Audrey asked:

According to Robert Solomon, The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical theory, a vision of the absurd.
Sisyphus really represents all of us as we spend our lives in futile quests. in the end, only personal
experience is meaningful. Solomon asks if the absurd would disappear in the face of irrefutable
evidence that God exists?

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I've basically sort of given up answering questions like this... because I've done it so much. So first,
go look in the archives on this site about questions on the meaning of life, the existence of god(s),
etc. But your putting it in terms of "the absurd" is somewhat intriguing to me...

Let's say that we had that proof. Ok, something we'll call "god" exists. Now, that means, I assume,
that we are, or should be, following some sort of "divine" plan that it has for us and the universe. Ok...
so what? What makes that plan, or whatever, "meaningful"? Take a god... it's got this plan... and it's
just made it up from nothing... after all, where would a godget a plan from, right? So it's made up
some plan for life, the universe, and everything... and... so... what? What justifies it? What makes it
any more meaningful than a plan you or I would make up? The fact that a god knows everything, and
so its plan will work? Um... that's nice... but my plan might work also. I guess that a god knowsthat its
plan will work, and so you and I know that its plan will work. In other words, god's rock will get to the
top of the hill. Whoopee. Why should we care? Because there's no other game in town? No, not true,
we can make up games also. Because god's game is better than ours, since we know it will work and
we don't know that ours will? Well, that's some kind of criterion, all right... but it seems pretty weak to
me. After all, maybe it's better notto know, then the game is more fun, right?

So, all in all... I just don't see that there's any more point, unless we want a sure win... and of course
that assumes that god's plan gives us(and not just god) that win, which assumes that god is "good"...
so we not only have to prove it (god) exists, we have to know its nature. And then, after we do that,
we stillhave to feel that going with a winning game is somehow "meaningful", not "absurd"... and now
that we're on that question, just what doesmake something "meaningful", after all? Or conversely,
what makes something "absurd"? It doesn't seem to be having a plan, or a game... wecan do that.
Having a winningplan doesn't seem to add much... does it? So, what else?

Let me put it another way. There's a very interesting novel by Colin Wilson, The Philosopher's Stone,
in which he asks somewhat the same question. His answer is that the mere existence of a being
which issuperior to us, plus our acknowledgmentof it as superior, will motivate us to work for its
ends. I think, based on the history of religions and of tyrants (which are actually not really separate
issues), that he's correct. But the question is, shouldhe be correct? Shouldwe behave that way? We
can look at studies of dominance/submission in animals for reasonsthat we behave like that, but
those reasons have to do with animal survival, all well and good until now. But now we are able (to a
certain rather feeble extent) to ask, answer, and act on higher-level, i.e., "existential" questions. God's
providing us with a game-plan is the same thing, isn't it. You can bring the issue down to not wanting
to go to hell, or some equivalent afterlife, but that's just avoiding the stick for the carrot... a refined
version of animal training. Or you can say that the acceptance of some entity's dominance over us
assures meaningfulness in our carrying out its goals. That seems pretty silly also, doesn't it. Or, as I
say above, you can say that the assuranceof being in a winning game provides meaningfulness. But
that leaves the question of the game's goalsopen, not to mention why "winning" is meaningful, and
not losing, or whatever... and so, you have to say that there's something about the endof the game
that provides "meaningfulness".

Ok... what is it? Solomon, you say, answers that with "personal experience"... um... it's not the
winning, it's the journey type of thing? Sorry, but I don't see that taking subgoals, the smaller steps on
the way to the maingoal, are any more meaningful than the main goal of the game. Maybe "personal
experience" means things like friendship, love... etc.? Very nice, but why are those "meaningful", any
more than anything else? Because we like them, they make us feel happy, satisfied? Well, yes, you
can take that as your criterion for meaningfulness if you want... but why is that any more justified than
any othercriterion?

So this little meta-ethical romp does not seem to have come to a satisfactory conclusion. And I think
that the reason, one reason, anyway, is that we started by asking the wrong kindof question. How,
we asked, is meaningfulness tied to a god? Well... I guess it isn't, and so what? Then we have to look
somewhere else, don't we... or ask just whatwe're talking about, anyway. Is "meaningfulness" a
feeling? A goal? Something even useful to talk about? Wheredoes that notion come from? What
does it mean? I think that thosequestions might be more interesting to think about beforewe start
with all the "god" stuff that people have gone around and around with for thousands of years.

Steven Ravett Brown

Not having read Solomons words I can only comment upon your quote and I can understand how you
can interpret The Myth of Sisyphus in the way you describe but my own take is that the book already
posits God/s existence, after all it was one who put Sisyphus there. So no, evidence for a God/s
existence would not change his interpretation of the theory being a vision of the absurd.

However, I prefer to see the story as heroic as to me it presents the existence of freewill in Man
regardless of the actions of any God/s. In his walk down Sisyphus is free and to me it shows that
even if all our actions were to be determined or pre-destined, we would still have freewill.

Kim Boley

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