can live up to, no external viewpoint from which our life can be viewed to be valuable.  Our life is a series of meaningless actions culminating in death, with no possibility of external justification.  Yet, Camus will say that we must imagine Sisyphus (and ourselves) happy?  "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". Why?  Why would this fool be happy eternally rolling a ball up a hill, and why should we be happy rolling our ball up the hill to nowhere?

At first, when one was still expecting to get ones value from outside of oneself, all this might seem depressing.  Camus says:

When images of the earth cling to tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes to insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory this is the rock itself.  The boundless grief is to heavy to bear.  These are our nights in Gethsemane.  But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged... ............................................

Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent.  The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

As we saw before, no matter what his external circumstances, Sisyphus is always free to make of them what he will, to rebel  against them within his island of subjectivity.  No matter what the Gods make him do, he is always free to give the Gods one of these [defiant gesture].

I remember when I first read this (as a senior in high school) thinking that this was sort of a stupid response to the absurdity of the human condition.  What sense does it make to give one of these [defiant gesture] to a non-existent God whose absence is the source of the absurdity of our lives.  What are we rebelling against? There must be more to the existentialist conception of happiness than this, I thought.

And there was.  The despair and rebellion we feel at the loss of our external sources of value are the necessary price of a greater value and happiness that comes from within.  One must lose all hope of external value before seeking value within.  The theme that true happiness must come from within is one that is familiar to all of us, and it is the key to understanding the existentialist conception of happiness. 

Two contemporary folk tails embody this existentialist theme well: The Wizard of Oz and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  This common theme probably does not show that these are existentialist works, but only that the American emphasis on self-reliance and internalism flows from the same individualist emphasis as Existentialism.  In the Wizard of Oz there is an external realm, somewhere over the rainbow, where everything is as it should be and all problems are solved.  There is a wizard who will give us brains, a heart, courage, and happiness.  When Dorothy got there and discovered that Oz was full of the same type of evil as Kansas, when they discovered that the Wizard was a hoax, that there was nothing outside of them that was going to make them what they wanted to be, they were understandably depressed.  But this disappointment was the necessary price of an important lesson: that the only place they could get a brain, or a heart, or courage was from within.  Dorothy learns that if she ever loses anything that cannot be found within her own back yard, it wasn't really lost at all.  There is no place like Home. (Especially if you are an island of subjectivity, for then there is no place but home.) The value one gets from within is infinitely better than the value one vainly attempts to get from outside.

The story of the Grinch shows why this is so.  At first when the Who's in Whoville woke up to find that the Grinch had stolen their Bamboozlers and Dingdangers, they were at first very disappointed.  They thought that the value of Christmas was in these external things.  What they discovered, and what the grinch discovered looking out over Whoville listening for sounds of grief and hearing, instead, the sounds of joy, was that their real value came from within and was greater than any value that could come from external things since it couldn't be taken away.

A common theme in existentialist literature is the transformation that can occur in one's outlook on life when one is forced to face death.  One of the founders of Existentialism, the 19th century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, actually had such a brush with death transform his life.  He was involved in some activities that ran afoul of the Czar and was among the people rounded up in one of the Czar's crackdowns.  He was told that he would be executed.  He was blindfolded and made to wait his turn to face death.  At the last minute, as Dostoevsky prepared to meet death, he got a reprieve.  It turned out that he was to be sent to a labor camp instead and that this had merely been a cruel joke.  One might imagine that if one could face one's death, face the impossibility of getting any value from any external accomplishments, and still find value within oneself, that value would be invulnerable.  It could never be taken away. What else could they do to you?

If, after all sources of external value have been taken away, you can find value within yourself, you would have found what philosophers have been looking for throughout the ages: a way of achieving human happiness that is not vulnerable to the uncontrollable contingencies of the natural world.  If we find ourselves isolated from external value by our radical individuality, we can make a world of ourselves, a universe of our own experience, in which we can and must find ourselves happy.  Camus writes of Sisyphus:

The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing.... he knows himself to be the master of his days.  At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death.............................................

But Sisyphus teaches a higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks.  He too concludes that all is well.  This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.  Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world.  The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

The Existentialist's secret of happiness, then,  is to get ones value from within oneself.  In doing so, one loses the promise of external value, but they find a more real happiness, one that cannot be taken away by the external forces beyond their control.