Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus [1942]

We take up Sisyphus' burden while our Adorno discussion leaders take a musical vacation from Zoom.

Please read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus in advance of our online session, March 27, 2022 at 2 p EDT

Here is this session's handout -thanks to Lindsie for her great work preparing these helpful slides.

From SEP:

In his book-length essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus presents a philosophy that contests philosophy itself. This essay belongs squarely in the philosophical tradition of existentialism but Camus denied being an existentialist. Both The Myth of Sisyphus and his other philosophical work, The Rebel, are systematically skeptical of conclusions about the meaning of life, yet both works assert objectively valid answers to key questions about how to live. Though Camus seemed modest when describing his intellectual ambitions, he was confident enough as a philosopher to articulate not only his own philosophy but also a critique of religion and a fundamental critique of modernity. While rejecting the very idea of a philosophical system, Camus constructed his own original edifice of ideas around the key terms of absurdity and rebellion, aiming to resolve the life-or-death issues that motivated him.

Edition, any but... (available from your library or online):
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus [1942] Translated by Justin O'Brien New York: Penguin Classics, 2000. ISBN: 9780141182001
Ebook ISBN: 9780141914176

Any attendees who have not read the text will be invited to pose questions via the Zoom Chat.

Our 2022 Schedule (subject to change):
April 10, 2022: Adorno & Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment [1947]
April 24, 2022: Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth [1961] (Grove, 2005)
May: Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1962] (Chicago, 2012)
June: Derrida, Writing and Difference [1967] (Chicago, 2017)
Rawls, A Theory of Justice [1971] (Harvard, 2020)
Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia [1974] (Basic, 2013)
Foucault, Discipline and Punish [1975] (Penguin, 2020)
MacIntyre, After Virtue [1981] (3rd Ed. Notre Dame, 2007)

Follow the link here for a draft syllabus from Columbia U for our course of study.