|
Albert Camus wrote the Myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor for the human condition. Sisyphus had offended the gods in some manner and was condemned to roll a huge rock up a hill for eternity. When he got to the top it would roll back to the bottom and he would start again. Eternally. The horror of his predicament was not really due to the weight of the rock. Even if it had been a pebble the true horror still lay in futility of the predicament. He would never, in any real sense, or in any ultimate sense, achieve anything. Perhaps the gods would alleviate his plight by tampering with his make up, his brain chemistry perhaps. He would then develop a love of rolling stones up hills; it would become his passion. Here his predicament would become absurd rather than tragic. He would, it seems, have become a pathetic individual. In being reconciled to his fate he loses what dignity be once had when be railed against the injustice of the gods. Philosophical arguments are usually found to be false on the basis of unsound first principles, unsound beginnings. Sisyphus is considered to be a metaphor for the ultimate futility of the human condition. There can be no ultimate fulfilment; achievement, in that it will leave us without goals, is as empty as effort. This, of course, refers to all human activity and not just 'work' in any narrow sense. Suppose I brush my teeth every morning, a task made more enjoyable by flavoursome toothpaste. Surely the dental hygiene element in this form of 'rolling a pebble up a hill' would, at the very least, lessen the futility involved. Justice, said Plato, is its own reward in this world even if there is no afterlife. A life well lived is the same in either case. An atheist may fall short of the ideal of the good life through instances of egocentricity and the believer by morbid fears about the unknown beyond the grave. But the ideal good life is the same for both. St. Augustine posed the question "What is time?" He described in detail many of the aspects of time but he could find no answer to the actual question. "I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled." Wittgenstein, in his second and more important 'incarnation', used this puzzlement as one example to illustrate a more general point. The question "What is time?" is an example of an inappropriate use of the word 'time.' To use the word meaningfully it should be put to different use. "What time is it?" "What time is the bus due?" "How long does the movie last?" And so on. It is in such contexts that the true meaning of the word 'time' becomes understood. To raise the question as to the meaning and purpose of life out of context is to invite meaninglessness and futility. We end up "Waiting for Godot" which, not withstanding Becket's artistry and genius, is a vision of sheer hell. On the other hand if we were to, first and foremost, get on with the real business of our lives, to eat breakfast, brush our teeth, to seek to earn a living and to use our finances wisely, but not too wisely, it is likely that we will develop a sense that our lives have meaning, even if this sense of purpose may not easily be articulated. It may then be possible to address the question of ultimate meaning, but from this perspective. In desiring to know the meaning of life in absolute terms and out of context we bring the curse of Sisyphus upon ourselves. Don't blame the gods. Descartes based his epistemology, his study of the nature of knowledge, on the self-evident certainty of his own existence. It is possible to doubt, in principle at least, everything except the fact of ones own awareness of ones self as a thinking entity. This is certain, he asserted. David Hume pointed out that when one introspects one finds, not a 'self', but a variety of thoughts, feelings and images which one attributes to a 'self'. The 'self' is not observed but inferred. It is a theoretical concept used to explain the source of this stream of consciousness. Its existence is neither certain nor self-evident. Karl Popper has established that no knowledge is certain. A theory may be useful in pragmatic terms and, if this knowledge is not bogus, it must be falsifiable. The only possible exception to this would be knowledge that is trivially true. Such knowledge may, or may not, in fact, exist. But most, genuine, knowledge is a useful approximation to the truth and must be capable of being disproved. It can never be proved true in any absolute sense. Bishop George Berkley, the 17/18th century Irish Anglican, argued that, as we only have our experience of reality, material reality doesn't actually exist. This is called idealism as opposed to materialism. All reality is composed of thought; everything has its existence as ideas in the mind of God. Reality experienced as material reality is, in fact, a mental event. Dr. Samuel Johnson famously claimed: "I refute Berkley thus", as he kicked a stone. But he didn't. He simply experienced his foot colliding with an image of a stone. He did not establish the existence of matter, just the experience we attribute, theoretically, to interaction with matter. However… Berkley's idealism was a response to the implied atheism of Hume and Locke. It cannot be proved true and is unfalsifiable in any case. But let us suppose it is true in an absolute sense. Materialism or, at least the idea that much of the reality we inhabit is composed of something called 'matter', is a very useful and successful, human-invented, theory which explains a great deal of the behaviour of reality even if this reality is ultimately composed only of thought. Mainstream science until the early 20th century pointed towards, but of course did not prove, that reality was to be understood as if it were totally material in nature. Modern physics establishes that 'matter' is more complex than most lay people realise and most likely necessitates the existence of a non-material mind. And nothing, but nothing, is certain. Science deals with likelihood derived from knowledge that is always incomplete. Possibilities exist in varying states of likelihood and humanity has always, whether or not we now realise it, or have in the past realised it, negotiated our world using knowledge that is tentative, partial and incapable of completion. The scientific revolution that lead us out of late medieval dogmatism is based on the principle of the repeatable experiment and the rational analysis of the findings of such experiments. It would be wise to remember this and not delude ourselves that what was involved was the replacement of one set of dogmas with others of a more congenial nature. The will to power is, of course, a fact of the human condition, but our modern scientific, technological world is made possible by the recognition of the fact that the repeatable experiment establishes objective truths that are the same for all observers. Science is a largely 'will to truth' activity. Pragmatics requires this. Dogma, and the enforcement of dogma, are 'will to power' phenomena. Nietzsche's Superman would have mankind back in the Middle Ages just as quickly as any tyrannical church. However ambiguity in the possible interpretations of modern scientific endeavours creates possibilities for propaganda; propaganda more usually these days for atheism and materialism. Our quest for knowledge can never be complete but this in no way means that it is futile. The depth of our knowledge is intensified, perhaps. If what we know is forever uncertain how can we possibly understand ultimate meaning? But sometimes we may catch just a glimpse, out of the corner of our eye, of ultimate things. Certainty, if it exists at all, only exists in the realm of the trivial. In a real sense we never know, we believe. Our actions are concrete but always entail some leap of faith in their performance. Uncertainty is at the very heart of things. Brendan Burke MA(Phil) Cork Unitarian Church 1st March 2009 |