Sisyphus and the stone he wants to roll

Taylor's Sisyphus, meaning comes from within

Richard Taylor 1919 · 2003Sisyphus would find meaning in his task if he were given the desire to roll his rock.

What it claims

The meaning of life comes from within, from the will to do what one does; it is not bestowed from above.

Why

If Sisyphus loved rolling his stone, his life would have meaning for him, and meaning felt by the one living is real meaning.

The same idea through history

Albert Camus1942Same myth, different route: Camus keeps Sisyphus's lucidity, Taylor gives him a desire.

Richard Taylor1970The meaning of a life depends on the will of the one who lives it.

In short

"Sisyphus and the stone he wants to roll" is an argument by Richard Taylor (Good and Evil, 1970, chap. 18 "The Meaning of Life", 1970) on the question "Does life have a meaning?" (answer: a meaning to create). Its claim: The meaning of life comes from within, from the will to do what one does; it is not bestowed from above. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Good and Evil, 1970, chap. 18 "The Meaning of Life"

Valid with an implicit premise

Sisyphus rolls his rock to the top of a hill forever, and it rolls back down. For Taylor this is the perfect image of a meaningless life: endless effort that comes to nothing. And our lives, seen from afar, resemble it. But imagine that the gods also give Sisyphus an irresistible urge to roll stones. Nothing changes in the world: the rock always rolls back. Yet his life now has a meaning for him. Taylor concludes that meaning does not come from outside: it comes from the will to do what one does. Many find this conclusion too easy, and ask whether a desire is enough.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a world where Sisyphus wants his stones, so his life has a meaning for him, but where this "meaning" is only an effect of the drug: at bottom his life remains meaningless, and nobody has a reason to envy him.

Valid with P4. P1 and P2 show that our lives have no external meaning. P3 says that desire gives a meaning for the one who desires. P4 says that this meaning is a real meaning, and it is what lets us conclude. Without P4, one can grant everything and say that Sisyphus's meaning is only an illusion produced by a drug. Taylor feels this himself: he admits that this meaning would be "irrational". But he adds that the other way, where one finally reaches a goal, leads to infinite boredom.

Analogy. A collector spends his evenings sorting stamps. For most of us it leads nowhere. For him, these evenings are full. Taylor says he is the one who is right about his own life: nobody else can decide what fills it. Wolf's question is: what if the collector were only filling his time with something worthless?

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Susan Wolf 2010 · attacks premise 4

Susan Wolf takes up Taylor's case, which she calls "Sisyphus Fulfilled". She recalls that his task remains futile: there is no value in his efforts, and nothing comes of them. She writes that something desirable seems to be missing from his life despite his experience of fulfillment. For her, meaning also requires real value in what one does: meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness. Desire alone is not enough.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 2010, after the author's death (2003).

The debate goes on (our summary) Taylor died in 2003 and cannot answer Wolf. His 1970 text nevertheless contains elements of a reply: he writes that a life where one reaches a goal with nothing left to do is "the hell of its eternal absence", and that meaning comes from what people deeply want to do. Wolf answers in turn that Sisyphus's desire, produced by a substance, may be a delusion, or a sign of reduced intelligence. Both positions are still defended. Wolf's own work on this site is in preparation.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 1942 · attacks premise 3

Camus had told the same myth thirty years before Taylor, but for him what makes Sisyphus great is his lucidity: "If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious." His Sisyphus is happy because he knows the full extent of his condition, not because he was given a desire. A happiness obtained by a substance in the veins is not his.

Taylor replies

Taylor Taylor (1970), on the irrational character of this meaning

Taylor does not answer Camus, whom he does not name in this chapter. But on the point at issue, he admits that his Sisyphus's meaning would be irrational, since his desire would only be the product of a substance in his veins and not something reason could discover; it is nevertheless, he says, a meaning.

The debate goes on (our summary) The two Sisyphuses differ. In Camus, Sisyphus sees everything and chooses his revolt; in Taylor, he is reconciled to his fate "by nothing more rational than the potency of a new substance in his veins" (Taylor's own words). Camus would call this an evasion. Taylor might answer that lucidity is not necessary for a life to be full. Taylor's text does not say so, and the disagreement remains open. See the argument "Living without appeal" (camus-absurde-refus-suicide).