Following the Great War—better known today, retrospectively, as the First World War—Europe fell into a sort of despair. Europeans had believed that the cultural and political achievements of the Enlightenment had set Europe and, through Europe’s influence, the rest of the world, on a path of continual moral growth. But the Great War became the worst Europe had ever seen; not a “civilized” conflict, but a cruel and massive slaughter, full of atrocities. Europe’s greatest writers and thinkers struggled with disillusionment. Were European ideals of democracy and humanism just hollow idols, ignored as soon as they became inconvenient? Had art and literature made no difference in softening the heart? It seemed as if all the achievements of a cultured civilization had been shown to be illusory—what was then the point of trying to do better, to be better, to learn and to understand?

For Tuesday, we’ll read two short pieces written after the Great War that explore the distinctive crisis in a sense of meaning and purpose in Europe at this time. The first is a reflection on death and value written by Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which he relates a conversation with a “young poet” (who seems to have been the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke). The second is a short re-imagining of a Greek myth, written by French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus—here, Camus uses the myth of Sisyphus to examine whether life can be worth living even if there’s no real human progress and no purpose to living. Where Freud wrote his piece near the end of his life and shortly after the end of the Great War, Camus wrote his in 1940 at the age of 27, as one of his first philosophical writings, amidst the rising intensity of renewed conflict in Europe.

Reading Response

For Tuesday, please read “Transience”, by Sigmund Freud, and “The Myth of Sisyphus”, by Albert Camus and complete a response with the following sections:

a. Words: Write down three words you learned (or learned more about) from the reading.
b. Ideas: Write down three ideas or concepts you learned about (or learned more about) from the reading
c. Prompt: Write a short response (100–200 words, minimum 100 words required) to this prompt:

Neither of these essays takes the form of a straightforward argument. In your own words and with reference to the text, explain what you think the main point is in either one or the other reading.