Toni MorrisonThe function of freedom is to free someone else.
About This Quote
The function of freedom is to free someone else. This quote by Albert Camus is about the role of freedom in the human condition. It’s about the ability to frame one’s life by embracing values that are beyond oneself. It’s about how we each find our own way out of the shadows that define us in order to free others.
Camus wrote these thoughts in an essay called “The Myth of Sisyphus.” He was explaining the frustration he felt with Sisyphus, who was condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down when he eventually reached the top. Camus writes: “Sisyphus is happy. If there were no other gods, he would be happy with himself; for his whole life he would be conscious only of his own existence, and this is enough for him.
Who does not know that feeling?” Camus goes on to say that Sisyphus’s happiness comes from an awareness that his actions are meaningless. He is happy because he knows that “these useless gestures, which never please anyone and which never do anything good, serve only to extend on earth the reign of death.” But Camus insists that Sisyphus must continue on, because “the man who dies without having lived once more has failed on earth before dying.” To Camus, Sisyphus represents both our futile struggle against death and our futile struggle against injustice on earth.
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