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
A Night of Serious Drinking by Rene Daumal
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
