But would even that make his life worth living? While his labor may not have been all for naught, ultimately the temple too will crumble, and like Ozymandias, his mighty work will cease to be. He postulates some variations of the Sisyphus story to see if they might give us some hope: a Sisyphus, for instance, who doesn’t push merely a single stone, but instead many different stones to the top of the hill, and constructs a beautiful temple from them (although Taylor never states a temple to whom or to what). The great philosopher Peggy Lee once asked – “Is that all there is?” Taylor, in a chapter entitled ‘Metaphysics and Meaning’, essentially says that if life is simply drudgery, then perhaps suicide would be the best solution. Rolling a rock unceasingly, with no hope of ever getting it over that hill, wearily trudging back down again and again to start the effort anew once the rock falls back down – who could possibly draw any sustenance from such a life? And to imagine Sisyphus happy in such an endeavor? Surely that its a very strange way of looking at it – even, dare one say it, absurd?īoth Camus and Taylor are using the legend of Sisyphus to address what, as both Monty Python and Douglas Adams would attest, may be the most fundamental philosophical question of all: What is the meaning of life? Camus very famously begins Sisyphus with a related point, boldly stating, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” If Sisyphus’s situation really does exemplify the human condition, then why should one go on at all? What’s the point of pushing a rock, or punching a clock for that matter, if ultimately it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, or a hill of stones?

I suspect that most readers would be more partial to Taylor’s interpretation.

The myth of sisyphus meaning