Episode 228 - Transcript

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

Patreon.com/philosophizethis. Also, if you’re on Substack and like to read philosophical writing on there…I’ve been taking some of the writing from this show, tightening it up so it reads well and posting it on Substack. There will be other philosophical writing there in the future, so if you want to support the show, philosophize this on Substack is a way to go too. That said: hope you love the show today. 

So this whole series so far has been about this project that Camus dedicated his life to…where he wants to affirm the kinds of creatures that we are… without falling into the trap of system building. 

If in the myth of sisyphus Camus shows us the importance of lucidity in the face of the absurd. If in the Plague he shows us how when we take SERIOUSLY the kinds of creatures we are it leads to solidarity with our fellow people. If in the Rebel he shows us how, as creatures, we have certain lines that can’t be crossed…and that by saying no to something we affirm the lines that cannot be crossed in the human dignity of others. If these are all, uncontroversial statements, to make about what it is to be a human being…then in Camus’ NEXT book, The Fall…he’s going to EXTEND this line of reasoning… to the concepts of judgment and human error– or our Fallenness you could say if you wanted to put it in more religious terms.

That nobody out there is BEYOND judgement or BEYOND making mistakes. But man…isn’t it SO COMMON… for people to rationalize their behavior, or create elaborate systems in their life, ALL in an attempt to AVOID both of these things. Do you KNOW anybody like that in YOUR life?

Should be said we’ve already talked about the plot points of the fall on this podcast. It was episode #170 as part of the creation of meaning series. Just saying I’m focusing less on the PLOT here…and more on what the characters and story MEAN within the larger PROJECT of Camus. 

Cause if you’ve listened to that episode you know that the main character of the book, Clamence…STARTS the book talking about what he USED to be like…where in his stories he looks like a PERFECT example…of what Camus laid out in his essay The Rebel we just talked about. 

Clamence is the PICTURE…of solidarity with others through lucid rebellion. 

He’s a lawyer. He only takes on cases where he helps the downtrodden of society. In his spare time he likes to help old ladies cross the street, he does balloon animals for the kids. This is a man who is very VISIBLY, on the SURFACE at least… a MORALLY GOOD person…someone who seems to sacrifice a LOT in his life in the name of helping others. 

But he goes through what I called on the episode…a reverse baptism…it’s a REVERSE baptism because instead of there being a moment, where he’s dunked in water, that morally purifies him…he has a series of moments in his life…that REVEAL to him JUST how much of a morally QUESTIONABLE person he truly is. 

There’s the image Camus paints of him in the book getting punched in the face and humbled during a road rage incident. 

There’s the image of him crossing a bridge at night and hearing someone laughing at him behind his back. 

There’s most NOTABLY, FAMOUS scene from this book… the moment of the woman on the bridge…who when she falls OFF the bridge into the water, Clamence COULD choose to jump in after into the water and save her…but instead he does nothing and just continues on with his night like nothing happened.

In other words: Clamence on the surface, can SURE put on an ACT of being the Rebel that Camus writes about. But if you forced him to LOOK at HIMSELF with the SAME degree of lucidity we’ve been talking about looking at the WORLD with…he’d be FORCED to acknowledge certain limitations that he has…that are rather uncomfortable to admit. 

He’s forced to admit that a LOT of this morality of his is performative…or “half-hearted” as Camus writes. And this reverse baptism has placed him in a feeling of EXILE, like we talked about last time…but rather than SIT in it, where the ILLUSION of how great of a guy he is gets shown to be what it is…he instead reacts to exile in a very PREDICTABLE way…he creates tactics and rationalizations out of abstractions…that allow him to CONTINUE on living…not HAVING to consider his limitations. 

The one we see in the book is his strategy of being what he calls a judge-penitent. Where once he REALIZES how morally shallow he is…he spends the rest of his life sitting in a bar, in the deepest circle of hell in Amsterdam, where he acts as both judge and penitent, or prisoner…both at the same time. 

See by TELLING random people that sit next to him at the bar about how bad of a person he is…through this twisted little CONFESSION booth of his he judges HIMSELF… before ANYBODY else can BRING that judgment UPON him against his will. 

It’s what you could call something like the EIGHT mile defense, or what B-rabbit does to papa doc at the end of that movie. The idea is: screw EVERYBODY, me, you, papa doc, a clock, a trailer, santa claus, screw everybody! If I just cut MYSELF down enough and tell you all the bad things about me…then YOU don’t have anything left that you can JUDGE me for. 

In other words: this is a STRATEGY that’s going on here from Clamence.

And more than that this strategy comes with several OTHER benefits for him as well: see if I JUDGE myself really bad…if I’m the lowest, scummiest person in this room in everyone’s eyes…then everything that I judge people for after that…is officially swinging UP at that point.

Like have you ever known somebody that will want to criticize people…and they’ll start by saying, now look I’m the FIRST to admit I’m a TOTAL piece of crap myself…but look can we talk about this OTHER person over there, these other PEOPLE we BOTH don’t like?!? This is the judge-penitent strategy.

Now sprinkled THROUGHOUT this book are a lot of OTHER common strategies in the modern world that people use to AVOID guilt or AVOID admitting their own mistakes…again to AVOID this truly lucid confrontation WITH their life as it is. 

There’s the strategy of not really doing much of ANYTHING in your life…so that at LEAST if you’re not DOING anything, you’re not doing much that could be considered BAD by people that could JUDGE you for it. 

But of course this whole STRATEGY… is CENTERED on the idea that by just not doing bad THINGS…you somehow DEFAULT into being a GOOD person. As we know: not the CASE for Camus. This is a very life-denying way of MOSTLY, avoiding judgement and the discomfort of facing yourself. 

We also see the common strategy of surrounding yourself ONLY with people who agree with you on everything…OR people where you all ENABLE each other’s behavior all the time…and thus never judge each other for anything. These people’ll say things like: these are all the COOLEST people I know, people who REALLY love me… because they never tell me things that would make me have to confront my own limitations as a person.

You know Camus said at one point…that he WROTE this book The Fall, in PART as an ENDICTMENT on his generation and the strategies they were USING. 

But an important DETAIL about Camus to recognize is that… he also brought a good amount of COMPASSION to people who were ACTING in these ways IN the modern world…because he understood: its not like people who are USING these sorts of strategies are doing it in a vacuum. 

He thought there was something about modern life that we need to understand…that LEADS people TO these sorts of strategies in the FIRST place…and that maybe COMPASSION he thinks…is the ONLY lucid response we have…that makes sense in a world that’s FILLED with guilt and judgment like this. 

We’ll talk a lot more about this point here in a few minutes. 

But FIRST I think we need to talk about that modern condition… that LEADS to this whole situation we’re talking about. 

And for Camus…there are FEW voices better in the history of literature… at depicting what it’s like to BE a modern person…than what you’ll find in the work of the author Franz Kafka. 

Camus writes an appendix to the Myth of Sisyphus early in his career…where he lays out most of the reason why Kafka was so inspiring to him when he was writing his work. 

That said for whatever it’s worth… he ALSO lays out… some of the big things he DISAGREES with Kafka on that make them very different in terms of what they were going for as artists. 

We’ll talk about ALL of it…but, maybe the FIRST thing to do when introducing Kafka here on this show…is just to PLACE his work in the context of some recent episodes we’ve done. 

Kafka, is someone who’s inspired by Dostoevsky, LOVED his writing, where he’s living almost a full generation AFTER he did his work…but then KAFKA… is doing HIS work, almost a full generation before Camus, who would then go on to be INSPIRED by the work of Kafka when he writes his first book The Stranger. So in terms of the time period here, if it’s helpful to you… you can kind of think of Kafka as a bridge BETWEEN the work of Dostoevsky and Camus. The similarities and differences BETWEEN them… can be useful for understanding their respective projects. 

But it’s ALSO important to start by saying what Kafka is NOT. Because Kafka, LIKE Camus, is ALSO a person who’s more of an ARTIST… than he is a philosopher. 

It would be MISLEADING to call Kafka a philosopher. 

His writing… is NOT meant to be a philosophical SYSTEM that he’s developing. It’s not meant to PRESCRIBE a WORLDVIEW to people. But it ABSOLUTELY…IS intended to get people to see their reality DIFFERENTLY on the other side of having read it. And for whatever it’s worth: in the history of the WORLD… I can’t think of many other NON-philosophers… that have been MORE inspiring to PHILOSOPHERS in their work than… Franz Kafka. 

I mean the list is pretty short. There’s one author that compares the impact that Kafka has had on modern thought…to the impact that Shakespeare or Dante had during THEIR times.

Because the LIST of philosophers that he INSPIRED with these images he paints in his books…is incredible. And there’s DOZENS of COMPLETELY different interpretations that his work has PRODUCED when inspiring them. 

This is why if you wanted a comparison from ME…of who Kafka most resembles from the world of philosophy…I might compare Kafka…to someone like Zeno from ancient Greece. 

See, Zeno was someone way back then that was famous for his paradoxes. The paradox of the runner… that can never reach the finish line if they always have to travel half the distance. How  is that possible? There’s the paradox of the arrow… that seems to prove when Zeno explains it that motion must be an illusion– our senses must be tricking us somehow.

These are powerful, IMAGES that Zeno created during his time… that point out something important about the limitations of the ways we rationally try to make SENSE of our world. And while Zeno…as far as we know never tried to create any philosophical system…these images, inspired COUNTLESS philosophers that came AFTER him that dedicated their work to examining WHAT these paradoxes could MEAN. 

What I mean is: Zeno…NO doubt helped MOVE philosophy forward indirectly…and well: this is how I think of Kafka’s place in modernity as well. 

So what this MEANS is: one thing to KNOW about Kafka: is that if anybody ever tells you they read Kafka one weekend and they’re…PRETTY sure they know exactly what he was trying to say in his books– don’t believe their lies. This is someone that has clearly not ENGAGED enough with him… to SEE how deep his work really goes. 

Now we’re talking about ONE, interpretation of his work today…and that is again the reading that Camus writes about at the end of Myth of Sisyphus. You know, he once said that the GENIUS of Kafka…if you had to break it down…is that the way he writes FORCES you to READ him…but then it forces you to REREAD him and get another interpretation. And then to reread him AGAIN each time potentially creating an entirely NEW insight about your world than you got before. 

He thinks his work DOES this…because of a very deliberate STYLE that Kafka had…and it’s a combination of TWO different things: ONE: the density of the symbolism that goes ON in his books…and two: the fact his writing is ALWAYS designed… to keep the person that’s READING it…a bit CONFUSED all the time. Like have you ever heard people use the term Kafkaesque?

Let’s just give an example of his work. 

One of Kafka’s most FAMOUS books…is called The Trial. And the book STARTS… by IMMEDIATELY DUMPING the reader IN to one of these classic, Kafkaesque situations we’re talking about. 

The main character of the story, Joseph K., or just K as they call him throughout the rest of the book: he wakes up in his bed, wipes the sleep out of his eyes and instantly REALIZES…that he’s under arrest. 

Two men in suits, that claim to be public officials, are sitting in the next room drinking coffee, eating food… and they TELL Joseph K that while he’s technically under arrest…there’s really no need for them to detain him in this moment, not like he’s gonna get very far even if he TRIES to run. 

So when Joseph, naturally, asks them what he’s under arrest for…the two of them say: don’t know. Not really our JOB to explain all that to you. Look OUR job’s just to arrest you. You’ll find out all that information soon enough, don’t worry. 

When he starts to complain a bit more… the two of them start to make him feel stupid for even asking…they make him feel BAD for complaining to THEM. Why you making OUR jobs more difficult?

So Joseph eventually ACCEPTS the situation… and just paces around in his room until he’s told there’s gonna be some kind of weird initial HEARING for the arrest…IN the front room of this HOUSE he’s staying in. 

The guy leading the hearing shows up, neighbors and people passing by come into the front room to WATCH the hearing…the guy casually pulls up an end table and a chair as some kind of a makeshift DESK that he’s sitting at where he’s judging him…the guy starts smoking in the front room, casually…talking to Joseph like all this is very normal. He tells him he’s under arrest, that he’ll face trial at a later date, he doesn’t tell him when or where that IS, but that obviously he can keep going to work in the MEAN time…after all he’s just under ARREST here, that doesn’t mean to stop going to WORK. 

Fast forward to him showing up to the attic of an apartment building for his court date, you know the one they didn’t give him a time and place for…and the first thing they say to him when he gets there is good, you’re here, finally! You’re an hour and a half LATE!

Now this is just ONE example, of DOZENS of these slightly confusing, strings of events that Kafka writes into his work. 

And by the way don’t get me started on some of the more BIZZARE examples you’ll find in this book The Trial…

There’s one point in the book Joseph K opens up a random closet…and INSIDE of the closet are the two guards from the beginning of the book that arrested him…and they both have their shirts off, they’re down on their knees getting whipped by a guy wearing an all black suit. 

Now if that sounds like a Saturday afternoon for you…how bout THIS one: later on in the book when he’s visiting his lawyer…he goes behind a random CURTAIN this time… and he’s all of a sudden transported into a room where there’s an endless row of legal clerks that are all working on a bunch of files. Like they branch out into ALL directions. He literally can’t see the end of them. The room itself that he’s in is very hot, it’s filled with smoke, and all these legal clerks are very sick, coughing sweating, slowly dying from all the heat and smoke from the coals that are burning in the room. 

This is a scene that just HAPPENS in the middle of the book with no explanation.   

So all this is very weird if you compare it to a traditional story. Why would Kafka DO this sort of thing? Why write a book where the reader is made to feel a bit CONFUSED all the time? 

Camus is going to say that if you want to understand Kafka…pay LESS attention to the specific stuff that he’s writing about…and MORE attention to the way he makes the reader FEEL.

Because the WAY you feel when you read a Kafka novel to Camus…IS the way you feel sometimes… when you confront the ABSURDITY of the universe, head on. 

Think about it: when the main character K wakes UP in the story and he REALIZES that he’s under arrest. There’s SOME stuff about that scenario that looks like situations you’ve seen in your life before. 

And if you were READING the novel like you read all OTHER novels: following a typical PLOT arc, looking for things to make SENSE, if you DID that…then every so often when you’re READING Kafka… you’re going to be blindsided by something that’s NOTHING like what you expected to happen. 

Well SIMILARLY…if we go throughout our LIVES to Camus…you know constantly expecting the world to conform to some narrative, or some set of abstractions…in other words: if we IDEALIZE or DEMONIZE people and things around us as though the world is EVER gonna be that SIMPLE…well we’re SIMILARLY…going to be HIT with moments…where the LIMITS of the ways we’re SIMPLIFYING things becomes OBVIOUS to us. 

A close relationship ends…we have a HEALTH scare…maybe the thing we believed in the MOST… turns out to be NOTHING like the thing what we THOUGHT it was. 

To Camus…Kafka is a GENIUS…at PUTTING people in this headspace. 

Both to BE a human being that FACES the absurdity of the world…AND to be reading a Kafka novel…the experience of BOTH of these is to be HIT with moments that EXCEED our rational expectations of them…it is to face moments sometimes that feel like a nightmare, like something out of a bad dream…it’s to march forward throughout the whole process SCREAMING at the TOP of your LUNGS searching for some MEANING that’s going to make it all make sense…only to be met with an obvious SILENCE… as we continue to turn the pages. 

To Camus: Kafka captures the ESSENCE of what it is to BE an honest PERSON in the modern world. He just PUTS it in the dramatized form that seems RIDICULOUS to most people…but here’s the thing: it’s not REALLY any more ridiculous than our world…it’s just DIFFERENT than the world that MOST of us have found a way to normalize or escape from all the time. 

Camus would want us to notice how the PROTAGONISTS in many of Kafka’s novels…just AGREEABLY go ALONG with the ABSURDITY of the world they’re IN. Much like WE do. 

I mean sure, the character K from the book INITIALLY asks why he’s being arrested. But look it doesn’t take MUCH…for him to forfeit ANY kind of FREEDOM he might otherwise HAVE…to the set of PROCEDURES that he FINDS himself living in the middle of. 

He LIVES in a state of guilt…ACCUSED of something, not really sure of what. And his SOLUTION…is to just OUTSOURCE his DECISION making about what to do next, to outsource his MORALITY…to the officials that always tell him the next place to be, the next thing to do and the next way he needs to be thinking. 

Camus thinks this is the FATE…of MANY people that are living in the modern world. Because substitute the COURT system in this story…for something like a modern day political party, or a CAUSE…and you essentially have the LIFE of how MANY people frame their whole place in the universe. 

They don’t know what to THINK…until the officials TELL them what to think. Moments that seem like something out of a NIGHTMARE happen RIGHT in front of them…they’re confused for a second…but ONLY until they can get to the officials who tell them, don’t worry all this is very normal. This is all part of the plan. 

To Camus: to outsource your morality and your knowledge… to some set of faceless bureaucrats with a clear agenda…this is a recipe for living a life where there IS no FREEDOM for you really anymore…there’s just compliance to a set of procedures everyday– LIKE Joseph K. in the book. 

Decision making becomes just following the next procedure. 

Procedures you either FOLLOW… and then get a nice pat on the head for following them that day. Or you can deviate from them… and you’ll very quickly realize how much CONTROL these people have over your thinking. Camus calls this move at one point something that happens to people when they: “Embrace the God that consumes them”. And the thinking is: whether its a political party, or a philosophy or even an actual GOD…when it comes to these things that allow us to continue to live without facing our existence head on…better to embrace a God that CONSUMES you for some people…than to live in a state of true lucid revolt. 

One of my personal favorite LINES Camus ever wrote that’s around this same subject… is something he says in a famous speech he gives after WW2 called The Crisis of Man. 

Some context…again this is after WW2…and he’s trying to call for his generation to take responsibility for not only what happened during that whole situation…but for rebuilding the way that we think moving FORWARD so that stuff like this doesn’t happen again. 

Now of course WE know at this point in the series where he’s coming from with his whole project…you know finding an alternative to system building has ALWAYS been a huge part of him. 

And one GIANT area that he thought was OVERINFLATED during this time… is how people in the modern world typically view POLITICS. Which was for him: at least ONE small part of the rise of people like Hitler and Stalin.

He says in the speech if he had to give a piece of advice to his generation…he says he understands WHY politics is so inflated in people’s lives, and maybe you could make a case that it’s still necessary. 

But as SOON as we can he says: we need to bring the role of politics…back down to it’s proper size. He says quote, and this is one of my favorite lines by him: “Politics should do our housekeeping. It shouldn’t settle our domestic disputes.” 

And what he MEANS is: politics, throughout history, generally has been about certain things…about collecting taxes, building roads, maintaining the order of things. It’s about doing the sort of BACKGROUND stuff…that then allows for the actual PEOPLE… to go about living their lives, CREATING what the society is that they live in. 

But in TODAY’S world it’s different…today politics gives you an entire WORLDVIEW. Politics gives you a theory of LOVE he says, it gives you the way you think people should be living their lives, what freedoms you think people should be having, it gives you a picture of what you should think JUSTICE should be. 

But this is not TRADITIONALLY something that went on in the realm of POLITICS…in the past this has been done when people have their conversations: whether philosophical, religious, when people come together to DISCUSS the world they live in. 

But WHEN these things get wrapped up under the banner of POLITICS…well the WHOLE thing INVITES people to make their positions on these things antagonistic to each other. Every conversation…foreshadows some distant November off into the future…where these ideas are going to go to BATTLE against each other in the giant SUPERBOWL of POLITICS. 

Where your worldview… is not just a disagreement we have…where if you disagree with me I might be grateful that you help me develop my position like it would work in philosophy…no in POLITICS…now you are my political ENEMY, you’re destroying the WORLD I want my KIDS to live in, in a binary competition where EVERYONE in it has to pick one side or the other. 

Our conversations always existing under the banner of politics…ALLOWS people to get away with bad philosophy. 

And you can SEE this in who’s the most SUCCESSFUL in political conversations: it’s NOT people actually trying to understand the world better…it’s the people best at rhetoric…the people who are best at STEELMANNING their own side ignoring the limitations of it, and then framing the other side in the worst way they possibly can. And for Camus: when you apply this at SCALE…when this becomes a LANE that modern people can use to AVOID the existential tensions they’d otherwise have to be navigating…well you can imagine why he thinks the PROTAGONIST of a KAFKA novel, OUTSOURCING themselves to a set of faceless bureaucrats…how that reflects something IMPORTANT… about the CONDITION that a modern person finds themselves born into.

But here’s the thing: if everything we’ve just SAID here today about living in the modern world is TRUE…then does it REALLY make much sense to be ANGRY…at any of the people that TAKE one of these offramps as a way to get AWAY from it?

I mean look, Camus might say: AS modern people…we are not BORN into the mediterranean sun that he talks about so much in his work. This life of immanence and affirmation about things that he’s been signing the praises of…yeah this is NOT where most of us get STARTED in our lives. 

WE live in a world generally…that is completely DOMINATED…by rational abstractions, transcendence and ego. Those are basically your CHOICES… if you want to worship at the ALTAR of something. 

And if someone BORN today…when they HAVE that rare moment of lucidity, and they find themselves living in a world that feels like they’re in a Kafka novel…can you really BLAME people…for wanting to ESCAPE that somehow? I mean rather than think of these people as lazy, or stupid, or EVIL…maybe the BETTER way to think of them might be DESPERATE. Desperately born into a Kafka novel…that they will do ANYTHING to find a way OUT of. 

And this is where COMPASSION… is going to become such an important piece of what Camus was going for in his book The Fall. 

Because if you remember in The Plague when we talked about solidarity. How REAL solidarity with those around us…is only a response that starts to make sense…when you consider the common existential condition that we SHARE with other people.

Well in the same way, in the Fall…THIS book is Camus saying… that we’re all SIMILARLY…capable of making big mistakes, capable of judging and being judged, and capable of losing SIGHT of the fact that this is PART of the kinds of creatures that we ARE. 

Clamence as a character…MAY BE one of these modern people, trapped in a cycle of rationalizing their own behavior, ALL to avoid the difficult task of facing himself head on. 

But to Camus, a VERY important response when we are affirming our reality fully…is going to be COMPASSION for people like Clamence… who are IN a similar state of affairs as WE are. That maybe compassion is the equivalent of solidarity…AT the level of guilt and judgment. 

Now…Camus has a lot of LOVE for Kafka, no doubt. But he ALSO disagrees with him. 

His DISAGREEMENT with him…is that Kafka didn’t take the absurdity of the universe as seriously as he COULD have…because when Kafka writes his books…he ALWAYS leaves room for some kind of HOPE that can rescue the protagonist at the end.

He says you can see this in his book the Trial…where he has PRIESTS that come and TALK to Joseph K when he’s about to be put to death…telling him there’s this slight HOPE out there, that there’ll be some kind of acquittal for him that comes in at the last second. 

He says you can see this in ANOTHER book he wrote called The Castle, we’ll talk about next time…where there’s always this mysterious voice, that beckons and CALLS to the main character, trying to always get him to COME to the castle that’s going to save him. Again a kind of HOPE…that he leaves in there for people caught IN this absurd world. 

Now the FIRST thing to say probably…is that Camus has a certain level of RESPECT for this hope left in there by Kafka…CERTAINLY far more respect than he has for MOST of the hope that’s been pedaled in fiction throughout HISTORY. I mean MOST writers may as well send Santa Claus down on a golden chariot the way they’re idealizing the world. (Second santa reference.)

Anyway that’s not the kind of hope Kafka’s offering. In Kafka’s books…the people never actually GET the thing that they’re HOPING for…and this is a KEY DETAIL to understanding him for Camus.

Kafka has a line at one point where he says, oh don’t worry…there’s PLENTY of hope out there…just not for any of US. Camus LOVED this line and it’s why he would eventually CALL this kind of hope that he writes INTO his books: “hope in a strange form”. 

It’s hope in a strange form from Kafka…because it ALWAYS lies outside… of what WE as human beings…could ever actually have access to. It’s a kind of hope… that exists in a domain that is CONSTANTLY being deferred… or inaccessible to our lived experience. 

Like have you ever been in a place in life where you’re COMPLETELY nihilistic, NO hope whatsoever for anything beyond or any sort of meaning to ANYTHING you ever do…and then have you ever gone through SOME kind of mind-altering experience, whatever it is…where for a minute… you GENUINELY get the feeling like you’re CONNECTED to something that’s LARGER than you… and it MAKES total SENSE to you in that rare moment that you’re a PART of it? 

Okay, but LATER…when you’re BACK in your normal life, just doing routine day to day things…you may FEEL like you’re pretty much the same person…but now since you’ve had that experience…there’s this kind of GLIMMER, that exists there in your thoughts now that you didn’t HAVE before. 

It’s not that you feel like you’ve ACCESSED something or like SPOKEN to GOD…but then there’s also the possibility that: maybe you just DID. I mean what WAS that I just experienced…and aren’t I ultimately just a bipedal primate walking around on this planet anyway? Wouldn’t there BE…limitations to what I can possibly have access to? For some people even just having this GLIMMER of hope…can be WORLDSHIFTING for them. From Camus’ reading of Kafka…this is something that HE understood quite deeply. 

See this is why Camus can have this kind of respect for this hope that Kafka leaves in. To even GET… to this GLIMMER OF HOPE that Kafka leaves ROOM for…he had to take you through a labyrinth of absurdity and COMPLETELY OBLITERATE, all OTHER forms of hope from history that so many people get TRAPPED in. 

He has RESPECT for this but still… for Camus: even this small glimmer of existential hope…is something that STILL is going to be a bit too much for him when it comes to how he wants to write HIS work. Remember at the beginning of this series we said that Camus said he wanted to imagine what it would be like…to live without HOPE. Well THIS…is the context that line makes SENSE in. No matter HOW small…no matter HOW inaccessible…Camus wants to affirm EVERYTHING he thinks we can know about the world…and that doesn’t include a mysterious HOPE that we REALLY have no reason to be believing in. 

As well INTENTIONED as this may BE from Kafka…to Camus…this is is STILL a hope that he thinks “traps people in an infinite search for grace”. They cling ON to that hope…and it PREVENTS them from facing exile– or once again: “Embracing the God that consumes them”. 

But here’s the question to ask about this that you’re probably already thinking right now: which one of these two options…is TRULY accepting the limitations we have as beings? Is it to accept the total SILENCE of the universe and the limitations of meaning? Or is it to accept the limitations of my own phenomenological experience…and the possibilities that may lie BEYOND it, that I may catch glimpses of in strange moments?

Anyway…as I’ve been talking about this whole series…Camus often thought of his work as being divided into five different cycles or series. 

And as I alluded to towards the beginning of this it’s kind of fun to speculate…about what he was planning to write about in cycle five of his work… things that we really have very little information about, only the TITLES of the books written in margin notes. 

As I said: one of the essays was going to be called Creation Corrected. Another book he planned on was going to be called The System. 

And knowing as much as we DO now about Camus…it’s interesting WHAT could these titles have meant? BOTH of them… share of sense of IRONY to what he was going for in the rest of his project…though to be fair: both the rebel and the fall as titles would PROBABLY be kind of confusing TOO if we didn’t already know what they were about. 

Maybe ONE possibility… is that Camus would’ve went in a more… Anarchist direction later in life…. though obviously not GROUNDING any of this “system” in the RIGHTS that people have to self-organization. Obviously he’s not into RIGHTS…but maybe self-organization…would’ve been just ANOTHER one of these almost universal human tendencies we’ve been talking about…and that maybe The System, or creation being corrected, is just the way this blossoms out of a society that lucidly confronts reality and the people around them. It’s ONE possibility, right?

And if this was right wouldn’t this have ALSO served…as a pretty great culmination to his whole project of finding a way to LIVE that isn’t constantly mediated by abstractions. Wouldn’t whatever this “system” looks like…HAVE to at least RESEMBLE the sort of Mediterranean lifestyle he’s alluded to with the sun all throughout his work? 

Wouldn’t he have given us a WAY there at the end of his career…a way to LIVE among each other…in a way that doesn’t RELY on abstractions about the world as much as our current societies do. 

And I guess wouldn’t it be destined to sit for a while on a bookshelf, like anarchism often gets treated… as something that yeah, sounds great…but that could NEVER work now…people have to CHANGE into the kinds of people that could IMPLEMENT a system like that. 

Well it’s ONE theory. But seriously if you’ve made it this far into the series, you’ve done the work and I’m genuinely curious what YOU think these coulda meant. And it PAINS me…that this sounds like let me know what you think about bananas down in the comments…but seriously if you have a theory I’d love to hear it. Let me know if you get a chance this week.

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Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.