Episode 225 - Transcript

Hello everyone! I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!

So this here’s a philosophical companion for reading the book The Plague by Albert Camus. 

Heads up: this episode BUILDS off the one we just did before this on his book the stranger, so maybe listen to that one before you do this one. 

That said: coming IN to this episode… we already know a COUPLE important things about Camus so far in this series. 

We KNOW that Camus thought of himself as an artist, and not a philosopher. 

That he didn’t want to be a philosopher. 

That philosophers in his eyes are people that build systems out of theoretical abstractions. 

And that HE thinks, abstract argument, not ONLY misses something deeply IMPORTANT about the human condition, but that it sets a dangerous precedent for people to live their lives BELIEVING that philosophy can provide some neat justification for the things that go on in the world. But that this is all NONSENSE at some level for Camus. This is just philosophical suicide.  

So what we see INSTEAD in his work…is him not being someone who wrote PHILOSOPHICAL works…where he might write out propositions and then try to organize them into a SYSTEM, more CLASSIC way philosophers have done things…Camus’s much more interested in his work in presenting what he calls IMAGES of the human condition. 

His thinking is that by DRAMATIZING these ideas and creating IMAGES…there won’t be so much of a temptation for people to try to REDUCE them to some kind of delusional system of universals. As Camus HIMSELF once said: what is a novel…but just a philosophy expressed in IMAGES. 

Well communicating in IMAGES like this…is going to be a BIG part of this radical project he’s embarking on in his career… where he’s refusing to GROUND his positions in theoretical abstractions of any type. Again he sees himself as an artist here, and not a philosopher. 

This is WHY things like the Myth of Sisyphus, FAMOUS essay by him…this is why he CREATES such powerful, memorable images in it. 

I mean think about it: a man named Sisyphus that’s condemned by the gods… to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity…only for when the boulder REACHES the top of the hill… to have it roll back down, forcing sisyphus to start again, repeating this until the end of time. This is a POWERFUL IMAGE. And fantastic for the glutes by the way if you’re looking for a nice deep range of motion. But to understand the book we’re talking about today, The Plague, and WHY this marks a major SHIFT in his work… it’s GONNA be important to understand… ALL that Camus was trying to say here, at the end of the Myth of Sysiphus with this powerful image he painted in his work. 

Because as it turns out there’s a really overRATED line I think….from The Myth of Sisyphus that basically everyone knows. The line is: that we should imagine Sisyphus HAPPY. 

And what SOME people think when they read that…is that what Camus is SAYING…is that our LIVES are essentially…like…Sisyphus here. That life is suffering, and that a great METAPHOR for continuing to LIVE ON is that it’s the equivalent of pushing a boulder up a hill in a completely meaningless, fruitless grind. But that we should just keep pushing the rock, and try to be HAPPY about that somehow, LIKE Sisyphus in the essay. 

But this is not what Camus was saying there. 

No, he’s not saying this is what ALL of our life looks like.

See the image of Sisyphus…IS partly a metaphor for a specific PIECE of how our lives may feel…specifically, for our encounter with the absurd when we face it head on. 

For that tension between what our nature seems to DESIRE from the universe… and what the universe can actually give to  us. 

That constant tension…CAN sometimes feel like that cycle of pushing the boulder up and having it fall…but Sisyphus is EQUALLY an image that’s being used by Camus here…to ILLUSTRATE what our lives are NOT. 

Because to Camus it is ALSO important for us to recognize…how much we are NOT like Sisyphus. That we are NOT…beings that are condemned by the Gods for all eternity. Our lives are NOT pushing a boulder, constant suffering, with NO redeeming moments. 

No, the image of Sisyphus… is also supposed to be a CONTRAST against a reader's OWN life. 

Because for Camus the reality of OUR life is: we DO have, MANY good moments that are available to us as human beings. Yes, life is PARTIALLY suffering to Camus, but life is ALSO partially: joy, love, belonging, beauty, EXCITEMENT…and look if you were gonna try to affirm life in ALL that it IS…well it’s to understand that these things TOO… are an important piece of the immanence of our reality. 

Now it may be that you come from a HISTORY…where you’ve been led to believe that transcendence ABOVE this world and its suffering is what you should EXPECT. 

That that’s the GOAL when you’re here: to create a system of meaning that JUSTIFIES the suffering you’re in…or makes it go away somehow. And I mean the thinking from this kind of person will often be like: well, how could Sisyphus EVER be anything other than MISERABLE…when he DOESN’T have some way of transcending his reality?

But the POINT to recognize for Camus is… that it isn’t just a GIVEN…that Sisyphus would be UNhappy. 

That it’s EQUALLY possible…if Sisyphus affirmed his life, if LUCIDITY was his primary goal instead…it’s possible for someone to LIVE their life in a way…where life itself… IS good enough…EXACTLY…how it is. That we don’t need to TRANSCEND it… or to get AWAY from it…and we don’t need to make it into something that it’s NOT like we’re condemned by the gods for all eternity. 

Nah, in GENERAL Camus will say over and over again ALL throughout his career in different contexts: forget the EXTREMES, forget the temptation… to violently IMPOSE yourself onto a problem just to try to get RID of it…and the goal for him is MORE gonna be: to TRY to find a way of being more rooted in the IMMANENCE of things…along the lines of the example he sees set by certain Mediterranean cultures he admires in the lyrical poetry that he writes. A way of life more centered on balance, on moderation, on measure from the work of St. Augustine who he admires deeply, and on LUCIDITY towards life as it IS. This is one of the IMAGES Camus paints OF the human condition.

And what this will lead to is a very LUCID understanding of the fact that challenging moments…LIKE the one Sisyphus is forever trapped in…these are often the places, where when we’re OPEN to it… this is sometimes where we form our DEEPEST connections with the people and things around us. That lucid revolt…ALSO produces a life that’s worth living as well. 

And we’ll see that FRONT and center… IN this book The Plague, basically right from the start. 

The book begins when people start noticing dead rats showing up all around them. 

In the book these people live in a very small, perfectly normal town on the coast of Algeria...and it’s soon realized by them that a bunch of rats, carrying a disease, have come OFF of one of the boats that are docked NEAR the town… and now as they’re going about their day: going to the store or going to check their mail…they start to see these dead rats popping up that clearly have some sort of disease that has killed them. 

It soon becomes evident to EVERYBODY in this town at different speeds…that they are now all living in a town… that is quickly being infected by the bubonic plague…and that a city-wide quarantine and lock down is going to mean for them… that there’s really no hope of any of them ESCAPING this problem… that they are all going to be FORCED to confront the coming plague head on.

Camus would later say in an interview about this book… that MUCH of the SYMBOLISM of the actual plague…is pointing to the Nazi occupation of France during world war two when he was living through it. Camus was famously a member of what you could call a literary resistance AGAINST the Nazis…he was one of the biggest voices in a resistance newspaper called Combat-- some of his best writing I think.

But it should be said, Nazi symbolism aside…the PLAGUE in the book ALSO represents a confrontation… with the absurd more GENERALLY. I mean keep in mind WHERE this book The Plague fits IN to the larger project of Camus. 

See little known fact here: all the books, plays, or essays that WE know about from Camus…if you read what HE wrote about them in his notes… Camus PERSONALLY organized his work into what he called 5 different stages, or cycles– this is how HE was thinking about it. 

Cycle one for him was the book The Stranger, the essay The Myth of Sysiphus and his early play Caligula. And for cycle two…well the The Plague, was the FIRST major book that he thought was a PART of cycle two…meaning it represents a MAJOR shift in focus for him in his work…where he goes from these EARLIER works that focus mostly on the individual, and a PERSONAL encounter with the absurd…to cycle two focusing on FACING the absurd at the level of community, and our relationships to other people. 

So writing a book about a plague that terrorizes a small community…well this is going to be FANATASTIC, as one of these powerful IMAGES that he creates…that explores revolt against the absurd at the level of our commitments to the other people around us. 

Now you can think of the CHARACTERS in this book…IN their different responses TO the plague…as IMAGES presented by Camus where EACH of them represent, SOME common REACTION to when we’re forced to confront the absurd in our LIVES. 

That there’s common ways people RUN from the absurd. Or distract themselves AWAY from it. There’s common WAGERS that people MAKE with themselves… to avoid being LUCID about their reality.

Let me give some examples of these characters from the book…that you can notice as LANDMARKS of this as you’re reading through it. 

The character Father Paneloux for example… is someone we hear from early ON in this book…and he’s one of those fire and brimstone religious PREACHER type of guys that when the world’s getting shut down in the book and people are starting to DIE of the plague…well what does HE do… he gives a sermon saying look if any of you are confused about this plague I know EXACTLY what’s going on here! This PLAGUE, he says…is divine retribution from God. 

God has sent this plague…to PUNISH the people of this town for all their SINNING. He says more or less this is just an elaborate RUSE by God to GET the people coming back to church. Some people might just put one of those fancy electric GEETARS in the WORSHIP group to boost attendance at church, nope: God sends a plague. Which, lesson of the day: you do something, you do it right, people.

In all seriousness Father Paneloux represents for Camus the common reaction of a metaphysical form of DENIAL. He uses a story, that’s LOADED with METAPHYSICS, to explain AWAY the absurd events of the world. And this story… conveniently reinforces all his EXISTING views of the world, so there’s no reflection that’s actually REQUIRED on his part. He has a ready-made form of escapism FROM the absurd… in every moment.

Another minor character we see early on is a guy named Cottard. 

Now Cottard… is a criminal in the book. 

He STARTS the book as someone that’s always looking over his shoulder worried that the police are about to come and arrest him…so when the plague breaks out: well all of a sudden the police don’t have the RESOURCES to come after him anymore. The plague, in other words, becomes an opportunity for this guy Cottard…it becomes a way to take ADVANTAGE of people’s fears and lack of resources. So when he organizes a black market of smuggling things in and out of the city and makes a lot of MONEY from it, ALL of this in an effort to USE the absurdity of the world…to further ingratiate himself. Yet ANOTHER…common reaction Camus wants to put on display.

In other words Cottard as a character is meant to represent the person who ENCOUNTERS the absurd…and then ONLY thinks of themselves. And as a reader you’re left to LOOK at his example and you can’t help but feel…like something’s MISSING here…like IS this an authentic REACTION from Cottard to all that’s going on AROUND him? Or is this just another clever way of DENYING pieces of the world that are around you?

Seeing Cottard’s example is an important MOMENT…because for the MAIN characters of the book…Camus’s has them RESPOND to the absurd in a way that DOESN’T only think about themselves.

And first up to be able to EXPLAIN this point: let’s talk about the main CHARACTER of this book, a man named Dr. Bernard Rieux. 

Because I think by talking about HIS, PERSONAL ARC he goes through in the book, of going from at first a denial of the absurd and developing into a lucid revolt AGAINST it…I think using him as a case study here will help us be more able to look at all the other main characters and THEIR approaches more easily. 

So Dr. Rieux…is obviously a DOCTOR in this small coastal town we’ve been talking about. 

He’s one of the first people that HEARS about the plague when it’s starting, he’s one of the only medical professionals around so he starts running tests on these RATS that are dying to see if he can figure out what this is. And after finding out this is the bubonic plague they’re dealing with…he THEN, very briefly is involved with some of his colleagues, in trying to develop a SERUM for the plague… that hopefully they can just GIVE to people and it will CURE them. 

In other words: his first instinct when he ENCOUNTERS the absurd… is to do what MANY of us do in our OWN lives…we RETREAT into a kind of PROBLEM solving mode… where we MAKE the mistake of thinking we can get AWAY from it. 

For Dr. Rieux it’s a kind of SCIENTIFIC cocoon he makes for himself trying to come up with a CURE…but ANY ONE of us might also SEE the absurd, and THINK of it as a problem that needs to be solved with our own personal skillset. 

This is of course an understandable reaction, but again for Dr. Rieux this is something he’s forced to outgrow pretty quickly. 

Because very soon in the book he realizes that this plague is NOT going anywhere…there’s no magic SERUM that’s going to CURE everyone. There’s no getting RID of the plague ENTIRELY. And upon realizing this his goal CHANGES…from a DENIAL of the absurd…to a stance of revolt against it. 

Dr. Rieux starts to feel that to BE a lucid, authentic person that is NOT in denial of what is actually going on around him…the ONLY response that really makes SENSE in this moment…is solidarity with his fellow people. 

Meaning in a very quiet, measured way…his choice is to just keep going on about his life CARING, for all the PEOPLE who are suffering from the plague AROUND him. Running tests, checking vitals, giving medication— Dr. Reiux chooses to just put his head down…and keep on LIVING in SPITE on the senseless DEATH that’s taking over the town.

For Albert Camus: solidarity like this with our fellow people– is going to be an everyday form of revolt that we can EMBODY against the absurd. Dr. Rieux becomes a character not interested in grand theories about the plague, not interested in trying to BEAT the absurdity of the plague, but someone driven towards solidarity with others, by a sense of personal duty and empathy.

Now somebody could say back to this: HA! I KNEW it! I KNEW you were gonna do this at SOME point here Camus! Look at YOU now SMUGGLING in a system of morality yourself, things like duty, things like empathy…you know what? You’re NO different than one of those philosophers you claim to not want to BE like! 

But this is why it’s important to understand that for Camus: Solidarity like this… is not an ETHICAL rebellion that he’s presenting…this is a metaphysical rebellion.

Remember LAST episode… when we described this lucidity by him… as a DESCRIPTIVE claim that he’s making, and not a normative one. 

That to be a creature that affirms its OWN nature, AND the nature of the universe, you know to strive for meaning in a universe that can’t give it to us, to strive for knowledge in a universe where there’s many things we can’t know…to LIVE in this metaphysical POSTURE of LUCIDITY towards what things ARE…is DESCRIPTIVELY an act of revolt against the absurd. 

So this ISN’T him saying this is how you SHOULD behave. It’s him saying that for you to keep on living, doing ANYTHING in this world, after truly AFFIRMING it…that THING you’re DOING THERE…DEFAULTS into an act of revolt.

Well let’s talk about how this ladders up from the individual, PERSONAL revolt… to one where it involves solidarity with others. 

See: at the level of the individual…SURE there’s a way you can get lost in ENDLESSLY questioning whether or not things really matter. You can spend every day of your life AGONIZING over whether or not you have the right set of abstractions that GROUND the value of these things in a universal.

But as we’ve been talking about a LOT lately…there’s ALSO this more PRE-theoretical experience, that Camus is very aware of…where THINGS in the world, just MATTER to you. 

That you HAVE an orientation of CARE towards the things in your vicinity. You CARE whether the FLOOR is there to walk on or not. You CARE about getting your next MEAL. And these things have VALUE to you… that ISN’T grounded on any set of theoretical abstractions for Camus… but  it just SEEMS to be that the KIND of creature that I am…is one that has an orientation of CARE about the physical space I’m in. 

This is a pretty uncontroversial statement to MAKE for Camus. And remember part of what he’s trying to DO here is start from EXTREMELY uncontroversial claims… that don’t have to be GROUNDED in a particular SYSTEM. 

Well if we’re the KIND of beings that just CARE about the things in the world around us…how would that not be something that EXTENDS… into a care that we have towards the other PEOPLE, who are around us?

I mean if I’m walking along one day…and I see a child drowning inside of a big puddle…I do NOT stand there, stone faced, feeling NOTHING inside, watching as the child slowly dies. No, when we AFFIRM the kinds of creatures we seem to BE…to Camus we find that we often see to  DEFAULT, to a type of empathy and solidarity towards people that are SUFFERING immediately around us.

We DO this Camus thinks…because to NOT do it would be a contradiction. I KNOW…what navigating a human existence is LIKE at times. I KNOW what it FEELS like to suffer. When I look around me, and I SEE other people in the SAME existential dilemma that I face…for the example of the Plague: when I SEE other beings like me where we all have NO idea what this disease even IS. We don’t know if we’re all gonna be dead in a week. Where we ALL just want to run and get out of this horrible situation, but none of us CAN. 

To be fully lucid towards a world where people on the DAILY are suffering against the absurd like this…is to acknowledge a COMMON set of existential PROBLEMS that we all face…and a COMMON struggle we ALL face where we all need to find SOME way to keep on LIVING in spite of it. 

Empathy and solidarity…seem to be the DEFAULT. 

In fact if you THINK about it to Camus: it’s ONLY when we have a set of theoretical abstractions that FRAMES the people around us as the ENEMY or as LESS HUMAN or something…THAT is typically the only way people can rationalize to themselves why it’s OKAY that people around them are suffering. Oh, it’s cause these people DESERVE it. Oh, it’s cause these people had it COMING. 

And this is why to him propaganda of ANY type, if you pay ATTENTION to it…always tries to put up BARRIERS between PEOPLE. 

They try to silence the group of people that are suffering. They try to LIMIT communication between people. They demonize them, try to PRESENT people in a way that’s very narrow, making us NOT be able to lucidly SEE them in their full existence. 

On a SMALLER scale… this is also why ABUSIVE people often want to LIMIT who the VICTIMS of their abuse can TALK to about it. They don’t want someone talking to their friends, or an advocate somewhere: that might be someone that takes them OUT of the narrow FRAMING they need them to STAY in to keep going along with their abuse. 

Picture a really restrictive totalitarian state… with a population essentially being held captive…and now imagine what would happen if tomorrow…everybody woke up for some reason, and just stopped playing the game that the state REQUIRES for it all to keep going.  Silence is the ENEMY to lucidity for Camus. 

Camus says in one of his speeches called the Crisis of Man, FAMOUS speech he gave after world war two…he says wherever you see INJUSTICE in the world…you will also see SILENCE. BARRIERS that have been set UP…to PREVENT people from truly KNOWING each other and the world around them.  

This is why free speech for him is one of the natural positions that emerges OUT of this commitment to lucidity. And it’s not him saying that “Free speech is an unalienable right that’s granted to us by GOD in HEAVEN”...no he doesn’t ground this in a RIGHT, he’s SKEPTICAL of rights as a framework, obviously–he’s a LOT like Simone Weil in this way…no, he’s saying that for ANY setup… that wants to promote people AFFIRMING reality as it IS…open communication between people is the ONLY way that‘s going to get done. 

And that’s not grounded in some COSMIC RIGHT I’m pretending to declare. That’s just the policy that lets people actually be in CONTACT… with the things in the world around them as they ARE.

See it’s only when you start layering on abstractions about the world that are USUALLY claiming to be getting us to a more “moral” place…well that’s when most of the stuff we see as IMMORAL… can even start to make sense to people as something that’s justified. So what is TRULY the ENEMY of us living in a more moral world? Is it NOT having abstractions about morality? Or is it HAVING them?

Now this probably a good spot to bring back that criticism of Camus: that this is ALL grounded on FAR too little. The idea is: look I get that you’re trying to avoid abstractions here, and I’ll accept the point that they’re DANGEROUS sometimes…but this whole thing from you is based on WHAT…a FEELING of CARE that you have? Your experience of this moment? 

Well look, what are your reasons for why we should even be TRUSTING that feeling? What if that EXPERIENCE of yours…is DECEIVING you… or what if important parts OF that experience are just being dictated by someone ELSE?

To which Camus would have a lot to say back but maybe FIRST he’d say can we just take a moment to appreciate here…HOW MUCH of an obsession you have with needing to validate EVEN your own EXPERIENCE in these theoretical abstractions? Like it seems the abstraction… has become more REAL to you…than the LIVED EXPERIENCE that lies underneath. The number on the scale means more to you than how you feel. The like count on the post means more to you than whether you’re really feeling it. Or how bout the one my friend Dave uses all the time: 76 degrees…feels MORE REAL to you than the actual experience of 76 degrees. 

Camus might say: if I’m feeling VISCERALLY AGAINST sitting by watching a child drown in a puddle…WHY is my lucid EXPERIENCE of that moment…not enough of a GROUND for you? Sure it doesn’t provide ULTIMATE meaning…but ill tell you what it DOES provide…it DOES provide a kind of provisional meaning you could say. 

A type of meaning that’s grounded in NOTHING other than a lucid reflection on this moment…and it’s meaning that comes loaded with the FULL EXPECTATION…that this will be REVISED as FUTURE moments come about. Why is that not VALID?

But STILL someone could say back to this: well what about sociopaths? What about horribly, selfish PEOPLE? THOSE people exist out there TOO right? I mean what if someone looks at the child drowning… and GENUINELY doesn’t CARE? You can’t morally CONDEMN that person, what are you gonna do THEN?

To which Camus might say yeah, you’re right this isn’t a moral universal. 

But that sociopath watching the child die… is BY FAR the exception to the rule here. I would much rather have to deal with the very occasional person that doesn’t feel the same way as MOST of us, I mean we can DEAL with that case by case. But I’d MUCH rather deal with THAT… than to accept the set of premises we CURRENTLY live under…where people by the MILLIONS feel emboldened by these fake moral universals, that end up CAUSING things like fascism and totalitarianism. 

What he’s saying is even though provisional meaning like this is NOT a universal…when it comes to CERTAIN things that SEEM to be common to almost ALL human BEINGS, things like working together, justice, safety for the average person–things of THIS class: BECAUSE these are such common feelings…even though these are NOT universals—these more or less FUNCTION like universals…but without all the abstractions that get brought along as baggage. 

So now that we have a pretty deep knowledge of why solidarity makes SENSE to Camus…let’s take a closer look at some more EXAMPLES of this solidarity you can expect to see in the symbolism of his book: The Plague. 

The main character Dr. Reiux… as we said: he BECOMES a symbol…of a sort of ordinary, every day absurd HERO for Camus. Now what exactly is MEANT by this term absurd hero.

Well when the absurd comes knocking at your door each day…it may be TEMPTING for us to go out and try to be a SUPER hero about it– to go out and try to save the world. 

But for Camus: if you’re not trying to do GOOD in the world that you’re ultimately CAPABLE of succeeding at…then you may just be mistaking MOVEMENT for PROGRESS. 

I mean the MISTAKE in the thinking of totalitarianism or fascism…PART of it to Camus… is that lacks proportionality. This is a VIOLENT, EXTREME way of IMPOSING yourself onto a problem in the world that you CAN’T actually SOLVE with a set of abstractions. It other words this is a lack of lucidity. This is in a sense: a denial of the absurd, AND a denial of your own abilities… within the limits of your own station as Camus says.

So instead of Bernard Rieux trying to be a SUPER hero doctor…no, this is a man who understands that heroism…is OFTEN something that’s found in the every day. In fact in SOME sense even CALLING it HEROISM is missing the point. He says in the book: “there’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency.” Then he says later, “the only means of fighting a plague is – common decency.”

And again by doing HOUSE calls, taking vitals, giving medication, by putting himself at risk out of compassion for the common existential PROBLEM the whole town faces…the idea is look: the plague MAY BE a kind of senseless destruction that is going on in this world. But I am not gonna let this CAUSE me… to DENY what truly matters to me. I’m going to keep on living, in the most measured, balanced way I CAN, from WITHIN the LIMITS of my own STATION. 

Anyway there’s more than ONE image that Camus paints of the absurd her: there’s ANOTHER character by the name of Raymond Rambert. 

Rambert… is a journalist in the book. He CAME to this small town to research a story he was doing…when all of a sudden a PLAGUE starts breaking out all around him. Horrible timing. 

Now his FIRST response like others here is to DENY the absurd. He tries to JUSTIFY why this isn’t even his problem. He says look, you guys don’t understand. I don’t even LIVE here! 

You can’t quarantine the place! This is the PROBLEM of the people IN this city. I’m not ONE of you! 

He says there’s a WOMAN I’m in love with back in France, she’s WAITING for me! That he’s willing to do ANYTHING, legally, illegally, just to get out of the city to get BACK to her. 

I mean HIS perspective is: I’m not ON this planet to save the world from PLAGUES. 

I’m just here to be a journalist…and to love a woman. THAT’S what human life is all about, not OBSESSING over other people’s problems. 

But you can see what Camus’s going for there. This is him actively creating a BRIDGE…between cycle ONE of his work that focuses on the individual revolt against the absurd…and he’s showing a character here, that gives a set of common EXCUSES, that ANY of us might give…for WHY the people around him are not his problem…how they’re SOMEHOW part of a totally different WORLD than the one he’s living in. 

Eventually Rambert in the book…after seeing Dr. Rieux and others risk their lives daily to FIGHT against the plague…eventually he starts to see what’s going ON as a fundamentally HUMAN crisis. One we’re bound in TOGETHER by our shared condition. 

And it’s NOT because he finds GOD, or finds some set of moral abstractions where now he knows what the right thing to DO is…no it’s through REMOVING abstractions, it’s just through being forced to lucidly look at what’s going on around him– that he REALIZES that this is ultimately HIS problem too. 

ANOTHER very important main character in the book is a man named Jean Tarrou. 

Jean Tarrou is a character…that has been opposing the absurdity of the world for MOST of his entire life. He describes himself towards the END of the book as someone that wants to be a saint, without god. Doesn’t NEED much of an explanation with all that we’ve already SAID about Camus.

But for MUCH of the book he’s an important character because he embodies a different kind of APPROACH to the task of the absurd hero. He’s the one in the book that SEES the plague, or “PLAGUE” as he calls it…as something that’s FAR LARGER than just an epidemic that’s going around. 

Plague is something we will ALWAYS be fighting against. 

As Dr. Rieux says towards the end of the book: even if we eradicate THIS plague from THIS particular TOWN…plague is something that will ALWAYS, come back, unexpectedly, looking a little different than last time, but still in MANY ways the same thing: there’s a sense in which Camus uses something NATURALLY OCCURRING like a Plague here as a metaphor…as a warning to future generations that when it comes to the type of thinking that LEADS to plague…this stuff is ALWAYS a possibility. We should always be keeping our eyes OPEN. 

Now one issue that really DEFINES Jean Tarrou in his fight against absurdity…is how he’s STRONGLY against the death penalty. 

And for Camus himself: the issue of the death penalty was one of the things he was the MOST vocal about in his entire lifetime. 

He gives multiple speeches talking about it and writes one of the most cited essays in HISTORY…talking about the PROBLEM with the death penalty called reflections on the guillotine. 

We’re gonna talk about it in detail NEXT time as a compliment to his views on justice that he lays out in his essay The Rebel. How does this case he’s making for solidarity and empathy for others…ladder UP into a point we can make about JUSTICE? I mean justice, with it being something that seems CENTERED around laws and norms…the VERY sorts of abstractions that his whole project seems to be moving AWAY from…how is Camus gonna DO this?

Well the death penalty becomes a striking IMAGE he paints of where he’s going. You know, he tells a story once of when he was young. His father was apparently a really solid dude, CARED about people in a similar kind of way that we just talked about in the plague…and part of CARING about those people led him to want to PARTICIPATE in the POLITICS of his time that was around him. So one day Camus’ father decides to go and see a public execution. I mean he’s FOR the DEATH penalty…at LEAST when it comes to really HORRIBLE PEOPLE that do heinous stuff. Time to go see where my TAX dollars are going!

And Camus writes about how this is an IMAGE that forever changed him. Camus was sitting at home, his father goes to see someone get killed and he says he’ll never forget it: his father came home, immediately excused himself into the bathroom, and then vomited uncontrollably at what he’d just witnessed. 

See, it turns out there’s a difference between people linking themselves to a theoretical CONVERSATION about what they want done…and the reality of violating a boundary that’s so DEEPLY important to us all. The entire PROCESS of the death penalty for Camus…is rooted in hypocrisy. Next episode we’ll find out why. 

And for whatever it’s worth AS we continue…and you see what Camus had planned for cycle FIVE of his work, which by the way he died in a CAR crash in the middle of writing cycle four…it’s VERY interesting to speculate what this man would have had planned had he lived long enough to develop his thinking in that direction…I mean all we have is MOSTLY speculation, mostly just TITLES that he wrote in the margins of his notes, apparently the title of the major book in cycle five was gonna be called The System. Seems ironic. There was another GIANT ESSAY he planned in cycle five called Creation Corrected, and it was maybe what he intended to be the culmination of his work. 

Anyway we’ll speculate on it by the END of this, but still MUCH more to talk about to understand the work we DO have available to us. If you value this show as an educational resource check out Patreon.com/philosophizethis and as always: Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.