19. Albert Camus on The Absurdity of Life

25/07/2022 1h 10min Temporada 1 Episodio 19

Listen "19. Albert Camus on The Absurdity of Life"

Episode Synopsis

In this episode we unpack Algerian Novelist Albert Camus' 1942 essay "The Myth of Sisyphus."
This essay explores...
-Why life is an absurdity
-Why sitting with inconvenient truths make them easier to bare
-How to find meaning in a meaningless world
Links to Reading and Other Sources Mentioned
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Hamlet by William Shakespeare 
A Night of Serious Drinking by Rene Daumal
Oedipus by Sophocles
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (film)
*note* reading is not required to enjoy this episode!
Host: Zach Stehura  UnpackingIdeas.com
Guest: Arthur O'Dwyer
Theme Music: Polyenso
Timestamps
00:00:00 Introduction 
00:02:52 Writing from a place of confusion and curiosity 
00:08:15 The only Serious Philosophical Problem
00:08:55 The Nietzschian Criterion 
00:11:32 Can we live with the awareness of the absurd without turning away?
00:13:00 Suicide as a social cause vs. existential cause 
00:14:56 Is living worth the suffering?
00:14:44 The uncertainty of the afterlife
00:16:47 Camus two certainties 
00:18:08 Nostalgia for Unity 
00:20:40 Camus’s Critique of Science 
00:23:11 Waking up to the Absurd  
00:27:35 Definition of Absurdity
00:30:04 Philosophical Suicide 
00:30:55 Critique of Kierkegaard 
00:36:25 Critique of the Phenomenologists
00:43:21 Truths worth Dying For
00:47:05 The Greek Myth of Sisyphus 
00:52:50 What Makes Sisyphus a Tragedy 
00:54:44 Abandoning Hope
00:57:29 Consciousness as the cause of and cure to suffering 
00:58:16 Finding Meaning in the struggle 
01:03:42 We can only control how we respond 
01:05:27 Crushing Truths Perish from Being Acknowledged  
01:09:00 wrapping up/outro