Imagine being handed a literal death sentence
at 17. Which is, I mean, unimaginable. Right.
And then surviving a world war by publishing
illegal newspapers right under the noses of the
Gestapo. Just incredible risk. Yeah. And then
you go on to win a Nobel Prize only to die at
the absolute peak of your career because of Well,
a last minute decision to get into a friend's
car instead of taking the train. A completely
random twist of fate. Exactly. Today, we're diving
into the mind of Albert Camus. So welcome to
the deep dive. Glad to be here. Our mission for
you today is to unpack how a kid born into just
absolute grinding poverty in French Algeria grew
up to become basically the literal voice of the
French resistance and, of course, the father
of a philosophical concept known as absurdism.
Yeah. And we've got a massive stack of historical
and biographical research to go through today.
We really do. And we're going to distill all
that down to figure out how his philosophy isn't
just, you know, some dense academic theory that
you read in a dusty classroom. Far from it. Right.
It's actually a highly practical toolkit for
finding meaning in a world that is completely
and sometimes violently Unpredictable. Yeah,
and to really understand that toolkit, you have
to look at a man who lived his philosophy in
real time. Like he didn't just sit in an ivory
tower writing about these concepts. He really
didn't. No, he was constantly navigating this
agonizing tension between morality, politics,
and just the raw human condition. He forged these
ideas in the middle of absolute chaos, poverty,
and war. Well, let's start with that poverty,
actually, because his origin story really sets
the baseline for everything he believed about
human suffering later on. It's the foundation
of everything. Yeah. So he was born in 1913 in
a working class neighborhood in French Algeria
called Belcourt, and his home life was, well,
It was tough. His mother, Catherine, was deaf.
She had a speech impediment, and she was entirely
illiterate. And his father, Lucien, was a poor
agricultural worker. Right. And he was killed
in action in World War I when Camus was barely
an infant. So you have this incredibly silent,
deeply impoverished household. Exactly. They
didn't have basic material possessions. No electricity,
no running water. And that background is really
the lens through which he viewed the entire world.
I mean, Camus was what was historically called
a pied -moir. What does that mean exactly? So
it's a slang term for people of French and European
descent who were born in Algeria. And often,
you know, history paints the European settlers
in Algeria as this wealthy colonial elite holding
all the power. Right. Like they're all aristocrats
or something. Exactly. But Camus was intimately
familiar with the struggles of the working class.
He saw firsthand that poverty didn't care about
your heritage when you were scraping by in the
slums. Yeah. Because of that poverty, he was
actually on track to leave school early, to become
a manual laborer, to bring in some money to keep
the family fed. His grandmother was completely
set on pulling him out of the classroom. She
was. But there was this one teacher, Louise Germain,
who intervened. Such a crucial moment. It really
was. Germain saw this massive intellectual spark
in the young Camus and just started giving him
free, private lessons. He actually coached him
to win a scholarship to a prestigious secondary
school. Which is amazing. That single act of
intervention basically changed the trajectory
of his entire life. And I love this detail. When
King Luce won the Nobel Prize in Literature decades
later in 1957, he actually dedicated his acceptance
speech to Louis Germain. Yeah, he read a letter
to him shortly after winning, basically saying
that without that affectionate hand extended
to a poor child, None of his life's work would
have happened. Wow. It just shows how deeply
he valued human connection and mentorship. He
never lost that sense of profound gratitude.
OK, let's unpack this a bit because before he
was a Nobel winning intellectual, Kimoos was
actually a really passionate football goalkeeper.
He was. He played for a junior university team
in Algiers. Yeah. And he famously stated later
in life that the simplistic morality of football
actually contradicted the complicated hypocritical
morality imposed by the state and the church.
Which is such a fascinating perspective. I mean,
think about the mechanics of being a goalkeeper.
You operate within a very defined space, the
penalty box, and inside that box, the rules apply
equally to absolutely everyone. The objective
is pure. You know, just keep the ball out of
the net. Yeah, your teammates rely on you and
you rely on them. Exactly. It is a pure, uncorrupted
sense of fraternity. So the penalty box is basically
a moral sanctuary for him. Completely. You know
exactly what is right and wrong on the field.
And then Kamas is looking out at colonial Algeria,
which is a society with a deeply unjust, two
-tiered system. the rules change depending on
your class or your race. Right, the state and
the church were just full of contradictions.
So football was really the only place where he
saw true uncorrupted justice and clear boundaries.
But then that sanctuary was violently taken from
him. Yeah. When he was just 17 years old, Kamis
was diagnosed with severe tuberculosis. And in
1930, Before modern antibiotics, that was a big
deal. Oh, it was devastating. It was highly transmissible
and often fatal. His football ambitions just
vanished overnight. Just gone. And because of
the risk of infecting his family, he actually
had to move out of his home and go stay with
his uncle, who was a local butcher. Which is
so tragic. I mean, this is a kid who defined
himself by his physical vitality. He was an athlete.
He spent his days swimming in the Mediterranean
sun, diving for the ball on the pitch. And suddenly,
his own body is betraying him. Right. He's coughing
up blood. The rules of the game have just been
ripped away. And that physical betrayal completely
altered his mindset. That terrifying, very early
confrontation with his own mortality was the
exact catalyst that drove him into philosophy.
You had to figure out what it all meant. Exactly.
He started being mentored by his teacher, Jean
Grenier, reading the ancient Greeks, absorbing
Nietzsche, and he had to take on this bizarre
string of odd jobs just to survive. Like what
kind of jobs? Well, he worked as a private tutor,
a car parts clerk, even an assistant at a meteorological
institute. Wow, quite the resume. Yeah. And all
of this while grappling with the realization
that life is incredibly fragile and can just
be snatched away without any logical reason.
So. Camus had just learned how to face the absurdity
of his own failing body with the TB. But then,
the universe was about to scale that absurdity
up to a global level. Right. The 1930s were rolling
into the 1940s. Yeah. He wasn't just fighting
his own mortality anymore. He was about to face
the mortality of all of Europe as World War II
broke out. And he actually tries to volunteer
for the army. He does. But the military rejects
him immediately because of his history of tuberculosis.
Which forces him down a completely different
path. Exactly. So instead of fighting on the
front lines, he essentially takes his philosophy
out of the classroom and straight into the underground.
Right. He eventually makes his way to Paris and
he takes an active, highly dangerous role in
the French resistance against the Nazi occupation.
He becomes the editor in chief of combat. which
was an outlawed underground newspaper. What's
fascinating here is that he's using fake IDs.
He's writing under a pseudonym. Yeah, he is organizing
covert drops of illegal newspapers while the
Gestapo is actively hunting down resistance members.
I mean, if he gets caught, it's a trip to a concentration
camp or a firing squad. And during this exact
period of extreme daily terror, Kios was finishing
what he called his first cycle. of writing. Right,
the cycle of the absurd. Yeah, which includes
his massive breakthrough novel, The Stranger,
and his defining philosophical essay, The Myth
of Sisyphus. But wait, I'm struggling to square
these two things though. How so? Well, if Camus
believes the universe is entirely meaningless,
which is sort of the popular pop culture takeaway
of absurdism, why is he risking his life every
single day in the underground resistance? That's
a great question. Right. If there is no grand
meaning to life, why not just keep your head
down and try to survive the war? Why bother fighting
the Nazis at all? And you've hit on the exact
paradox that most people misunderstand about
his work. Camus didn't believe that because the
world lacks inherent meaning, we should just
throw our hands up and surrender. So he wasn't
a nihilist? No, not at all. He believed that
the universe is indifferent, absolutely. But
because it lacks inherent meaning, human dignity,
rebellion, and courage are literally the only
moral values we have left to cling to. So we
have to create the meaning ourselves. Exactly.
But so what does this all mean in practice? Let's
bring this down to earth and define the absurd.
Good idea. When Kamis talks about the absurd,
he's describing a very specific collision. It's
the crash between our desperate human desire
for things to make sense and what he beautifully
called the unreasonable silence of the world.
Right. Because we are creatures wired to seek
purpose. We deeply want to know why we are here,
why we suffer, and why terrible things happen.
We look up at the universe demanding an explanation,
and the universe just stares back at us completely
blank. It makes me think of an analogy. It's
like, you are constantly sending these deep heartfelt
text messages to the universe. Oh, I like this.
Yeah, you're pouring your soul out, asking for
advice, asking for just a tiny sign that you
are on the right path. And the universe always,
always leaves you on read. Yes. There are no
reply bubbles. Nothing. Just the little read
receipt. Exactly. And Camus essentially says
you have three options when you realize you've
been left on read. You can throw your phone away,
which he equates to physical suicide, just a
total surrender to the meaninglessness. Right.
Or you can delude yourself into thinking the
universe did reply by inventing a comforting
story, which he calls philosophical suicide.
And what's the third option? The third option,
which is the core of Cayma's philosophy, is to
accept that you are left on read. You look directly
at the blank screen, you accept the silence,
and you find joy and defiance in the act of typing
the message anyway. You embrace the absurdity
of the situation. And that is where the myth
of Sisyphus comes in. It perfectly illustrates
the concept. Camus uses the ancient Greek myth
of Sisyphus, a man who defied the gods and was
punished for eternity. His punishment was to
push a massive, heavy boulder up a steep mountain.
Right, and every time he finally reaches the
top, the boulder rolls all the way back down
to the bottom and Sisyphus has to walk down and
start over forever. It is the ultimate symbol
of meaningless, frustrating labor. I mean, most
people would look at that and see pure hell.
But Camus looks at it and sees a blueprint for
human triumph. He focuses on the exact moment
when Sisyphus reaches the top, watches the boulder
roll back down, and turns to walk back down the
mountain. That specific moment. Yes. In that
moment of walking down, Sisyphus is fully conscious
of his wretched condition. He knows his labor
is pointless. But by choosing to walk back down
and push it again, he claims ownership of his
fate. He rebels against the gods simply by continuing.
Exactly. Camus concludes the essay with the famous
line, one must imagine Sisyphus happy. The struggle
itself toward the heights is enough to fill a
man's heart. Wow. And when you apply that to
his life during World War II, it suddenly makes
perfect sense. It really does. Fighting the Gestapo
might have felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain.
The odds were impossible. But the act of fighting,
the act of asserting human dignity in the face
of a terrifying, indifferent machine, was the
victory itself. He was forging his own meaning
in the dark. And this brings us to a really crucial
distinction in the history of philosophy. A lot
of people lump Camus in with Jean -Paul Sartre.
Oh, yeah, they constantly get grouped together.
Right. They were contemporaries in Paris. They
ran in the same circles, and they were both constantly
labeled as existentialists. But Camus hated that
term and actively rejected it. And to understand
why they clashed so spectacularly, you really
have to look at the massive differences in their
lived experiences. I mean, Sartre was an ivory
tower Parisian intellectual. It was very easy
for him to look at the world from a comfortable
cafe and declare that humans are entirely blank
slates. Yeah, Sartre championed the core existentialist
idea that existence precedes essence, meaning
you are born as nothing and you completely invent
your own human nature through your choices. But
Camus looked at that and said, no, that's fundamentally
wrong. Because of his background. Exactly, because
Kemu grew up in grinding poverty in Algiers.
He fought the physical deterioration of tuberculosis.
He fought in the dirt and the paranoia of the
resistance. He saw firsthand that humans share
a fundamental, undeniable condition. We all bleed,
we all suffer. We all face mortality, and we
all crave dignity. That shared suffering meant,
to Kemus, that there is an inherent human nature.
We aren't blank slates. And that philosophical
difference eventually exploded into a massive
public feud when Camus shifted into his second
major cycle of writing, which centered around
the concept of the rebel. Right, he basically
updates Descartes' famous statement, I think,
therefore I am. Camus writes, I revolt, therefore
we exist. And notice the shift there from the
singular I to the plural we. Yeah, that's really
important. By rebelling against oppression, we
affirm a shared human value that connects all
of us. But he issued a profound warning alongside
that concept. He looked at the history of the
20th century and saw that revolutions, even those
that start out fighting for justice and freedom,
often curdle into new oppressive regimes. The
rebel overthrows the tyrant. Only to become the
new tyrant. Exactly. Therefore, Camus demanded
that rebellion must have strict moral limits.
You cannot sacrifice innocent lives today for
some promised utopian society tomorrow. And this
stance made him incredibly controversial, especially
on the political left in France. And just as
a quick reminder for you listening, we are not
taking a political side here. Our goal is strictly
to explore the historical facts of Camus's life
and the mechanics of his philosophy. Absolutely.
that Kamas applied this concept of moral limits
to fiercely criticize Marxism, Leninism, and
the Soviet Union under Stalin. He looked at the
Soviet model and recognized it as totalitarian.
He was deeply disturbed by intellectuals in Paris,
like Sartre, who were sympathetic to the Soviets
and willing to overlook the gulags and the state
violence in the name of a future communist utopia.
Right. Kamas accused them of making a decision
to call total servitude freedom. He refused to
tolerate political violence, arguing that revolutionaries
were sacrificing living, breathing, innocent
humans on the altar of an abstract historical
idea. So if he rejected the Soviet model and
he rejected Western capitalism, where did he
actually land politically? Well, the sources
note he was drawn to anarcho -syndicalism and
libertarian socialism. OK, let's break those
terms down because they sound incredibly dense.
They do, yeah. So. Anarcho -syndicalism is basically
the idea that everyday workers, not politicians
or corporate bosses, should directly control
their own workplaces and communities through
labor unions. He hated the idea of a centralized
state controlling everything from the top down.
And libertarian socialism operates on a similar
wavelength. It advocates for a society based
on community care, mutual aid, and shared resources,
but absolutely rejects the authoritarian control
of a massive government bureaucracy. So he basically
wanted power decentralized. Yeah, he wanted people
to govern themselves locally, ensuring that human
dignity was always prioritized over state power.
But you know, it is one thing to sit in Paris
and write brilliant essays about the moral limits
of rebellion and decentralized power. It's a
lot easier in theory. Right. It is entirely another
thing when a real, visceral, bloody revolution
breaks out in your own childhood home. And that's
exactly what happens to Kamis. The Algerian war
for independence begins in 1954. And it completely
shatters his life. He is painfully caught in
the middle of a brutal conflict because as a
Pied Noir, he was born in Algeria. And years
before the war broke out, he had worked as a
journalist, writing scathing, highly unpopular
exposés about the atrocious living conditions,
the starvation, and the institutional racism
that the French colonial government imposed on
the Arab and Berber populations. So he knew the
colonial system was deeply unjust and needed
to be dismantled. He did. But at the same time,
he deeply identified with the working -class
European settlers. Right. People like his deaf
mother, who still lived in a poor neighborhood
in Algiers. Do you view these everyday settlers
as evil colonial mastermind oppressors? No, he
viewed them as ordinary poor people who were
just trying to survive in the only home they
had ever known. So he tries desperately to find
an impossible middle ground. He really does.
He actually travels to Algeria at massive personal
risk, trying to negotiate a civilian truce. He
pleads with both the French military and the
Algerian National Liberation Front, the FLN,
to agree to spare innocent non -combatants. He
advocates for a new Mediterranean culture, a
pluralistic, multicultural Algeria, where Arabs,
Berbers, and Europeans can coexist equally. But
his efforts are completely rejected by almost
everyone. Yeah, the French colonialists think
he's a traitor for exposing their abuses and
demanding equal rights for Arabs. And the FLN
rejects him for not supporting their campaign
of full scale armed independence and guerrilla
warfare. His calls for peace are viewed by radicals
on both sides as foolish or worse as a cowardly
defense of the colonial status quo. Which leads
to perhaps his most famous and historically debated
public moment. Oh, the Stockholm incident. Yeah.
He's in Stockholm in 1957, answering questions
from students after accepting his Nobel Prize.
And he is aggressively confronted by an Algerian
critic about his refusal to fully support the
FLN's armed struggle. And Kamis replies by rejecting
the false equivalence of justice with revolutionary
terrorism. He says, People are now planting bombs
in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be
on one of those tramways. If that is justice.
then I prefer my mother. Which is such a powerful
statement. And that quote is still a lightning
rod for debate today. Post -colonial critics
like Edward Said later argued that this was Camus
showing a colonialist bias, failing his own political
ideals when the pressure was on. It's definitely
a point of heavy criticism. But if you look at
the underlying mechanism of his philosophy, everything
we just talked about regarding Sisyphus and the
rebel, is this actually the ultimate expression
of his beliefs? If we connect this to the bigger
picture, it aligns perfectly. For Camus, no political
cause, no matter how righteous or historically
justified the grievance, was worth the blood
of innocent civilians. The moment a revolutionary
group justifies bombing a public tramway full
of everyday people like his mother going to the
market, they have crossed the line from rebellion
into tyranny. They have lost the moral high ground.
Exactly. He refused to sanction murder in the
name of an abstract political future. He chose
flesh and blood human life over ideology. It's
a tragic position to hold though because it left
him entirely politically orphaned. He had no
allies left. He once described the violence in
Algeria as affecting him as others feel pain
in their lungs. Which is an incredibly loaded
heavy metaphor for a man who spent his entire
adult life battling tuberculosis. Yeah. and the
mental burden just became too heavy to carry.
He essentially withdrew from the public debate
on Algeria after the Stockholm incident. He turned
back to his roots in the theater, adapting works
by Dostoevsky for the stage. And he began writing
what he predicted would be his masterpiece, a
heavily autobiographical novel called The First
Man. Exploring his childhood in Algiers, his
father's death, and his connection to the land.
But the universe, in its ultimate absurd indifference,
had other plans. Yeah. In January 1960, Camus
had just spent the New Year's holiday in the
south of France. His wife and children took the
train back to Paris, and Camus actually had a
train ticket in his pocket. He fully intended
to take the train. He did. But at the very last
minute, he decided to ride back with his friend
and publisher, Michel Gallimard, in Gallimard's
luxury car. A Facel Vega. And on a long, straight,
unobstructed stretch of road, the car drifted
and crashed violently into a massive plane tree.
Camus was in the passenger seat. He was 46 years
old. He died instantly. Gallimard died from his
injuries a few days later. And in the mud and
the wreckage of the car, investigators found
his briefcase. Inside was the 144 -page, handwritten
manuscript of the first man. The story of his
life cut short mid -sentence by a random piece
of bark and steel. It is the bleakest kind of
irony imaginable, a man who wrote so extensively
about the sudden meaningless nature of death
taken out by a completely random, avoidable accident.
It's just absurd. It really is. And I should
note that in 2011, an Italian author proposed
a theory that the KGB actually orchestrated the
crash by tampering with the car's tires. Wait,
really? The KGB? Yeah, the theory suggests it
was retaliation for Kamius's heavy, relentless
criticism of the Soviet Union. Wow. Whether it
was a targeted assassination or just a horrific,
absurd accident, it abruptly ended the life of
one of the 20th century's greatest mimes. It
really did. And when we pull all of these sources
together, the takeaways from this deep dive are
incredibly powerful. This was a man who stared
directly into the void of an absurd silent universe.
He suffered through the terrifying disease of
his own body, the horrors of World War II, and
the agonizing political exile of the Algerian
War. And despite carrying all of that weight,
his response was never nihilism. His response
was to fiercely love human life. He recognized
that we are all trapped in this absurd condition
together and therefore the only logical, decent
response is solidarity. He teaches us to resist
oppression with everything we have but to maintain
the strict moral discipline to never become an
oppressor yourself. Yeah, if you've ever felt
completely disillusioned by a political movement
you initially believed in because the rhetoric
became too extreme or the tactics became too
cruel, you are experiencing exactly what Kam
has warned about. Absolutely. In an era like
ours today, where political polarization is so
intense, where the us -versus -them mentality
is practically a global religion, chemuse offers
a blueprint. A way to keep your moral compass
intact. Yeah, and a way to find joy and sunlight
even when the world feels entirely broken. He
proved that you can look at the darkest parts
of the human experience and still conclude that
there is an invincible summer inside of us. It's
a beautiful way to live. It is. But here's where
it gets really interesting and where I want to
leave you today, the listener. Camus defined
the absurd as the human need for meeting the
unreasonable silence of the world. Right. But
you live in the digital age. You are constantly
connected. What happens to absurdism when we
aren't facing the unreasonable silence of the
world, but the unreasonable noise of the internet?
Oh, that's a great point. When every app, every
headline, every algorithm is shouting at you,
trying to hand you a pre -packaged meaning or
a brand new reason to be outraged. How do you
maintain your own moral limits, your own quiet
rebellion, when the world won't stop screaming
at you? It's a whole new kind of boulder to push.
Exactly. Think about that as you go about your
day. Are you letting the noise dictate your essence
or are you typing your own message into the void,
finding your own meaning? Keep questioning, keep
seeking. Until next time.