Dr. Sisyphus or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boulder

Abstract:

                 Within Camus’ absurdist framework, I examine more closely what I propose to be the coterminous claims of the two polemicists that Camus pits against one another, Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard.  In the process, I argue that, like Kierkegaard (whose work is distinctively theological), Nietzsche also maintains an underpinning of theology within his works. In order to accomplish goal, I elucidate the tripartite, transgressional processes that both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard describe in respective works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Either/Or. In illustrating this tripartite, I find that Camus has, in a way, shortchanged Kierkegaard. By this I mean that, in spite of the seemingly opposing conclusions of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (Kierkegaard’s return to some sense of Christianity and Nietzsche’s supposed dismantling of all things Christian through the character Zarathustra), both authors, in their fight against organized religion or Christendom, philosophized within an apophatic, existential, Jesusesque theology. “Apophatic,” because both authors describe their notion of god through negation. “Existential,” because both authors advocate necessity of the individual’s quest to discover and acknowledge the truer nature of (or rather lack there of) human existence. “Jesusesque,” because both authors expose the hypocrisy and troubling manner in which organized religion has functioned, and yet end up positing a worldview based in Christian redeemer  grammatology.

Dr. Sisyphus or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boulder