19. Albert Camus on The Absurdity of Life

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