The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus Book Review

In The Myth Of Sisyphus, the heart and the mind are referred to. “Rationalism always stumbles eventually on the irrational of human thought. … One thing that interests him, and that is the expedition, whether in the domain of the heart or of the mind”(Camus 25) Rationalism represents the mind, and the irrationality of the mind represents the heart. What is the relationship between the mind and the heart? The heart wants an answer to everything, knowing full well that answers are not possible, but the mind continuously tries to answer the heart the unanswerable single answer for everything. 

The heart wants an understanding of the world and asks the mind what everything truly is. “I want everything to be explained to me or nothing. And the reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart”(Camus 27). But there is a misunderstanding between the heart’s definition of “understanding the world” and the mind’s definition. The heart refers to understanding as a pure and self-sufficient reason for an explanation for everything. It is not being said in the context of a “theory of everything”, that is an answer the mind will give. What the heart wants is more than the reasonings of the mind.  “If one could only just say once: ‘This is clear,’ all would be saved”(Camus 27), The heart is asking the mind for an answer to define, in the terms that the heart can understand, a general outline in which everything can be explained and in which everything takes part.  

The heart asks the mind a knowledge of the world, knowing that the question it asks can not be answered. How the heart knows this fact is that it is the only fact that the heart knows. The heart dictates that there can not be true knowledge of the world. “Of whom and of what indeed can I say: ‘I know that!’ This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists”(Camus 25), but the mind nevertheless wastes its effort to try to explain to the heart. The mind says that indeed the world is clear and understandable. “Blind reason, may well claim that all is clear”(Camus 20 - 21). But the heart doesn’t bother with the reasoning of the mind. Because reason is confined to itself, and can not reason the unreasonable bounds that the heart is asking for an explanation. “However, as soon as thought reflects on itself, what it first discovers is a contradiction”(Camus 16) 

In The Myth Of Sisyphus, the heart and the mind, are depicted as the heart wasting the efforts of the mind by asking it the impossible of defining a world that will never be defined. As to why the heart seeks answers from reason, it is because the mind is the consequence of the heart. The heart can not explain everything or in fact, anything. The heart then gives responsibility to the mind, who does not explain everything or anything like the heart. But the mind provides an environment, where each person can keep his sanity. This is the importance of the mind, for sanity. For without mind, the heart will kill the man, finding no one to answer its question of understanding the world. That is why the heart needs the mind, to keep sane. It could even be said that the mind is an adaptation that the heart created. To give consolation to a world that will never be understood but through thinking alludes itself that it is understood.