Video summary
Alex O'Connor and Joe Folley engage in a critical examination of Albert Camus's *The Myth of Sisyphus*, with Alex expressing skepticism regarding its status as an overhyped existentialist text. While acknowledging his general appreciation for the philosophy, Alex finds Camus's famous conclusion—that one must imagine Sisyphus happy—unsatisfying and ultimately meaningless to him. He argues that simply imagining a man pushing a boulder up a hill repeatedly does not resolve the absurdity of existence but rather presents it as equally futile. Joe counters by suggesting this interpretation represents an act of rebellion or existential irony, yet Alex pushes back by highlighting how Camus's own thought evolved significantly over time to address deeper inconsistencies in his earlier work. The conversation delves into the moral implications found within *The Myth of Sisyphus*, where Camus introduces characters who are "absurd men," including a philanderer and an actor who never becomes himself, effectively living out valuelessness. Alex points out that if one accepts there is no objective way to rank aspects of life, the only remaining value enacted by choosing not to commit suicide is simply affirming that existence has quantity over quality—a stance bordering on moral nihilism. To illustrate Camus wrestling with these uncomfortable conclusions, Joe and Alex discuss *Caligula*, a play depicting a fictionalized Roman emperor descending into madness and mass murder. They interpret this work as evidence of Camus realizing the logical trap his earlier philosophy created: if only life's quantity matters, then any action becomes permissible, leading to absurdity rather than liberation. Moving beyond Sisyphus, the speakers highlight how Camus's later works demonstrate a significant development in his thinking that contradicts his initial "hardcore" absurdism. They praise *The Stranger* for its counterintuitive nature but emphasize *The Plague* as an amazing novel and bestseller set during a plague outbreak in French Algeria. This text is analyzed through multiple lenses, including an analogy to the Nazi occupation of France, yet Alex focuses on themes like friendship and shared struggle found within it. He notes that while people face abhorrent struggles where others die around them, they cope by fighting back because that resistance itself provides meaning. Similarly, *The Rebel* is cited as a later work attempting to define what an absurdist can coherently value without resorting to a leap of faith or falling into nihilism. To contextualize the reading of philosophical texts like Camus's, the discussion shifts to the importance of chronology and personal history in understanding intellectual evolution. The hosts argue that philosophers are not static entities; their thoughts change as they age and experience life events, meaning readers might be engaging with a "goblet of fire" before reaching the "chamber of secrets." They cite Plato's transition from *The Republic*, which focuses on creating philosopher kings to rule Syracuse, to *The Laws*, written after his disillusioning experiences with tyrants like Dionysius who imprisoned him. Similarly, Thomas Hobbes wrote *Leviathan* as a royalist fleeing the English Civil War, advocating for authoritarian submission due to his specific political context. Finally, the dialogue addresses how external pressures and censorship shape philosophical output, using Dostoevsky's *Notes from Underground* as an example where a chapter arguing for Christianity was censored by Tsarist authorities, leaving readers with only a nihilistic tract. The speakers conclude that human beings are dynamic writers whose motivations include political considerations and personal crises, such as David Hume revising his massive *Treatise of Human Nature* into the shorter *Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding*. Ultimately, they advise listeners to view philosophical works not just as definitive statements but as snapshots in a developing life, urging readers to consider when texts were written relative to an author's changing mind and circumstances rather than treating them as immutable truths.
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I unfortunately think it's pretty
overhyped, the myth of Seisphus.
>> Why Why do you not like the myth of
Seephus?
>> I
I I sort of I don't have an aversion to
existentialist philosophy sort of
generally, but it it sort of doesn't
really capture me. Like I think that I
don't know. I mean, I don't know if Kimu
like sufficiently answers the question.
His his famous conclusion is imagining
Sisphus happy, right? And I just I don't
know if that's like a satisfying thought
to me. For some it might be, but but for
me it's it's not. It's just as as
meaningless as the situation that we
that we began with. You know, this this
sort of happy pushing of the boulder. Um
I don't know. Joe, you can probably make
>> Is there a a bull case for
well just imagine this thing to be
different? Just play pretend until you
believe.
>> It's like an act of rebellion for for
Kimu. It's like a it's almost like an
existential irony, right? like he's sort
of you're just going to
like enjoy the thing. It's interesting.
I I find the development of Kimu's
thought over time very interesting for
this because the myth of Cisphus is
often you know the thing that people
take away is of course you know
imagining Cisphus happy it's such a such
a famous image but
>> a lot of the myth of Cisphus
>> is significantly more [sighs and gasps]
>> I don't know what the right word is like
more intuitively abhorrent than that if
that makes sense and even to Kamu so
Kamu writes a myth of Sysphus he paints
a bunch of characters who are meant to
be like absurd men and some of them are
like really awful people, you know, like
like kind of philanderas or, you know,
one of them is kind of, you know, the
actor who never becomes themselves and
is just playing characters all the time.
And
there and he has this idea of like,
okay, well, if you're an absurdist and
you are you think there's no objective
or or you know, no way to say that that
one aspect of life is better than any
other. You're kind of trying to live out
valuelessness. Well, then in that case,
Kamu thinks, well, if you decided not to
kill yourself, the only value that
you're at least enacting is that life is
better than no life. And so, you should
value the quantity of life over the
quality of life. Now, of course,
although that's not existential
nihilism, that's pretty close to moral
nihilism. And Kamu clearly is troubled
by this because one of the next things
he writes is a play called Caligula,
which is all about the Roman emperor, a
kind of fictionalized version of the
Roman emperor Caligula, going absolutely
batshit and killing lots of people. And
you know there there are various
analyses you can make of this. When I um
read that I think yeah this is Kamu
wrestling with his own philosophy and
he's got he's painted himself into a
corner whereby you can only value the
quantity of life and not the quality of
life. And then he's [snorts] teasing out
some of the the consequence of that.
He's clearly not happy because he then
writes books that are ostensibly
attempting to go no hang on a sec. We
can't
>> there are there are further things that
we can do with with absurdism that
>> that wasn't definitive.
>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And we just, you know,
the myth of Sisphus is is one of the
first things that Camu writes along with
the the stranger.
>> Oh, it's the difficult first album or
secondation
of of the outsider
>> and it's it's and it is, you know, I
I've I like The Sisters partly because
it's so counterintuitive, but some of
his later works, things like The Plague,
The Plague is an amazing novel. Sort of
it's it became like a bestseller for
obvious reasons. It's about a kind of a
plague hitting the the town of Iran in
um I think it's you know in French
Algeria what was then French Algeria and
how people cope with that and it's you
know people are given various different
analogical readings for this. So um one
is to read it as an anal analogy for the
Nazi occupation of France. Um, another
is to but but but part of the the kind
of tying this back to the development of
Kamu's thought from the mythus one way
of looking at it is to say well these
are lots of things that Kamu thinks when
the chips are down people turn to one of
them is friendship I'm very bullish on
friendship generally but um you know
another one is kind of this kind of
shared struggle there there are bits in
the in the plague where they sort of say
okay yeah we're fighting a kind of
non-nipotent disease but what like we're
going to fight it because that's the way
that we're coping almost, you know, in
in a in a a time of of kind of abhorentt
struggle and people are dying around
them all
>> feels like the human centipede of
philosophical arguments
>> a little bit. Yeah. As in like as in
it's and so you know and then Kamu
writes the rebel which is one of his one
of his later um works which is again
discussing you know what can an
absurdist coherently value without
simply falling back onto a kind of leap
of faith or something. And I I really
like those later works. I'm not
convinced that they actually are
consistent with this earlier position he
has of like kind of hardcore absurdism,
but I do think they're still they're
still worth reading. I think that's
actually like understated in a great
deal of like philosophers who are now
dead is like what they thought as if
they just like like lived for one year
wrote everything down [clears throat]
and stayed the same you know like we
sort of we we forget that people like
you know if you've ever thought about
writing a book
>> and I'm sure we all at this table
probably have at some point one of the
thoughts you have is like you know am I
am I ready you know is this the right
time because you recognize that whatever
you write now in 20 years at least some
of it you're going to want to revive
eyes or you're going to have changed
your mind about.
>> And you're also going to have to answer
to
>> Exactly. And it's, you know, you're
going to have your your name in a
bookstore and you have to grimace every
time you walk past it. I would probably
be driven mad. I'd like pull it off the
shelf and scribble out the the
paragraphs by by hand, you know.
>> Um,
>> and this is is what humans do, right?
And so when we talk about what Camu
thought as if his life was this
>> actually just that day when he finally
[laughter] said and done.
>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's just had a
he's just had a fantastically bad day
and the car is just and he thought, you
know what, [ __ ] it. You know,
>> yeah. Like David Hume writes the the
what's the first one? The treaties
concerning human nature and it's like
this.
>> Did he spell human
>> with with an E? That would have been
[ __ ] brilliant. [laughter]
>> It would have been would have been
properly bad. Well, he didn't know much
about PR because the book didn't sell.
And he later sort of revises his
thoughts into the much shorter inquiry
concerning human understanding. the same
kind of thoughts revisited and it's
posited as like a sort of like an update
and he tells people not to read the
other one but some people think it's
just cuz the first one kind of wasn't
selling and in fact when I went to
university they made us study the
treaties because it's more like fleshed
out but he literally like writes the
kind of same thing again in different
form later in his life and so there is
always sort of development of thought
with philosophers and we only tend to be
aware of it when it's grand and dramatic
when someone converts from one side to
another when Anthony flu becomes a
theist or something but it it happens
throughout the history of thought too.
So like when when you're reading a text
by somebody like if you're interested in
their thought like try to keep in mind
some chronology of like when it was when
it was written because otherwise you
might be reading you know the goblet of
fire before you read the chamber of
secrets and you're probably going to get
the wrong kind of idea.
>> I'm sorry. No no I was good. Even even
someone like Plato who we quite often
think of as having a a very strong
stable consistent set of literatur
if you if you you know is one of his
earlier works which is both a kind of
political treatise but also a theory of
the human mind is called the republic
and then later he writes a book that's
also a political work called the laws
and you can see the development of his
thoughts in the republic he's very
focused on what makes a good ruler and
in the laws he's very focused on okay he
he'd had a quite a disillusioning
experience with a a tyrant called um
Dionis I think. Cool. Yeah. Um in in
Syracuse where he tried to Dianis
invited him over um twice actually and
both times it went terribly
>> and said, "Yeah, yeah, like I'm really
interested in being in being like a one
of your like philosopher kings. Yeah,
like this sounds really cool. You can
help me rule better." And then he shows
up and and Dian Isis is just like
drinking himself silly and um and and
Plato was like look like one of the
really big things about being a kind of
philosopher king is like temperance and
and and and you know not gorging
yourself and kind of staying cuz other
how are you going to make like really
good decisions if you're drunk all the
time and Dianisis kind of goes look I'm
going to stop you right there like you
don't understand I'm I'm in charge and
like you do what I say. It's very
unreal. And so and he basically kind of
imprisons Plato for a bit and he
eventually gets free and then he goes
back and same thing happens and he flees
and disillusioned by this Plato writes
the laws which are much less concerned
with what makes a good ruler and are
much more concerned with if you know
rulers come and go. How are you going to
keep everyone in check?
>> These philosophers often have like
extraordinary lives. Why does Thomas
Hobbes write the Leviathan? Because he
had to flee him being a royalist during
the English Civil War. he has to flee to
to France because of the English civil
war and he writes this tract about how
we should all submit to a to a
authoritarian dictator essentially and
there should be that who should be able
to dictate everything with full
submission including religious affairs.
You got to be aware not only the
chronology but also the the context
>> personal motivation
>> and also one other thing on this thread
is be aware that sometimes when you're
reading people they're kind of they're
writing under the laws of a country.
DSTski, his notes from the underground,
one of the most famous of his books
because it's it's so short and easy to
read, uh, originally contained a chapter
which essentially argued for the
necessity of Christianity as Dosski saw
it, but it was censored and and taken
out and so you end up with this sort of
quite fully nihilistic tract. Um, but I
think a lot of that is also going on
historically too. So, so be aware that,
you know, these are human beings with
developing thoughts and political
considerations inspiring their writing.
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