One interesting fact the video left out: Camus had a life long fear of automobiles. In his young years he worked at a car factory on an assembly line to pay for his education. When he started to write about Absurdism, he wrote: "The most meaningless way to die is in a car crash". Of course we all know how it ends. A tragic and undeniably absurd end for one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
That's actually not a fact. First and foremost, he never wrote explicitly about Absurdism, so I'm curious what your reference is regarding. Second, it's been debunked as a rumor a long time ago seeing as he never actually said that. Lastly, to say his death is undeniably absurd is nonsensical if used in the philosophical sense.
Camus did not write about the absurd? Interesting... “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.” “Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” “The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe. Suicide would mean the end of this encounter, and absurdist reasoning considers that it could not consent to this without negating its own premises.” "The absurd is an experience that must be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence, of Descartes's methodical doubt." "Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest."
David Eagin I said that he didn't write about Absurdism explicitly; he most definitely wrote about the Absurd, and Absurdity; but the original comment on "when he started writing on Absurdism" implies (Camus') delineation of a mental framework that some how preexisted his prerequisite work, which makes no sense. I'm meaning to say,the quote is falsely attributed to Camus', and the timeline is also false (i.e. he didn't sit down on June 2nd and begin writing a paper titled Absurdism and spell out fundamentals of it; there was no definitive period where he "began work on Absurdism"; his work on the subject was about *the absurd* and *absurdity*. I suppose I'm getting too literal when the original comment likely knows nothing of Camus' history of work and where to attribute movements of thought
I had an existential crisis in my high school. I am so glad that I read Camus. I find his interpretation of nihilism so liberating. It makes life worth living for.
Same, last year in my sophomore year I would read a lot of books on nihilism and existentialism, and ironically it made my self esteem go up and made me more social, in a way it helped me because I thought to myself if life has no objective meaning, then might as well try to make the best of it and so I did Haha
you are the lucky one. I had the same problem but only i read him until I was 25. I kind of regret not living my full potential through those important years of being a student. Camus is an absurdist by the way.
I want to ask, how many people watching this channel discuss these sort of topics with other people in face to face conversation ? I would love to talk about morality, existence, and many other subjects brought up in philosophy but unfortunately I never see anyone else do it in person so I have been trained in a way to not bring these up in conversations often. However, after seeing how many people love this channel I have a new found optimism about the depth of thought that surrounds me in others but is never brought from the mind to words.
Tell me about it... I only have two friends we discuss these things with. Everyone else seems to be too absorbed in selfies and workout. Where are all the thinkers hiding?? There should be a world philosophy convention or something (if there isn't one already, hmm...).
I have three friends that i can discuss these matters of life with.We usually hang out in one of my friends house late at night and we dont even realise how fast time flies when we discuss these things.
I'm sorry to hear that. I've been kind of stuck in that situation in higschool as well. although I love a good drink and having ridiculous, whimsical experiences with my friends, no one really wanted to talk philosophy or really understood/cared where I was coming from when I wanted to talk about camu or nietzsche or Dawkins or Tyson. in the past I was mainly restricted to expressing these ideas through social media with other people many, many miles away. As I've started college I became more exposed to these sort of people. I've become good friends with my professor who teaches philosophy, theology and humanities and others learning in his courses. every Thursday we gather in the courtyard to discuss a variety of things like this and it's so enriching and revitalizing to hear from other people who know even more than I about these things.
***** I like this channel and even though one could be called lazy for relying on "second hand readings/takes" on philosophers, I like how Mr. de Botton put's the effort into these videos. From what I've heard Heidegger actually didn't like being called an existentialist and what I like about Camus is how not just existentialism but absurdism is brought up,which imo can sometimes be a separate "attitude" and like existentialism is interesting to see how it's sprung up across different non-Western cultures.
SolangeTeParle Solange, I can report back that Alain's English accent is, well, more than passable too: now I'm just waiting confirmation of my suspicion he nailed the splash of German in the Wittgenstein video.
Camus seemed like a down-to-earth fella. Sharp ladies' man living life to the fullest. His philosophy is mad deep, realize that life is absurd and meaningless yet simultaneously embrace and revel in it.
Still, he doesn't give any answers as to why to enjoy life if you're not good-looking and succesful with women or talented in other areas. Aside from sex and some love that becomes routine after a few years, what else is there? Just temporary pleasure..
My favourite aspect of Camus is that he was never a know-it-all. He never assumes he is correct and doesn’t even claim to have any more knowledge than anyone else. He was rarely ever cynical about the world around him and he greeted the absurdity of life not with frustration but with acceptance. He knew he was no more enlightended than anyone else and advocated philosophy for what it should be - not a study towards finding the answers in life but rather a study towards dealing with the unavoidable reality that no such answers exist. He makes what is usually the most dampening and mind-shattering realisation the most liberating and satisfying realisation.
So he was a down to earth ladies' man, who was good at sport, had a keen intellect and was enraptured by philosophy and life? Some blokes really do have it all.
It's a shame that many people who read philosophy make it seem snobbish and difficult. The way they talk, a few of my "intellectual" friends, makes one thing that philosophy makes you sullen and presumptuous. This field really deserves more attention than it usually gets. To those who love philosophy, please don't give it negative advertising by being jerkish and weird with others.
People are attracted to philosophy for many reasons and at a variety of stages of life. Most of us have our first exposure to philosophy as undergraduates, often in courses we took to meet graduation requirements. Know-it-all’ism is a common intellectual failing we associate with sophomorism. They crowd student centers and make themselves the center of conversation seeking attention for their latest enthusiasm. When teaching high school and college students, we read Plato’s Apology and ask Why did Athens turn on Socrates - The man who was determined to show that Sophists (teachers) knew nothing. Camus makes great reading, too. Add a few plays of Brecht and Sartre to get the juices going. It is far more important to learn how to think than to learn what the Greats thought back when. Once one gets the knack of thinking on one’s own and probing ideas that won’t yield to binary choices (Y/N or T/F) one can begin the journey of reading the Greats and learning how they wrestled with the leading ideas of their day. Above all, philosophy should be fun, playful and not ego consuming or nihilist in its intent. A love of Wisdom should aim to lift the spirit and fly free of the conventional wisdom of the day. Wisdom bashing is another sport all together darker and mean spirited. An experienced guide (teacher) can show the way out of sophomoric passion for destruction and triumph over others. It’s entirely doable.
Camus would be a great guy to have as a friend. He enjoys life and see it as it is, but at the same time, he has such an amazing mind. I would not mind sitting down and having a conversation with Camus.
+Aso Paso Friend, Camus himself would scoff at your pretense. He was definitely into doing all of the above as well as being one of the great minds of his day. They are not mutually exclusive.
"If there is a sin against this life, it consists perhaps not so much into sparing life, as in hoping for another life and eluding the quiet grandeur of this one" These are indeed the words of someone who enjoyed and appreciated the value of life.
Him and Nietzsche helped me so much in my high school years. Realizing that you need to make your own morality, far away from the prejudiced and condescending influence of societal morality, gave me so much confidence and love, and most importantly, the strength to face my own fears.
I think it depends on. For sure, if your morality goes against natural law, like, killing or shit like that, it is indeed... But if your morality is, for example, free love, or atheism, or naturalism, like the hippies, then you can find your own community outside of society. Or hell, even have your own moral code but stay in society triying to stick to it while understanding that this world needs flexibility on its own. @@matletico
He was a very talented child and his teacher really supported him. In his teenages he had some very bad illness and couldn't really go to the beaches that he loved. So he had a lot of time to read and write.
School of Life, you have brought a level of catharsis to my life that your team will never fully comprehend. And for that I thank you. Please keep up the great work you're doing.
+Dante Kierkegaard bro you named your UA-cam name after a 14th century Italian poet and Kierkegaard, so you're right to call others pretentious is immediately revoked lol
The Outsider was a saving grace during the treacherous years of high school. Camus highlight of the absurdity of human life; a genuine plea for a deeper and open understanding of our mortality moved me greatly. I contemplated suicide numerous times under societal pressure, but philosophy saved my life. I thought before I acted upon that thought, and it has made all the difference.
Same here, actually a therapist introduced me to this in high school. This, A stranger and a strange land and Brave new world he told me to read and they helped me a ton. From there he half way guided me through a lot of philosophy
One of my favorite quotes addresses this notion. It was Merlins monologue to Arthur in T.H. White's "The Once & Future King" " The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. " I think Camus figured out how to get around the pretty obvious lack of meaning in life without letting it prevent him from living it to the fullest and most enlightened way possible using that very notion.
I love his quote about sport. Sure so much of it is meaningless and it's all "just a game" but why it's so important is what it teaches you about life and the bonds you create with other people.
I feel like the dude in The Outsider was based on me...but I think I found that spring you're talking about. Maybe I won't drink this bleach-tini with rat poison garish. Is the first line yours or Camus'? I just learned about Camus today and I feel like someone finally understands. He understood many decades before I was even born. The heaviness in my mind and soul seem to have been lifted. I'm so glad I didn't do the permanent solution to the temporary problem of unhappiness/hopelessness. Hope restored. This is not mere sentimentality, I have truly discovered a treasure. Thank you and thank Albert.
“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead.”
@@Jdabomb93 because the unimportant nonsense can occasionally inspire joy. That joy is better than endless nothingness. Even worth suffering for, if you can frame the pain as being merely a result of unimportant nonsense.
akshay Viswambharan Ha. The Japanese don’t think so. Lol But you have your own opinion. I like to think that we get to choose to be born on earth. And we choose when to leave too. Just my spiritual belief.
Jdabomb93 I agree with you on having choice to do anything after we were born, but I’m not sure we had choice in being born. But maybe it’s possible and we just forgot. Wherever we were before this physical existence was much longer then this life and wherever death leads is much longer. If anything life seems to be an intermission between the two.
I was having a really bad day, I was looking out of my window and seeing the evening rain with despair. After watching this, I looked out my window again with calm and glee. Merci Camus
Unfortunate that The Fall was overlooked almost entirely from this video essay. It is my favorite of his works and a fantastic, creative and inventive piece of moralist philosophy.
I second that. Imo, the use of second-person narative made that eery and provocative atmosphere even more significant. I had never experienced anything like it and I can't understand how it's so easily forgotten.
The Fall is Camus' deepest work, way more profound than The Stranger. But it's a tough reading, I have to admit. It's not easy to look yourself in the mirror like that.
"A lucid invitation to live and to create in the midst of the desert." Sounds like he would get a huge kick out of burning man, it's a literal translation of his philosophy!
In philosophy class, we once had to do a presentation on a philosopher we were assigned. I got Camus and the more I read about him, the more I thought: This is almost exactly how I view the world. It really helped me a lot at the time, making me understand my conflicted feelings about the world and putting them into words.
"In the years following the assassination of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy discovered Camus, and read and re-read all of his vast body of work. The experience profoundly affected Kennedy. Camus’s thoughts about how to live with the full knowledge of the inevitability of death helped Kennedy accept the tragedy. Camus’s arguments against capital punishment changed Kennedy’s mind on the issue, and other writings inspired Kennedy to focus on civil rights, children, and the poor. The senator and eventual presidential candidate started carrying Camus’s writings around with him, kept favorite sayings at the ready on index cards, and quoted him in debates and interviews, even on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Signs appeared at campaign stops: “Kennedy and Camus in ‘68.” In the summer of 2006, President George W. Bush took The Stranger with him on vacation. One has to wonder what might be different had he encountered something like this from Camus a few years earlier: “Henceforth there will be only one honorable choice: to wager everything on the belief that in the end words will prove stronger than bullets.” The Huffington Post
As a child, I didn't have any book, but one that my aunt gave me when I was about the age of 5. 'Rain, Rain, Go Away'. I come from a single parent household and my mother didn't read to me to the best of my memory. However, there was a time when my mom became a ferocious reader and joined in with my aunt. Yes, the one that gave me that first book. Well, there was a box of books in the hallway just outside my door. I looked through the books and found this one with an interesting cover. And I will read the first sentence 'MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.' That book is The Stranger.' I was 12 and that book totally altered my perspective on life. Today and from many decades find it hard to ask teenagers or even adults if they have read the book. More than likely and most likely they haven't.
I've just discovered Camus over the last year. I wouldn't say its been revelatory but I've learnt a lot from The Plague and The Outsider. The latter especially opened my eyes. On my first reading I found myself alienated from Meursault, almost frustrated with his indifference. I think this was completely intentional by Camus; for, after reflection, I came around to see my unwillingness to accept Meursault as being completely absurd. I was needlessly enforcing meaning on his existence and so deeming his actions as 'unquestionably wrong.' I did an analysis of the book a few weeks ago, for anyone interested it's on my channel. Thanks for this account of his work.
The Manifold Curiosity The character's indifference is in relation to his egolessness, seeing things as they are, he sees the absurd nature of it all. It is natural that one would be unwilling to accept Meursault as the rest of society did in the The Stranger. I actually related to Meursault's indifference and admired his humor, like the buddha's deep laugh at the beauty of it all.
+DrFreudstein 1981 How would you know what not having an ego is like? and what a person without an ego would do? Survival is beyond the ego, it's an ingrained instinct. Actually someone who is egoless would be a psychopath because they wouldn't seek any validation at all from society. A narcissist is all about seeking validation, and therefore caring what everyone thinks about them. A narcissist is anything BUT indifferent. A psychopath is 100% indifferent to validation and anything else regarding society. Mersault is egoless, indifferent, and psychopathic, not that being a psychopath is a bad thing ofcourse. Everything is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, the only thing that's meaningful is what you choose to make, not what society chooses. Therefore if one person wants to live his whole life eating junk and getting drunk, he is no better or worse than a person who wants to live his whole life studying and being a doctor. There is no right or wrong, that's the whole point of indifference and meaninglessness. The fact that society judges you for what you don't care about is the problem, and the point of this book. Camus exemplifies this by only doing what pleases him (soccer, women, food, etc..)
This channel has a wonderful way of making me feel sane. I want to hug everyone that is responsible for this channel and all that they create. Thank you, School of Life.
I owe a lot to Camus, his philosophy helped me through many difficult situations, and it also helps me to always remember to keep life simple and not overcomplicate things. Thanks Albert.
My favorite philosopher. I can say that his thoughts very much agree with mine. I am glad that I was finally able to find someone who took simple things so accurately without pathetic words.
This is the reason why I love YT. All the information, which by the way, is very nicely condensed and yet still interesting, is at one’s fingertips. Thank you.
For all friends who want to learn more about life from football, I highly recommend Eduardo Galeano's book " Football in sun and shadow". I am sure Camus would have loved that book too! Galeano died a few weeks ago. May he rest in peace, I loved that man so much... By the way he explains Uruguay's success in football with this very convincing sentence: "when babies are born in Uruguay they cry: gooooooooool :-):-) " I also wanted to mention that Camus has written very beautiful stories too. One of my favourites is from his book "Exile and Kingdom". The story is called " The Artist at work". It is about a very gifted painter whose life changes dramatically through the fame: he suddenly finds himself surrounded by fans, critics, pupils, who all want something from him. He has to talk and thank to everyone all the time, he must give his opinions about young painter's works, give interviews, follow the news about himself from the newspapers, answer hundreds of letters and most importantly he has to "live up" to the expectations of all those who admire him. He finds less and less time to be on his own. Even when he is painting there is a group of fans and friends watching him at his atelier. He has a family but he finds no time for them either. His creativity declines and in the end he can't paint at all. . So he begins to drink a lot and sleep with many women etc. Well, but in the end he decides to come back home and with pieces of wood, and half way up to walls he builds himself a floor to get a sort of narrow, high and deep loft. He paints there day and night with candle night. He doesn't eat or sleep or talk to anybody for a long time. In the end out of exhaustion he ends up in bed... And while the doctors are taking care of him, his closest friend looks at the canvas he was painting. " .....completely blank, in the centre of which Jonas had written in merely small letters a word that could be made out , but without any certainty as to whether it should be read "solitary" or " solidary"! I love this story, because both of them, solitude and solidarity are so important. Existential psychologist Rollo May mentions this story in his book " The courage to create". And he says: ."....Solitary: being alone, keeping one's distance from events, maintaining the peace of mind necessary for listening to one's deeper self. Or " solidary" : living in the market place; solidarity, involvement, or identifying with the masses as Karl Marx put it. Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations" ( Thank you so much for this lesson. I had a very good time watching! )
***** Thanks for your pithy summary of Camus's story of the artist, and the insightful quotes about solitude and solidarity. One thought occurred to me. Why does Camus connect the artist's turning to drink with a lusting for adulterous sex? I have long been puzzled by the apparent presumption, commonly held, that depression which leads to drink is accompanied by moral laxity. My own observations of heavy drinkers suggest they are often the least tolerant of those they consider wayward, and tend to present themselves as stalwarts of virtuous living - as they see it, at least. Drink provides that “feel-good factor” that improves the drinker’s solipsism no end. There is the added existential disadvantage that excessive drink imposes on the male libido. The initial flamboyant urge of excitement is soon replaced by the realisation the sotted drinker is not up for it. When you write the drunken artist would "sleep" with many women, it would probably be true without any euphemistic intent.
Nick Fielden Hi Nick! You know, I received your comment in a little bit strange format. I mean with many characters that I couldn't decode:-) But in between them, I have read what I could. I hope I haven't missed sth. important. I think you were talking about whether excessive alcohol consume brings moral laxity with it. I guess so...I mean thinking is really a very difficult business even when you are sober. We invent a thousand excuses not to look at the real causes of our sufferings...and we do this on a daily basis! Drinking a lot must be like taking painkillers all the time: you deal with the pain but let the causes untouched. I guess it does not help either to become an " ethical being", if one has such concern. There is a great book by the two Bibliotherapists of TSOL ( what a beautiful profession!!!) called The Novel Cure. You must check the website of the book. It is very wise and very funny too. Especially the surgery part. They offer you a novel for any problem you may have. I think for people with alcohol problems they recommend the famous novel " Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry. There is also a movie based on that novel. There you may find better answers to your question. Best wishes!
If you think about it, it's better that he didn't live any longer. What i mean is, we give importance to people the more we miss them and want more of them. For example, if freddie mercury didn't die young and in his prime, he'd probably be nobody right now, but his legacy, like camus' legacy, has lived on because people miss them and wish they got more out of them. You feel me?
I've been watching these Philosophy videos of this channel and I love them! The narrator's voice is amazing! I knew pretty much nothing about philosophy up until this point, Camus is my favourite philosopher so far.
Not gonna lie, this video nearly made me tear up. Because I've finally found someone who perfectly mirrors something I've always believed to be true. Existence may be cold, but we must FIGHT against it, finding warmth in this chaotic blizzard.
I truly wish I had found Camus back when I was 16 when I started struggling with the meaning of life. Knowing that I was not the only one with fundamental questions would have probably easen the burden on my shoulders.
I love the thought that we should appreciate our lives now and not concentrate on our supposed lives in the hereafter. I struggle with breaking boundaries. Change often renders me immobile. His pholosophies make me dream bigger.
Oh yes. That’s the secret. Today on my way back home I told my wife, ‘We should spend our next vacation just cycling until our legs fall off’ she said yes. There’s something liberating about focusing on nothing and just repetition.
"Once you properly realize that life is absurd you're on the verge of despair perhaps...but also compelled to live life more intensely". My teacher could have told me that instead and made me feel better instead of keeping me entrapped in a spiraling notion of the significance/insignificance of life. The time when I had to read The Stranger for school was one of the scariest times of my life. Fuck IB
Albert Camus is one of my favorite intellectuals in the history of mankind, you rarely see such erudition in one man. I have read "The Plague" and "The Rebel".
Could you consider making a video on Diogenes the Cynic? He's the perfect example of how to be independent and have faith in your own views and judgements. (Also, he's hilarious)
I reaonate with this guy beyond most philosoiphers. I wrote this before I discovered Camus. -"I wondered, therefore It became; It pondered, therefore I am. But if I am the answer, Then what is the question? Am I It, or is It I? I know that I don't know; But It is thought upon, so I am. I imagine that I know everything, just not all at once; the less I know, the more imagination manifests. Because if nothing I imagine matters, Then It doesn't matter what I know; But if It matters what I think, Then everything I imagine matters. The true power of manifestation, Is the wisdom It takes to be able to imagine what I don't know."-
Thank you School of Life, for taking up the slack of what the education system lets us down so poorly on, understanding the self and others around us. Can you please do John Locke!?
This channel literaly got me startet in philosophy. I´ve developed a vast philosophical love to camus, read 6 of his books, but this video was literally the first time i´ve ever heard of him. School of life, i thank you for bringing Camus and many other great minds into my life! :)
Love these videos, succinct and enlightening. I just found out the narrator guy is Alain de Botton. Have read a couple of his books, might have to read some more. BTW, please do vids on Orwell and Chekhov.
Mostly agree. Took me a while to realize this. The videos seem so self contained and with an air of finality to them. As if the matter has been settled. Impressive but also dangerous if one has unconsciously switched off critical thinking. Since there is a business behind this, there is an agenda. They are actually dispensing a wide range of ideologies through these videos, even on weighty topics like meaning of life. Rather hubristic. I also noticed some vids on psychotherapy that begged to be challenged and were very idealized, and turns out one of the services offered by the parent company is therapy. Bourgeois, yes agree. User-friendly for middle class white folk.
It would be really great if you could make a video about the Romanian philosopher - Emil Cioran. Just a suggestion for the future, would be really great to see a video about his views.
To thank you for the information you invest in your videos is one thing, but to thank you for the brilliant insight and dextrous rhtoric you are showing in them is another level of expressing gratitude. You are doing a great job, guys. wishing you all the best and waiting for more inspiration from you.
Finished the book recently and was looking for some other after opinions on the book and about the protagonist, glad I found this video. Great breakdown!
It's good to know I'm not alone though. We're like intellectually isolated. You can't freely express your personal views on life and many other things, unless you go with the mainstream. You can't use critical thinking and rationality, you just have to keep silent or swallow the daily nonsense you keep hearing.
Yeh I know what you mean, I'm just saying that it's more or less the same wherever you go, and Algeria is no exception.. it's a hard life whatever you choose to do, speak up or keep silent, in the former you'd have to deal with the looks and the labels of being weird, nonconformist, philosopher in a derogatory meaning.. but I guess you already know that. That's the life I choose to live and you know if you keep being true to yourself people will learn to deal with it, accept you for it, maybe even get inspired to be more daring and question things.. and well the people who can't live with it, doors are wide open, always, nobody needs that kind of people in their lives. You'd be surprised by the like-minded people you'll find if you speak up. I hope you're lucky enough to meet those around you, and in any case we find refuge on the internet ;)
I'm from Morocco , and I learned how to stop voicing my opinion long ago . I have some close friends I can sort of share my thoughts with , and sometimes I try to debate people about some political or religious view they hold , but if it gets heated I just shut up and swallow whatever I wanted to share. If I want to share an idea or an opinion , i usuallly just write it down . I just do not want to risk everything for my ideas . If I speak up, it might ruin my future . A future I am so ridiculously excited to be a part of . Long live the Maghreb :3 !
I see that in the years since I read it, it has become "The Outsider" rather than "The Stranger"... (Local theatre comedians are staging, as unlikely as it sounds, a mashup of Albert Camus and the 2004 presidential debate - that would be John Kerry and W. Bush - under the title, 'The Strangerer'... Now, how could I miss that!? :) My favorite existentialist quote actually comes from a mathematician, Norbert Wiener, which must have been an unfortunate name to have as a kid!... "No _defeat_ can deprive us of the _success_ of _having existed for some time_ in a universe that seems indifferent to us..." It's really quite warm and fuzzy for an existentialist... In the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, existentialism seemed so correct in its suppositions that the only arguments were about its implications, and those were largely idiosyncratic. It took a lot of thinking and searching and rethinking, personally, to find ideas that were bigger and righter and more inclusive, and more _helpful_, than the skeptical realism of the mid-century pessimists, doubters, and quite ethical hedonists who could with Kierkegaard say, "Do it, or do not do it. You will regret both." :3
***** As you may imagine, it’s difficult to express it in the space of a comment, but here’s a few pointers. It’s an amalgam of thought that begins with Darwin and descends through Frazer and Jung; which was assembled in the ‘30s and ‘40s by the American philosopher Philip Wylie. Wylie is not often considered a philosopher though, because he lacked academic standing and made his (comfortable) living writing popular fiction: short stories, movie scripts, novels, science fiction, op-eds, a TV series, even a syndicated newspaper cartoon. He wanted to popularize Jung, and he presented his own ideas as “a science of philosophy and a philosophy of science” - but working scientists didn’t much think they needed a philosophy, and philosophers tended to think that philosophy can’t be made into a science. Furthermore, he was an original thinker himself and found it impossible to simply present Jung without also presenting his own ideas and opinions. As Jung himself said, “Every psychological theory is also a subjective confession.” So while Wylie thought he was transmitting Jung’s ideas to the English speaking world, he was actually often doing original work. Jung endorsed Wylie explicitly in the 1940s, almost saying Finally! Somebody gets what I’m talking about! But by the end of the ‘50s they had parted thought. (In like manner, I would like to transmit Wylie’s thought, but my own thoughts and interests and personality and experiences intervene, modifying his message into my own…) Darwin had shown man to be natural, not super-natural; that is, an animal. Then, and often since, that has been taken to emphasize that man is beastly, horrible at heart. Wylie inverted the formula to say that it was _animals_ that built the cathedral at Chartres, invented calculus, and contrived to walk on the surface of the moon. For Wylie, Darwin doesn’t diminish the nature of man, he elevated the nature of animals. Animals are easily observed to behave based on instincts. Their instinct is greater and encompasses more than either their learning experiences or their consciousness. And so it then should be with man as well; but in man instinct is harder for us to see. That’s because we’re looking in the wrong place. Instinct is encoded in myth. It is _experienced_ in what we usually call religion, salvation, patriotism, the emotions engendered by great art and music, the beauty of a sunrise, the love one has for one’s children… Thus human consciousness - the ego - is not the summa of man. Rather it is a small part of a larger unconsciousness. In fact the theory suggests that consciousness actually evolved for a purpose: to _intercept_ instinct when the promptings of nature are inappropriate to the organism’s situation. But it can be used for another purpose: to flatter the organism, by inflating the ego and diminishing the continuum. And that’s what we mostly do with it… That’s just a tiny facet of his very big ideas. He wrote a lot of books - and a lot of them are trash! He is also a very difficult to understand writer, very 19th century in style, with long run-on sentences, multiple clause, and many parenthetical and hyphenated insertions. He was the son of a Calvinist minister, and rejected the church; but Christian ideas hang heavily over his writing. And his books are now quite old. Several of the important ones are out of print. They were offered as science in the understanding that we will learn more about these subjects in the future, and in many instances we have, so some of what he says is obsolete, and he anticipated that it would be. One doesn’t - at least today - receive his ideas; one must engage with them. And, while - for me - they have sorted out a lot of the problems of life; another man (under the promptings of his own instincts) might fairly come to different conclusions. “As is meet” we would say, in the antique language… or in web speak, YMMV. :D
***** You're welcome. I'm sure I didn't do him justice, but it's at least a pointer, a starting place to describe his thought...
9 років тому+4
ThePeaceableKingdom "Do it, or do not do it. You will regret both." That gave me a little chuckle. What a contrast to the NIKE marketing slogan, "Just do it!" It would be funny to see that mantra right next to some of those signs. Thank you.
The problem isn't about life being meaningless but the possibility that there do exist a purpose but we as a species being incapable of finding and comprehending it.
Camus is my hero, he changed the way I look at life, his philosophy should be taught in schools today where students and young people suffer serious depression
3:10 This stopped me in my tracks. I’m watching this video, right now, during the summer before I start college. To make matters worse, my family MOVED to a new state right at the start of summer, so I have no friends where I am now. I’ve staved off the feeling of pointlessness in my life, funnily enough, through education. I’ve been reading books such as Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. Which is, subsequently, why I’m here.
Great summary, but it's a true shame not to even mention The First Man, his unfinished novel. Even in its incomplete state, it's the most beautiful work by Camus.
camus is the only philosopher i like, tbh. not just because of his ideas but also because of the way he communicated them: beautifully and without using overly-complicated language.
we "must", we "should", we "have to." Once you realize life is absurd, you are "compelled" to live more intensely. Am I the only one who sees the shortsightedness of these statements? It's like they are rationalizations after the fact of being motivated to live in the first place. Camus's absurdist conclusions will only drag you down - they do nothing to inspire you. The 2nd half of the video does a good job describing all the success and indulgences Camus was in tune with - these were likely sources of motivation for him to keep going DESPITE the abdsurdism of life. Being in tune with life is a matter of luck. For ex, those crippled philosophers would unlikely have sympathized with Camus's views that we "must" go on. And life is beautiful.
+mlke Yeah... I just finished The Myth of Sisyphus. I'm currently reading the Stranger(renamed from the Outsider?). His writing is excessively verbose and tangential. He never seems to rely on coherent, well-flowing logic. I am happy that I read The Myth of Sisyphus, but he didn't do a great job of convincing me to continue living. 80% of the book doesn't even discuss suicide--opting instead to discuss metaphysics or ontology. That combined with his writing style makes his case rather unconvincing.
+Jake Whitton I just returned The Stranger to the library today lol. Tried Sisyphus but put it down for reasons you mentioned - the rambling wordiness is hard for me to get into. I enjoyed The Stranger, because the main dude is so jaded, like me (us). The very ending though, I don't know. He has this epiphany, but like with you and Sisyphus, I'm not "convinced." I just find it hard to understand any positive outlook that seems to come out of the blue.
+mlke I'm afraid I have to disagree. Camus described his fluency with people, his ability with women and his keen athleticism, and one may be compelled to think these motivate him to keep going. It's not necessarily these pleasures Camus is saying we should be given meaning, but instead the simple pleasures. Even people with the struggle to court with women, like Sartre, or those who feel they lead an insignificant life, their pleasures may lie somewhere else. A good book, walks in the countryside or the beauty of a sunset. These are pleasures that everyone could enjoy, regardless of their looks, status or wisdom. A child can enjoy a ladybird just as much as an elderly man, if they both realise that these pleasures are worth living to see.
I used to say things such as "I must" or "I need to." Then I gave it some thought, and now instead I only say "I get to" or "I'm able to." Try it for yourself, an entirely new perspective can be found which is inspiring and humbling.
"The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself."
Great thought thank you
Haha, I just reread this at the OPPERTUNE moment.
Because you liked it.
It's in quotes, do you have an author?
@@ElectricBrown1 it is albert camus my friend
Fear is the meaning of life
One interesting fact the video left out:
Camus had a life long fear of automobiles. In his young years he worked at a car factory on an assembly line to pay for his education. When he started to write about Absurdism, he wrote: "The most meaningless way to die is in a car crash". Of course we all know how it ends.
A tragic and undeniably absurd end for one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
+The New Travel the law of attraction?
What would he have thought about aircraft.....
That's actually not a fact. First and foremost, he never wrote explicitly about Absurdism, so I'm curious what your reference is regarding. Second, it's been debunked as a rumor a long time ago seeing as he never actually said that.
Lastly, to say his death is undeniably absurd is nonsensical if used in the philosophical sense.
Camus did not write about the absurd? Interesting...
“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”
“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
“The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe. Suicide would mean the end of this encounter, and absurdist reasoning considers that it could not consent to this without negating its own premises.”
"The absurd is an experience that must be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence, of Descartes's methodical doubt."
"Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest."
David Eagin I said that he didn't write about Absurdism explicitly; he most definitely wrote about the Absurd, and Absurdity; but the original comment on "when he started writing on Absurdism" implies (Camus') delineation of a mental framework that some how preexisted his prerequisite work, which makes no sense.
I'm meaning to say,the quote is falsely attributed to Camus', and the timeline is also false (i.e. he didn't sit down on June 2nd and begin writing a paper titled Absurdism and spell out fundamentals of it; there was no definitive period where he "began work on Absurdism"; his work on the subject was about *the absurd* and *absurdity*. I suppose I'm getting too literal when the original comment likely knows nothing of Camus' history of work and where to attribute movements of thought
"Sexually-unsuccessful Schopenhauer"....found my new band name.
Raford146 love your humor 😁
Well played....
Raford146 What's the point of being part of a band, then?
Eduardo Almeida -to spread Uncertainty to the Ignorant Masses lol
Poor Peculiar Nietzsche is a far better band name tbh
I had an existential crisis in my high school. I am so glad that I read Camus. I find his interpretation of nihilism so liberating. It makes life worth living for.
Same, last year in my sophomore year I would read a lot of books on nihilism and existentialism, and ironically it made my self esteem go up and made me more social, in a way it helped me because I thought to myself if life has no objective meaning, then might as well try to make the best of it and so I did Haha
Camus is not interpreting nihilism. Most consider him to be an existensialist, but some people including Camus consider himself an absursist.
@@johnpijano4786 haha you copied that from google and no shit.
you are the lucky one. I had the same problem but only i read him until I was 25. I kind of regret not living my full potential through those important years of being a student. Camus is an absurdist by the way.
Reading about Nihilism makes your life worth living... Talk about Irony 😂
I want to ask, how many people watching this channel discuss these sort of topics with other people in face to face conversation ? I would love to talk about morality, existence, and many other subjects brought up in philosophy but unfortunately I never see anyone else do it in person so I have been trained in a way to not bring these up in conversations often. However, after seeing how many people love this channel I have a new found optimism about the depth of thought that surrounds me in others but is never brought from the mind to words.
Tell me about it... I only have two friends we discuss these things with. Everyone else seems to be too absorbed in selfies and workout. Where are all the thinkers hiding?? There should be a world philosophy convention or something (if there isn't one already, hmm...).
football and beer are the only reason people talk
I have three friends that i can discuss these matters of life with.We usually hang out in one of my friends house late at night and we dont even realise how fast time flies when we discuss these things.
me and my friends talk about these things all the time..
I'm sorry to hear that. I've been kind of stuck in that situation in higschool as well. although I love a good drink and having ridiculous, whimsical experiences with my friends, no one really wanted to talk philosophy or really understood/cared where I was coming from when I wanted to talk about camu or nietzsche or Dawkins or Tyson.
in the past I was mainly restricted to expressing these ideas through social media with other people many, many miles away.
As I've started college I became more exposed to these sort of people. I've become good friends with my professor who teaches philosophy, theology and humanities and others learning in his courses. every Thursday we gather in the courtyard to discuss a variety of things like this and it's so enriching and revitalizing to hear from other people who know even more than I about these things.
The narrator's French is simply exquisite.
***** I like this channel and even though one could be called lazy for relying on "second hand readings/takes" on philosophers, I like how Mr. de Botton put's the effort into these videos.
From what I've heard Heidegger actually didn't like being called an existentialist and what I like about Camus is how not just existentialism but absurdism is brought up,which imo can sometimes be a separate "attitude" and like existentialism is interesting to see how it's sprung up across different non-Western cultures.
SolangeTeParle Solange, I can report back that Alain's English accent is, well, more than passable too: now I'm just waiting confirmation of my suspicion he nailed the splash of German in the Wittgenstein video.
I love the cute little pause he takes before he slips into another language so as to completely be in that language.
SolangeTeParle Absolument impressionant et impeccable.
he's a native speaker
Camus seemed like a down-to-earth fella. Sharp ladies' man living life to the fullest. His philosophy is mad deep, realize that life is absurd and meaningless yet simultaneously embrace and revel in it.
The Chad Absurdist philosopher vs The Virgin Nihilist Philosopher
its easy to embrace when ur handsome and good with opposite sex
Still, he doesn't give any answers as to why to enjoy life if you're not good-looking and succesful with women or talented in other areas. Aside from sex and some love that becomes routine after a few years, what else is there? Just temporary pleasure..
@@mariusciolacu9820 everything is temporary bro
Marius Ciolacu You’re not supposed to take it at face value. Camus lived for his passions, you should to.
My favourite aspect of Camus is that he was never a know-it-all. He never assumes he is correct and doesn’t even claim to have any more knowledge than anyone else. He was rarely ever cynical about the world around him and he greeted the absurdity of life not with frustration but with acceptance. He knew he was no more enlightended than anyone else and advocated philosophy for what it should be - not a study towards finding the answers in life but rather a study towards dealing with the unavoidable reality that no such answers exist. He makes what is usually the most dampening and mind-shattering realisation the most liberating and satisfying realisation.
So he was a down to earth ladies' man, who was good at sport, had a keen intellect and was enraptured by philosophy and life? Some blokes really do have it all.
y can't u?
He also died young and suddenly. Seems like no one has it all
He had to stop playing football because he got tuberculosis so 🤷🏻♂️
What a guy
His dad died when he was an infant though so life sucks and we all should die
It's a shame that many people who read philosophy make it seem snobbish and difficult. The way they talk, a few of my "intellectual" friends, makes one thing that philosophy makes you sullen and presumptuous.
This field really deserves more attention than it usually gets. To those who love philosophy, please don't give it negative advertising by being jerkish and weird with others.
Pp
@Lord Voldemort did you find your nose?
I talk to philosophy students in ghetto language with a cheap blunt cigar in my mouth.
People are attracted to philosophy for many reasons and at a variety of stages of life. Most of us have our first exposure to philosophy as undergraduates, often in courses we took to meet graduation requirements. Know-it-all’ism is a common intellectual failing we associate with sophomorism. They crowd student centers and make themselves the center of conversation seeking attention for their latest enthusiasm. When teaching high school and college students, we read Plato’s Apology and ask Why did Athens turn on Socrates - The man who was determined to show that Sophists (teachers) knew nothing. Camus makes great reading, too. Add a few plays of Brecht and Sartre to get the juices going. It is far more important to learn how to think than to learn what the Greats thought back when. Once one gets the knack of thinking on one’s own and probing ideas that won’t yield to binary choices (Y/N or T/F) one can begin the journey of reading the Greats and learning how they wrestled with the leading ideas of their day. Above all, philosophy should be fun, playful and not ego consuming or nihilist in its intent. A love of Wisdom should aim to lift the spirit and fly free of the conventional wisdom of the day. Wisdom bashing is another sport all together darker and mean spirited. An experienced guide (teacher) can show the way out of sophomoric passion for destruction and triumph over others. It’s entirely doable.
We'll try
Camus would be a great guy to have as a friend. He enjoys life and see it as it is, but at the same time, he has such an amazing mind. I would not mind sitting down and having a conversation with Camus.
JustSok You and me both.
JustSok Camus would mind that.
JustSok Well, he was suicidal and depressed as fuck one time but yes rest of it I would 100% be his friend
Aso Paso I would guess that a lot of men were simple minded back then too. Probably more. It's also not really a privilege of men to be stupid.
+Aso Paso Friend, Camus himself would scoff at your pretense. He was definitely into doing all of the above as well as being one of the great minds of his day. They are not mutually exclusive.
"If there is a sin against this life, it consists perhaps not so much into sparing life, as in hoping for another life and eluding the quiet grandeur of this one"
These are indeed the words of someone who enjoyed and appreciated the value of life.
Him and Nietzsche helped me so much in my high school years. Realizing that you need to make your own morality, far away from the prejudiced and condescending influence of societal morality, gave me so much confidence and love, and most importantly, the strength to face my own fears.
But it is hard to live while detached from societal morality
I think it depends on.
For sure, if your morality goes against natural law, like, killing or shit like that, it is indeed...
But if your morality is, for example, free love, or atheism, or naturalism, like the hippies, then you can find your own community outside of society.
Or hell, even have your own moral code but stay in society triying to stick to it while understanding that this world needs flexibility on its own.
@@matletico
:Camus was good looking, had at least 3 girlfriends on the go and had a great dress sense."
How come he was a philosopher?
because he's french
Well hes was at a good position in my opinion, to have popularity and fame but to have a great craft in literally works. Sounds great lol
+MrGanack Ha
He was a very talented child and his teacher really supported him. In his teenages he had some very bad illness and couldn't really go to the beaches that he loved. So he had a lot of time to read and write.
He never claimed to be a philosopher; he resented being deemed as such. He was self-admittedly a writer and novelist first and foremost
School of Life, you have brought a level of catharsis to my life that your team will never fully comprehend. And for that I thank you. Please keep up the great work you're doing.
pretentious pseudo intellectual.....
chill out Mr. Jelly
Says one to oneself.
Dante
+Dante Kierkegaard bro you named your UA-cam name after a 14th century Italian poet and Kierkegaard, so you're right to call others pretentious is immediately revoked lol
The Outsider was a saving grace during the treacherous years of high school. Camus highlight of the absurdity of human life; a genuine plea for a deeper and open understanding of our mortality moved me greatly. I contemplated suicide numerous times under societal pressure, but philosophy saved my life. I thought before I acted upon that thought, and it has made all the difference.
finalfantasy8911 - The video literally answers your question...
Same here, actually a therapist introduced me to this in high school. This, A stranger and a strange land and Brave new world he told me to read and they helped me a ton. From there he half way guided me through a lot of philosophy
One of my favorite quotes addresses this notion. It was Merlins monologue to Arthur in T.H. White's "The Once & Future King"
"
The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
"
I think Camus figured out how to get around the pretty obvious lack of meaning in life without letting it prevent him from living it to the fullest and most enlightened way possible using that very notion.
Overthinking doesn't let you do any specific work.Its a cuss 😂
@@cosmonaut379 Brave new world is amazing, but please try also Orwell's 1984. Also, from Huxley I would recommend as well 'Doors of Perception'
"a wise and life-enhancing friend." many times this channel fills that role.
PSA: “The Stranger” is the American title of the book. It was published as “The Outsider” in the UK.
I think "The Outsider" fits better.
@@marcusanark2541 agreed
I love his quote about sport. Sure so much of it is meaningless and it's all "just a game" but why it's so important is what it teaches you about life and the bonds you create with other people.
Kenneth Fox The point Camus ends up making is that sport is no less of a game than life itself is.
Camus is one of my personal heroes. His thoughts completely changed the way I live and enjoy life, and is an author more than worth reading.
In the mids of a seemingly endless winter I discovered within myself an invincible spring.
Forever and ever my personal favourite philosopher.
I feel like the dude in The Outsider was based on me...but I think I found that spring you're talking about. Maybe I won't drink this bleach-tini with rat poison garish. Is the first line yours or Camus'? I just learned about Camus today and I feel like someone finally understands. He understood many decades before I was even born. The heaviness in my mind and soul seem to have been lifted. I'm so glad I didn't do the permanent solution to the temporary problem of unhappiness/hopelessness. Hope restored. This is not mere sentimentality, I have truly discovered a treasure. Thank you and thank Albert.
Definitely the best video uploaded by The School of Life. Keep going this way!!!
“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead.”
...mr.peanutbutter?
What is this? A crossover?!?
@@Jdabomb93 because the unimportant nonsense can occasionally inspire joy. That joy is better than endless nothingness. Even worth suffering for, if you can frame the pain as being merely a result of unimportant nonsense.
akshay Viswambharan
Ha. The Japanese don’t think so. Lol But you have your own opinion.
I like to think that we get to choose to be born on earth. And we choose when to leave too. Just my spiritual belief.
Jdabomb93 I agree with you on having choice to do anything after we were born, but I’m not sure we had choice in being born. But maybe it’s possible and we just forgot. Wherever we were before this physical existence was much longer then this life and wherever death leads is much longer. If anything life seems to be an intermission between the two.
I was having a really bad day, I was looking out of my window and seeing the evening rain with despair. After watching this, I looked out my window again with calm and glee. Merci Camus
I just looked out my window to see a kid walking in the snow wearing shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and the head of a panda costume. Life is good.
Day at a time Amigo,
One day at a time... ☀️
Unfortunate that The Fall was overlooked almost entirely from this video essay. It is my favorite of his works and a fantastic, creative and inventive piece of moralist philosophy.
I second that. Imo, the use of second-person narative made that eery and provocative atmosphere even more significant. I had never experienced anything like it and I can't understand how it's so easily forgotten.
The fall is still pessimistic. The ending is a typical novelist's twist, not wanting to appear uplifting or optimistic!
The Fall is Camus' deepest work, way more profound than The Stranger.
But it's a tough reading, I have to admit. It's not easy to look yourself in the mirror like that.
"A lucid invitation to live and to create in the midst of the desert." Sounds like he would get a huge kick out of burning man, it's a literal translation of his philosophy!
Well noted, I think he would like it very much.
Marcus Anark Burning Man by?
@@danielle7988 it's a music festival
In philosophy class, we once had to do a presentation on a philosopher we were assigned. I got Camus and the more I read about him, the more I thought: This is almost exactly how I view the world. It really helped me a lot at the time, making me understand my conflicted feelings about the world and putting them into words.
The virgin sartre VS the Chad camus
I'm writing a paper on Camus and I have this exact sentence in my notes lmao
Can you not apply disgustingly cringy internet culture to cool people from history please.
@@justaperson9155 that's why it's funny, you idolize these nerds and I made you mad
@@justaperson9155 shut up nerd
No Satre Chad and Camus also chad
"In the years following the assassination of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy discovered Camus, and read and re-read all of his vast body of work. The experience profoundly affected Kennedy. Camus’s thoughts about how to live with the full knowledge of the inevitability of death helped Kennedy accept the tragedy. Camus’s arguments against capital punishment changed Kennedy’s mind on the issue, and other writings inspired Kennedy to focus on civil rights, children, and the poor.
The senator and eventual presidential candidate started carrying Camus’s writings around with him, kept favorite sayings at the ready on index cards, and quoted him in debates and interviews, even on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Signs appeared at campaign stops: “Kennedy and Camus in ‘68.”
In the summer of 2006, President George W. Bush took The Stranger with him on vacation. One has to wonder what might be different had he encountered something like this from Camus a few years earlier:
“Henceforth there will be only one honorable choice: to wager everything on the belief that in the end words will prove stronger than bullets.” The Huffington Post
Camus is the purest embodiment of frenchness, half existential crisis "stranger", half hedonistic stylish guy with girlfriends
As a child, I didn't have any book, but one that my aunt gave me when I was about the age of 5. 'Rain, Rain, Go Away'. I come from a single parent household and my mother didn't read to me to the best of my memory. However, there was a time when my mom became a ferocious reader and joined in with my aunt. Yes, the one that gave me that first book. Well, there was a box of books in the hallway just outside my door. I looked through the books and found this one with an interesting cover. And I will read the first sentence 'MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.' That book is The Stranger.' I was 12 and that book totally altered my perspective on life. Today and from many decades find it hard to ask teenagers or even adults if they have read the book. More than likely and most likely they haven't.
I've just discovered Camus over the last year. I wouldn't say its been revelatory but I've learnt a lot from The Plague and The Outsider. The latter especially opened my eyes. On my first reading I found myself alienated from Meursault, almost frustrated with his indifference. I think this was completely intentional by Camus; for, after reflection, I came around to see my unwillingness to accept Meursault as being completely absurd. I was needlessly enforcing meaning on his existence and so deeming his actions as 'unquestionably wrong.'
I did an analysis of the book a few weeks ago, for anyone interested it's on my channel. Thanks for this account of his work.
The Manifold Curiosity The character's indifference is in relation to his egolessness, seeing things as they are, he sees the absurd nature of it all. It is natural that one would be unwilling to accept Meursault as the rest of society did in the The Stranger. I actually related to Meursault's indifference and admired his humor, like the buddha's deep laugh at the beauty of it all.
+DrFreudstein 1981 How would you know what not having an ego is like? and what a person without an ego would do? Survival is beyond the ego, it's an ingrained instinct. Actually someone who is egoless would be a psychopath because they wouldn't seek any validation at all from society. A narcissist is all about seeking validation, and therefore caring what everyone thinks about them. A narcissist is anything BUT indifferent. A psychopath is 100% indifferent to validation and anything else regarding society. Mersault is egoless, indifferent, and psychopathic, not that being a psychopath is a bad thing ofcourse.
Everything is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, the only thing that's meaningful is what you choose to make, not what society chooses. Therefore if one person wants to live his whole life eating junk and getting drunk, he is no better or worse than a person who wants to live his whole life studying and being a doctor. There is no right or wrong, that's the whole point of indifference and meaninglessness. The fact that society judges you for what you don't care about is the problem, and the point of this book. Camus exemplifies this by only doing what pleases him (soccer, women, food, etc..)
This channel has a wonderful way of making me feel sane. I want to hug everyone that is responsible for this channel and all that they create. Thank you, School of Life.
I owe a lot to Camus, his philosophy helped me through many difficult situations, and it also helps me to always remember to keep life simple and not overcomplicate things.
Thanks Albert.
As a frenchie, I am very proud of your accent, as well as your analyze. I love to listen to podcasts like yours. Thank your for bringing me knowledge.
This man is my favorite philosopher
He is not a philosopher, he's an Absurdist.
+Shadowgamer1370 you are an absurdist
+Shadowgamer1370 that is philosophy...
The Nunez he's my favorite too
You are idiot
My favorite philosopher. I can say that his thoughts very much agree with mine. I am glad that I was finally able to find someone who took simple things so accurately without pathetic words.
Favourite philosopher, hands down.
Me too. I punch holes in everybody. But not him. Camus nailed it like a king.
This is the reason why I love YT. All the information, which by the way, is very nicely condensed and yet still interesting, is at one’s fingertips. Thank you.
I love the fact that these videos always end on a weirdly hopeful and uplifting note, it keeps me sane.
For all friends who want to learn more about life from football, I highly recommend Eduardo Galeano's book " Football in sun and shadow". I am sure Camus would have loved that book too! Galeano died a few weeks ago. May he rest in peace, I loved that man so much... By the way he explains Uruguay's success in football with this very convincing sentence: "when babies are born in Uruguay they cry: gooooooooool :-):-) "
I also wanted to mention that Camus has written very beautiful stories too. One of my favourites is from his book "Exile and Kingdom". The story is called
" The Artist at work".
It is about a very gifted painter whose life changes dramatically through the fame: he suddenly finds himself surrounded by fans, critics, pupils, who all want something from him. He has to talk and thank to everyone all the time, he must give his opinions about young painter's works, give interviews, follow the news about himself from the newspapers, answer hundreds of letters and most importantly he has to "live up" to the expectations of all those who admire him. He finds less and less time to be on his own. Even when he is painting there is a group of fans and friends watching him at his atelier. He has a family but he finds no time for them either. His creativity declines and in the end he can't paint at all. . So he begins to drink a lot and sleep with many women etc. Well, but in the end he decides to come back home and with pieces of wood, and half way up to walls he builds himself a floor to get a sort of narrow, high and deep loft. He paints there day and night with candle night. He doesn't eat or sleep or talk to anybody for a long time. In the end out of exhaustion he ends up in bed... And while the doctors are taking care of him, his closest friend looks at the canvas he was painting.
" .....completely blank, in the centre of which Jonas had written in merely small letters a word that could be made out , but without any certainty as to whether it should be read "solitary" or " solidary"!
I love this story, because both of them, solitude and solidarity are so important.
Existential psychologist Rollo May mentions this story in his book " The courage to create". And he says:
."....Solitary: being alone, keeping one's distance from events, maintaining the peace of mind necessary for listening to one's deeper self. Or " solidary" : living in the market place; solidarity, involvement, or identifying with the masses as Karl Marx put it. Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations"
( Thank you so much for this lesson. I had a very good time watching! )
***** I always look forward to your comments. Thank you for expanding my mind
Insperium 123
I am very happy to hear that! Thank you very much for reading! Have a nice sunday:-)
Have a nice Sunday as well!
*****
Thanks for your pithy summary of Camus's story of the artist, and the
insightful quotes about solitude and solidarity.
One thought occurred to me. Why does Camus connect the artist's turning to drink with a lusting for adulterous sex? I have long been puzzled by the apparent presumption, commonly held, that depression which leads to drink is accompanied by moral laxity.
My own observations of heavy drinkers suggest they are often the least
tolerant of those they consider wayward, and tend to present themselves as
stalwarts of virtuous living - as they see it, at least. Drink provides that “feel-good factor” that improves the drinker’s solipsism no end.
There is the added existential disadvantage that excessive drink imposes on the male libido. The initial flamboyant urge of excitement is soon replaced by the realisation the sotted drinker is not up for it.
When you write the drunken artist would "sleep" with many women, it would probably be true without any euphemistic intent.
Nick Fielden
Hi Nick! You know, I received your comment in a little bit strange
format. I mean with many characters that I couldn't decode:-) But in
between them, I have read what I could. I hope I haven't missed sth.
important. I think you were talking about whether excessive alcohol
consume brings moral laxity with it. I guess so...I mean thinking is
really a very difficult business even when you are sober. We invent a
thousand excuses not to look at the real causes of our sufferings...and
we do this on a daily basis! Drinking a lot must be like taking
painkillers all the time: you deal with the pain but let the causes
untouched. I guess it does not help either to become an " ethical being", if one has such concern.
There is a great book by the two Bibliotherapists of TSOL
( what a beautiful profession!!!) called The
Novel Cure. You must check the website of the book. It is very wise and
very funny too. Especially the surgery part. They offer you a novel for
any problem you may have. I think for people with alcohol problems they
recommend the famous novel " Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry.
There is also a movie based on that novel. There you may find better answers to your question. Best wishes!
If he only had decided to go by train...
He did have the ticket...
you cannot avoid your fate, can you?
@@istvanheimer1845 theres no fate, theres cause and effect
That's why he had a fear of cars... premonition
If you think about it, it's better that he didn't live any longer. What i mean is, we give importance to people the more we miss them and want more of them. For example, if freddie mercury didn't die young and in his prime, he'd probably be nobody right now, but his legacy, like camus' legacy, has lived on because people miss them and wish they got more out of them. You feel me?
I've been watching these Philosophy videos of this channel and I love them!
The narrator's voice is amazing! I knew pretty much nothing about philosophy up until this point, Camus is my favourite philosopher so far.
+Peleg Tsadok Sounds like one heck of a dude.
I know this book as
"The Stranger" and it came into my life exactly when I needed it
As a philosophy major and tutor, I am more than in love with this channel. Well done.
Not gonna lie, this video nearly made me tear up. Because I've finally found someone who perfectly mirrors something I've always believed to be true. Existence may be cold, but we must FIGHT against it, finding warmth in this chaotic blizzard.
My personal favorite philosopher, and one I can relate to most fully.
My favourite philisopher! He changed my life, i owe him a lot.
I truly wish I had found Camus back when I was 16 when I started struggling with the meaning of life. Knowing that I was not the only one with fundamental questions would have probably easen the burden on my shoulders.
I love the thought that we should appreciate our lives now and not concentrate on our supposed lives in the hereafter. I struggle with breaking boundaries. Change often renders me immobile. His pholosophies make me dream bigger.
Camus...literary proof that the cure for existential dread is physical activity
Oh yes. That’s the secret.
Today on my way back home I told my wife, ‘We should spend our next vacation just cycling until our legs fall off’ she said yes.
There’s something liberating about focusing on nothing and just repetition.
This might have been my favorite video as of yet
this might be my favorite philosophy yet
"Once you properly realize that life is absurd you're on the verge of despair perhaps...but also compelled to live life more intensely". My teacher could have told me that instead and made me feel better instead of keeping me entrapped in a spiraling notion of the significance/insignificance of life. The time when I had to read The Stranger for school was one of the scariest times of my life. Fuck IB
"...Someone one would have wanted as a wise and a life-enhancing friend. This, too, is what philosophy is about." - Thank you, The School of Life.
Albert Camus is one of my favorite intellectuals in the history of mankind, you rarely see such erudition in one man. I have read "The Plague" and "The Rebel".
YES The School of Life YES THIS IS THE BEST CHANNEL ON UA-cam
Life is worth living when you're hot and popular.
make yourself in your mind hot and popular by someones standards or drink
That's the life for the people not yourself. If you want to live an extraordinary life, you will.
Life is about maximizing ones personal potential, thats what makes it worth living. Watch the Plato and Aristotle videos if you havent already.
+Necrosis Pain yeah, matt damon catches the flu sometimes
@Huseipot12 are you a philosopher? Because that was some deep dark shit you just said
Could you consider making a video on Diogenes the Cynic? He's the perfect example of how to be independent and have faith in your own views and judgements. (Also, he's hilarious)
vaderfiguur or the stoics maybe
What a legendary philosopher. Absolute hero when it comes to engaging with the absurd.
I reaonate with this guy beyond most philosoiphers.
I wrote this before I discovered Camus.
-"I wondered, therefore It became;
It pondered, therefore I am.
But if I am the answer,
Then what is the question?
Am I It, or is It I?
I know that I don't know;
But It is thought upon, so I am.
I imagine that I know everything, just not all at once; the less I know, the more imagination manifests.
Because if nothing I imagine matters,
Then It doesn't matter what I know;
But if It matters what I think,
Then everything I imagine matters.
The true power of manifestation,
Is the wisdom It takes to be able to imagine what I don't know."-
Thank you School of Life, for taking up the slack of what the education system lets us down so poorly on, understanding the self and others around us.
Can you please do John Locke!?
In summary: YOLO
thx Stalin
+Stalin Drake and Lil Wayne have polluted as many minds as C3p Stalin.
Wrong assumption
touhous are everywhere it seems :D
Thank you very much
Rather appropriately, Camus would likely have replied with, “De rein!”
This channel literaly got me startet in philosophy. I´ve developed a vast philosophical love to camus, read 6 of his books, but this video was literally the first time i´ve ever heard of him. School of life, i thank you for bringing Camus and many other great minds into my life! :)
its so soothing watching the school of life videos just before falling asleep
Quality of life, not quantity of life.
As long as your quality of life does not decrease someone else's quality or quantity of life.
Why? If there is no meaning or morals to this life or in this universe why should we treat others well for the sake of treating them well?
Because it makes things easier for all of us
why not both? a long prosperous infinite life is quite desirable.
get one and u get the other
i was waiting for a video on camus, thanks for that!
Love these videos, succinct and enlightening. I just found out the narrator guy is Alain de Botton. Have read a couple of his books, might have to read some more.
BTW, please do vids on Orwell and Chekhov.
+The School of Life Yes! Orwell please!
Please do Chekhov
that's cool. I have read a couple and didn't know
Chekov please!
Mostly agree. Took me a while to realize this. The videos seem so self contained and with an air of finality to them. As if the matter has been settled. Impressive but also dangerous if one has unconsciously switched off critical thinking. Since there is a business behind this, there is an agenda. They are actually dispensing a wide range of ideologies through these videos, even on weighty topics like meaning of life. Rather hubristic. I also noticed some vids on psychotherapy that begged to be challenged and were very idealized, and turns out one of the services offered by the parent company is therapy. Bourgeois, yes agree. User-friendly for middle class white folk.
Excellent. Never so I got closer to the answer, but I can rejoice in the quiet exuberance of this telling.
Pls can you fix Turkish subtitle. After eartquake everyday i visit here again. This philosophgy makes me alive
It would be really great if you could make a video about the Romanian philosopher - Emil Cioran. Just a suggestion for the future, would be really great to see a video about his views.
Camu is my favorite philosopher by far.
I just want a tv show of Camus, Kierkegaard and Kafka.
I just admire this channel's videos and respect the efforts that were put into them
‘Once you bathe in the truths that plight your own existence; only then will you wash yourself from all wrongs pre-existing.’
To thank you for the information you invest in your videos is one thing, but to thank you for the brilliant insight and dextrous rhtoric you are showing in them is another level of expressing gratitude.
You are doing a great job, guys.
wishing you all the best and waiting for more inspiration from you.
Love Camus and love this video!
Me encantan estos videos. Por favor, continúen con el excelente trabajo.
My favorite book and author, and philosopher. The most simplest text, so simple, but somewhat complex.
Finished the book recently and was looking for some other after opinions on the book and about the protagonist, glad I found this video. Great breakdown!
I live in Algeria and if I ever start talking about this kind of stuff they would consider me a crazy outsider.
So do I and you would be considered crazy by most people anywhere.. And I believe that some of us feel the same way about life sometimes.
It's good to know I'm not alone though. We're like intellectually isolated. You can't freely express your personal views on life and many other things, unless you go with the mainstream. You can't use critical thinking and rationality, you just have to keep silent or swallow the daily nonsense you keep hearing.
Yeh I know what you mean, I'm just saying that it's more or less the same wherever you go, and Algeria is no exception.. it's a hard life whatever you choose to do, speak up or keep silent, in the former you'd have to deal with the looks and the labels of being weird, nonconformist, philosopher in a derogatory meaning.. but I guess you already know that. That's the life I choose to live and you know if you keep being true to yourself people will learn to deal with it, accept you for it, maybe even get inspired to be more daring and question things.. and well the people who can't live with it, doors are wide open, always, nobody needs that kind of people in their lives. You'd be surprised by the like-minded people you'll find if you speak up. I hope you're lucky enough to meet those around you, and in any case we find refuge on the internet ;)
Sure, thanks to internet things are less miserable for the like of us. At least we can share our"crazy" way of thinking.
I'm from Morocco , and I learned how to stop voicing my opinion long ago . I have some close friends I can sort of share my thoughts with , and sometimes I try to debate people about some political or religious view they hold , but if it gets heated I just shut up and swallow whatever I wanted to share. If I want to share an idea or an opinion , i usuallly just write it down . I just do not want to risk everything for my ideas . If I speak up, it might ruin my future . A future I am so ridiculously excited to be a part of .
Long live the Maghreb :3 !
“The last good man in France.”
- Hannah Arendt in the 1950s
Every time I hear the opening music "chik chiki chik" I think: "ohhh, I'm in for a treat".
i still go back to old videos of this channel knowing i had questions before that were answered here. it's like a library of life.
Accept the absolute madness of life and push forward. Life has gotten easier for me since taking Camus' philosophy on board.
school of life make a vid on Allan watts
angel Montano that would be interesting!
Beep Boop what I wanted to ask as well
ikr
I see that in the years since I read it, it has become "The Outsider" rather than "The Stranger"...
(Local theatre comedians are staging, as unlikely as it sounds, a mashup of Albert Camus and the 2004 presidential debate - that would be John Kerry and W. Bush - under the title, 'The Strangerer'... Now, how could I miss that!? :)
My favorite existentialist quote actually comes from a mathematician, Norbert Wiener, which must have been an unfortunate name to have as a kid!... "No _defeat_ can deprive us of the _success_ of _having existed for some time_ in a universe that seems indifferent to us..." It's really quite warm and fuzzy for an existentialist...
In the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, existentialism seemed so correct in its suppositions that the only arguments were about its implications, and those were largely idiosyncratic. It took a lot of thinking and searching and rethinking, personally, to find ideas that were bigger and righter and more inclusive, and more _helpful_, than the skeptical realism of the mid-century pessimists, doubters, and quite ethical hedonists who could with Kierkegaard say, "Do it, or do not do it. You will regret both." :3
ThePeaceableKingdom And those ideas are?
***** As you may imagine, it’s difficult to express it in the space of a comment, but here’s a few pointers.
It’s an amalgam of thought that begins with Darwin and descends through Frazer and Jung; which was assembled in the ‘30s and ‘40s by the American philosopher Philip Wylie. Wylie is not often considered a philosopher though, because he lacked academic standing and made his (comfortable) living writing popular fiction: short stories, movie scripts, novels, science fiction, op-eds, a TV series, even a syndicated newspaper cartoon. He wanted to popularize Jung, and he presented his own ideas as “a science of philosophy and a philosophy of science” - but working scientists didn’t much think they needed a philosophy, and philosophers tended to think that philosophy can’t be made into a science. Furthermore, he was an original thinker himself and found it impossible to simply present Jung without also presenting his own ideas and opinions. As Jung himself said, “Every psychological theory is also a subjective confession.” So while Wylie thought he was transmitting Jung’s ideas to the English speaking world, he was actually often doing original work. Jung endorsed Wylie explicitly in the 1940s, almost saying Finally! Somebody gets what I’m talking about! But by the end of the ‘50s they had parted thought. (In like manner, I would like to transmit Wylie’s thought, but my own thoughts and interests and personality and experiences intervene, modifying his message into my own…)
Darwin had shown man to be natural, not super-natural; that is, an animal. Then, and often since, that has been taken to emphasize that man is beastly, horrible at heart. Wylie inverted the formula to say that it was _animals_ that built the cathedral at Chartres, invented calculus, and contrived to walk on the surface of the moon. For Wylie, Darwin doesn’t diminish the nature of man, he elevated the nature of animals.
Animals are easily observed to behave based on instincts. Their instinct is greater and encompasses more than either their learning experiences or their consciousness. And so it then should be with man as well; but in man instinct is harder for us to see. That’s because we’re looking in the wrong place. Instinct is encoded in myth. It is _experienced_ in what we usually call religion, salvation, patriotism, the emotions engendered by great art and music, the beauty of a sunrise, the love one has for one’s children…
Thus human consciousness - the ego - is not the summa of man. Rather it is a small part of a larger unconsciousness. In fact the theory suggests that consciousness actually evolved for a purpose: to _intercept_ instinct when the promptings of nature are inappropriate to the organism’s situation. But it can be used for another purpose: to flatter the organism, by inflating the ego and diminishing the continuum. And that’s what we mostly do with it…
That’s just a tiny facet of his very big ideas. He wrote a lot of books - and a lot of them are trash! He is also a very difficult to understand writer, very 19th century in style, with long run-on sentences, multiple clause, and many parenthetical and hyphenated insertions. He was the son of a Calvinist minister, and rejected the church; but Christian ideas hang heavily over his writing. And his books are now quite old. Several of the important ones are out of print. They were offered as science in the understanding that we will learn more about these subjects in the future, and in many instances we have, so some of what he says is obsolete, and he anticipated that it would be. One doesn’t - at least today - receive his ideas; one must engage with them.
And, while - for me - they have sorted out a lot of the problems of life; another man (under the promptings of his own instincts) might fairly come to different conclusions. “As is meet” we would say, in the antique language… or in web speak, YMMV. :D
ThePeaceableKingdom Thanks for taking the time to elaborate.
P.S. Actually, I just found out that Wylie was born on the same date as I have. :)
*****
You're welcome. I'm sure I didn't do him justice, but it's at least a pointer, a starting place to describe his thought...
ThePeaceableKingdom "Do it, or do not do it. You will regret both." That gave me a little chuckle. What a contrast to the NIKE marketing slogan, "Just do it!" It would be funny to see that mantra right next to some of those signs. Thank you.
The problem isn't about life being meaningless but the possibility that there do exist a purpose but we as a species being incapable of finding and comprehending it.
Camus is my hero, he changed the way I look at life, his philosophy should be taught in schools today where students and young people suffer serious depression
3:10
This stopped me in my tracks. I’m watching this video, right now, during the summer before I start college. To make matters worse, my family MOVED to a new state right at the start of summer, so I have no friends where I am now.
I’ve staved off the feeling of pointlessness in my life, funnily enough, through education. I’ve been reading books such as Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.
Which is, subsequently, why I’m here.
Well, I think I really like this bloke, Camus.
Great summary, but it's a true shame not to even mention The First Man, his unfinished novel. Even in its incomplete state, it's the most beautiful work by Camus.
Can you do a video about Nihilism, and possibly contrast it to existentialism?
camus is the only philosopher i like, tbh. not just because of his ideas but also because of the way he communicated them: beautifully and without using overly-complicated language.
i am deeply madly in love with this channel as it is beyond amazing and i have no words to describe my gratitude
+The School of Life Please make a video on Franz Kafka, Aldous Huxley and Yevgeny Zamyatin someday.
+Napoleon4778 Also George Orwell
Elmusicodelassombras Nah he was a plagiarist!
+Elmusicodelassombras Orwell wasn't a (career-wise) philosopher. Although a series on writers might not be a bad idea.
+Napoleon4778 don't forget Stirner
+Edward Cullen There already is one.
Do you speak french? Cause your accent is pretty amazing xD
+The School of Life oddly satisfying
+The School of Life wow! I love "Status Anxiety"
+The School of Life thought he was multilingual, no german?
we "must", we "should", we "have to." Once you realize life is absurd, you are "compelled" to live more intensely. Am I the only one who sees the shortsightedness of these statements? It's like they are rationalizations after the fact of being motivated to live in the first place. Camus's absurdist conclusions will only drag you down - they do nothing to inspire you. The 2nd half of the video does a good job describing all the success and indulgences Camus was in tune with - these were likely sources of motivation for him to keep going DESPITE the abdsurdism of life. Being in tune with life is a matter of luck. For ex, those crippled philosophers would unlikely have sympathized with Camus's views that we "must" go on. And life is beautiful.
+mlke
Yeah... I just finished The Myth of Sisyphus. I'm currently reading the Stranger(renamed from the Outsider?). His writing is excessively verbose and tangential. He never seems to rely on coherent, well-flowing logic. I am happy that I read The Myth of Sisyphus, but he didn't do a great job of convincing me to continue living. 80% of the book doesn't even discuss suicide--opting instead to discuss metaphysics or ontology. That combined with his writing style makes his case rather unconvincing.
+Jake Whitton I just returned The Stranger to the library today lol. Tried Sisyphus but put it down for reasons you mentioned - the rambling wordiness is hard for me to get into. I enjoyed The Stranger, because the main dude is so jaded, like me (us). The very ending though, I don't know. He has this epiphany, but like with you and Sisyphus, I'm not "convinced." I just find it hard to understand any positive outlook that seems to come out of the blue.
pretty much, dude
+mlke I'm afraid I have to disagree. Camus described his fluency with people, his ability with women and his keen athleticism, and one may be compelled to think these motivate him to keep going. It's not necessarily these pleasures Camus is saying we should be given meaning, but instead the simple pleasures. Even people with the struggle to court with women, like Sartre, or those who feel they lead an insignificant life, their pleasures may lie somewhere else. A good book, walks in the countryside or the beauty of a sunset. These are pleasures that everyone could enjoy, regardless of their looks, status or wisdom. A child can enjoy a ladybird just as much as an elderly man, if they both realise that these pleasures are worth living to see.
I used to say things such as "I must" or "I need to." Then I gave it some thought, and now instead I only say "I get to" or "I'm able to." Try it for yourself, an entirely new perspective can be found which is inspiring and humbling.
camus has a very common but complex mindset, he is one of a few who can express it in a simple and precise manner.
After some time of being very interested in the person and ideas of Camus, I have finally purchased his work that seems most interesting to me.