Episode 18, Albert Camus (Part I)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2017
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
All the reading can be found at www.thepanpsycast.com! Please tweet us your thoughts at www.twitter.com/thepanpsycast. Albert Camus (1913-1960) is perhaps the most read philosopher of the 20th century. Camus is generally considered to be the father of absurdism, the idea that life's meaning is beyond our reach and that we should embrace what he called the absurd. Given the extraordinary number of people that have read Camus' work, it is no surprise that he is one of the most romanticised philosophers to have lived. In this two-part special on Camus, we're going to be asking questions like; Who was Albert Camus? Is life worth living? What is the absurd? And How should we deal with the absurd? Part I. The Life of Camus (04:20), Part II. The Absurd (16:40), Part III. Camus' Response to the Absurd (00:10 in Part II), Part IV. Further Analysis and Discussion (15:25 in Part II). Make sure you've subscribed to us on iTunes to get new episodes as and when they're released! Thank you, we hope you enjoy the episode!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to how to push a boulder up a hill. |
| 0:05.0 | Just kidding, there'll be no point in learning how to do that. |
| 0:08.0 | In the words of Alba Camus, there is but only one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. |
| 0:23.6 | Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. |
| 0:29.6 | All the rest, whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories come afterwards. These are games. One must first answer. |
| 0:41.3 | Our inquiry question for this episode is something like, |
| 0:44.3 | what is the meaning of life and how do we live a life without meaning? |
| 0:49.3 | Born in 1913, in Algeria, Albert Camus lived his life in Paris and died tragically in a car accident in 1960. |
| 1:00.0 | Albert Camus is considered the father of absurdism. |
| 1:05.0 | According to absurdism, the efforts of humanity to find inherent meaning will ultimately fail. |
| 1:10.0 | In part one, we're going to be looking at the life of Albert Camus. In part one, we're going to be looking |
| 1:11.6 | at the life of Albert Camus. In part two, we're looking at the absurd. In part three, we're |
| 1:16.9 | looking at responding to the absurd. And in part four, we're engaging in further analysis and |
| 1:22.2 | discussion, and we have a special guest joining us to deliberate the sociological problems with suicide as well. |
| 1:29.9 | We're dealing with some very serious issues in today's episode which relate to suicide. |
| 1:34.0 | If you're affected or influenced by anything we discussed today or have any suicidal thoughts, |
| 1:38.7 | you should contact the Samaritans if you're in the UK, and the phone number for that is 116123. |
| 1:43.6 | You can also contact PIRAS, which is 0800-068-141. |
| 1:48.2 | You can also email both of these services as well as phoning them and you can also text the Samaritans number. |
| 1:53.5 | Also you can speak to your GP. Or if you're an emergency situation, please contact your emergency services. Obviously, that's |
| 2:00.9 | 999 in the UK. With all that said, we're going to enjoy the episode and we're going to engage |
| 2:06.6 | in some really good philosophical discussion on Albert Camus, one of the most romanticised |
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