My Human Sciences Essay

I'm still not sure if I like how I concluded it, and I hope it's understandable. Feedback is welcome because I have yet to hand it in!




The Tragedy of Sisyphus is the ultimate tragedy of humankind for the reason alone of his discovery of meaninglessness in his punishment to eternally bear the boulder up the hill. The meaninglessness in his punishment nullifies all philosophical questions, because in his punishment, all that there is to account for humanity and life itself is meaninglessness, and nothing more. “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards.” The world is meaningless, and thus the sacred does not exist but is a figment of profane’s imagination in this punishment.

The boy had snuck into the palace of the Fairy Queen after it was dark, and after the world had gone to sleep. He crept quietly down the long hallway with its rich colors and tall ceilings until he reached an ornate throne. The sight of the throne itself, even in the dark, moved him to awe and great fear, but still with trembling hands, he ascended the pedestal, and moved forward to seat himself on the throne. But suddenly, he heard a voice.

“You must not seat yourself upon that throne.”

The Fairy Queen had entered the darkness, and faced the boy.

“Why not?” He asked, indignantly.

“Because if you were to ascend that throne, you would destroy all that is sacred, and you do not want to do that, I can guarantee you.”

“Why do I not want to do that?” He asked again. “I don’t understand why I am unable to ascend the throne. Why am I different from you, and what ethics are in order that decree that you can sit on this throne yet I am prevented from doing so?”

The Fairy Queen nodded sadly. “I am composed of the same substance as the throne is, and you hold reverence for that substance. I know you to hold such reverence because you crept down the hallway, and you did not stroll. You regarded that throne, composed of wood and gold leaf, out of fear and awe and your hands trembled with the thought of even laying your hands upon that wood. You regard it yourself as a desecration for you to touch that throne, yet you still seek to do so, and I say, for your own sake, not for mine, but for your own and the sake of the world, heed that desecration you regard.”

“I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.” In this dialogue, neither is the Fairy Queen sacred or the boy profane. The boy lives with the long-held ideology of the distinction that exists between him and the Fairy Queen, and he is attempting to bridge that distinction. What Sisyphus has proven in his quest to be like the gods, is that there is no distinction, and that he can be like the gods, and seek immortality and trick them and win. In doing so, he shows that he has the same power as the gods, and that the gods are useless, and there is no need then for the sacred. If the boy were to touch that throne, he would discover only that the throne is nothing more than a chair, no more sacred than any other chair, and doing so would bring about the death of the Fairy Queen, the death of the throne, castle, and of the reverence the boy held as he crept up to the throne, moved to terror and awe. The Fairy Queen is urging him not to touch the throne not for the sake of her own life, but for the sake of protecting him from the knowledge of what substance it is she and the throne are truly made of.

“Why,” The Fairy Queen asked, “Do you wish to sit upon the throne?”

“Because I believe that there is nothing that separates me from you. I am no more special than you are, and because of that, I possess as much authority as you do to dwell in a castle, and be seated upon a throne.”

“What is it then,” She asked. “That formed this distinction between you and I in the first place? Do you value that distinction, and treasure the fact that you regard the throne and I to be composed of a different substance? If you did, then why are you seeking to destroy that substance in seating yourself upon the throne?”

“Why is it that you believe that if I were to seat myself upon the throne, the action would destroy you and the substance you and the throne are composed of?”

“Because in doing so you would unmask the substance for what it is really made of.”

The marriage of sacred and profane is an uneven union, because while both rely upon each other to exist, the profane can exist without the sacred, while the sacred cannot exist without the profane. The entire world cannot be sacred, but it is possible for the entire world to be profane. The profane, if it threatens to assert that the sacred is no more than just profane set apart, will unmask the sacred from what it is; intellectualizing the Body of Christ to be nothing more than bread and wine, the Holy of Holies only worth it’s weight not in sacred and spiritual, but monetary, physical value.

She led the boy down a corridor and into a room with a large window. Inviting him to look out the window, the Fairy Queen pointed in the distance to a deep valley. A solitary figure was in the valley, pushing a boulder up the hill. He toiled, and sweat under the weight of the boulder, and dust built up underneath him. When it finally seemed he was close enough and could reach the top, the boulder proved too heavy, and refused to cross the threshold. It toppled back down and rested finally in the valley below. With a resolute sigh, the lone figure descended the valley, ready to roll the rock up back again.

“This is Sisyphus,” The Fairy Queen said. “He tried to thwart the gods, and was sentenced to an eternity of rolling the boulder up the hill: an eternity of a meaningless existence. His tragedy is not rolling the boulder up a hill, however. Sisyphus could have been sentenced to an eternity of flying hot-air balloons, or traveling with gypsies. The tragedy is that he now knows that all things are meaningless. His life, as all the life of all humanity, has as much meaning as rolling a boulder up a hill, because you are all mortal, and all actions are equated with the same amount of eternal significance – nothing. Life is absurd, and that is all the meaning it is composed of.”

The boy looked at Sisyphus in his eternal struggle, and started to cry. “Why then, is there significance in the throne?”

“The significance exists because you attached significance to it. If you sit on the throne, the throne would become no different from any other chair. This is why you do not want to sit upon it. You would unmask the substance it is composed of to be nothing at all, and that would kill the chair, the castle, and myself in doing so. The significance that is attached to the mediocrity of the world is where the sacred can exist.”

“We must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Camus dares to put forth the idea that since everything is meaningless; the only meaning to be found is in the outlook upon the meaninglessness. Sisyphus must be happy, in order to live life, and the first step then to find the joy in life is to recognize the tragedy life is and find joy in it. In this notion, he strips all that is sacred away, because he asserts that everything has the same amount of meaning as pushing a boulder up a hill, so that there is no real existence of the sacred. The sacred only exists in the hope that the sacred must exist – it only exists because the boy had hope that the throne is more sacred than any other chair. When humanity tries to attain power like the gods; when the boy tries to sit on the throne, only then does humanity discover the tragedy of life, and the ultimatum of having joy in that tragedy, which is how one then has no choice to live. The boy is free to sit upon the throne now. In his action to try and be like the gods, he has discovered the tragedy that life is: that everything is meaningless, and that one has no choice but to take joy in the meaninglessness: tragic happiness.

The boy sat deep in thought for the remainder of the night. He sat at the window and watched as Sisyphus continued his eternal journey up the valley. He sat quietly until the sun rose in the sky and night gave way to daytime. When the sun spread her rays across the dark cool ground he knew then what was sacred, and went to find the Fairy Queen, who was sitting at the throne.

“There is nothing sacred about living in a joy one has no choice but to live because everything is meaningless. True joy cannot be found in that if one cannot choose to be joyful.” He said, looking at the Fairy Queen. “There is indeed a sacred that does exist, and it exists in the order of things. The sacred exists because the sun rises everyday and goes to sleep at night, and it is that continuous ritual that is essential to the survival of everything. It is the rituals, and the placement of everything in its rightful place that is sacred. Sisyphus should continue to carry up the boulder, because it is right, for if the sun abdicated her rightful position in the sky and refused to rise the next day, we would all die. You, as the Fairy Queen, and the throne are sacred because you are meant to be so, and it is not right for me to dare to touch it. Meaning is found in the pursuit of those rightful places in the world, and the achievement of that is the continuation of life itself, and that simplicity is a sacred ritual in and of itself, which must be preserved, preached, and remembered.”

The Fairy Queen, seated upon her throne that was sacred because it was right for it to be so, smiled.