Albert Camus Radio

A fascinating look into how academic scholarship is advanced. This session is a recording of the question and answer session where the scholars that just presented their work to some of the top Camus scholars in the world defend their views. Enjoy! 

Whilst there is no mention of the empathy or ethics of Edith Stein in the fiction and non-fiction of Albert Camus, one can easily surmise that Camus, being a part of the Parisian café scene during the years leading up to, including and beyond the second world war, would have encountered some discussions of Stein’s thought through Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, prior to his falling out with both men. It is then the purpose of this paper to set out and accomplish several things: firstly, I would like to provide a very brief introduction to the empathy of Stein; secondly, I should like to offer readers a concise summary of Stein’s principle text on empathy (On the Problem of Empathy)1; finally, I would like to offer an exposition and an analysis of Stein’s concept of empathy, from a phenomenological perspective, whilst keeping in mind Camus’s philosophy of the absurd as posited in The Myth of Sisyphus.

Gina Breen: ‘French-Algerian Exile’Albert Camus’s L’Exil et le Royaume was Camus’s last official literary publication before his death in 1960. It is a collection of six short stories, published in 1957, seven months before he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his acceptance speech, which was misreported, Camus specifically addressed justice and the Algerian situation, by discussing the role of the writer and the importance of truth, communicating his belief that the writer has a social duty as they bear witness to history.In this paper, I will discuss three of the six short stories, namely “La Femme Adultère,” “Les Muets” and “L’Hôte” which are all set in Algeria. Written at the beginning of the armed struggle, the stories were published three years into the Algerian War. I argue that these stories demonstrate the moral dilemmas of the colonial situation, and they are vital to our understanding of Camus’s mythopoetics and the evolution of the pied-noir myth Camus first presents in L’étranger fifteen years earlier. Like Meursault, the characters in these stories suffer from estrangement. As the title suggests, Camus’s identity crisis still exists as he depicts the poverty, self-exile, exclusion, and solitude inherent in these dystopic Algerian spaces. None of the stories end with resolutions and the characters’ neutrality makes them victims of French colonialism. The stories and protagonists also mirror many of Camus’s personal confrontations because they hesitate about the future. They imply a certain degree of hopefulness, but their true feelings remain hidden

In this episode you will here the finest Camus scholars engaging each other on their current research on Camus. It is here that our understanding of Camus and his work is really pushed in new directions. This is a very exciting episode indeed! 

In this episode Tom Hammer gives his paper to the Albert Camus Society's annual conference. The paper is titled "The Formal Structure of Existential Absurdity". It is a very engaging paper and a slight, but rewarding divergence from the typical paper we hear as it has an analytic approach.Enjoy! 

In this podcast you will hear from one of the leading Camus scholars in the world. Professor Heffernan of Merrimack College has been widely published and quoted on Camus across the years. Enjoy this engaging talk on Camus and the question of Meursault's guilt in The Stranger. 

First in a series of podcasts taken directly from the action at the annual meeting of The Albert Camus Society held on-line in November, 2021. This series of podcasts will give listeners first access to the newest (yet to be published) research on Albert Camus from the top Camus scholars in the world.  The papers you hear on these podcasts will eventually appear in The Journal of Camus Studies, click HERE to go to the journal's webpage.First up - Siimon Lea of the U.K. His paper on Camus and Nietzsche and Myth is a deeply engaging tour of this under-researched area in both Camus and Nietzsche studies. You will fine Simon Lea a very engaging speaker mixing just a bit of humor with loads of top-flight scholarship. Enjoy. 

A book review of the controversial book Albert Camus and the Minister.  The question: Did Camus ask to be baptized and covert to Christianity just before his fateful car accident? All Albert Camus Radio podcasts are made possible by the generous support of Vectis Consulting.  Vectis Consulting is in the business of fighting for the long-term health of the humanities. www.vectisconsulting,org

In this episode I review Catelli's 2020 (English translation) of The Death of Camus. In this text he makes the case that Camus was killed by the KGB.Enjoy.Thank you to Vectis Consulting for sponsoring this podcast!www.vectisconsulting.org 

Professor Dan Hieber is a dear friend from The University of Kansas and a very engaging thinker and writer. His book Five Cigarettes is a marvelous read and I encourage you to check it out on Amazon.com.  In this podcast we take a tour of Camus through the eyes of an accomplished philosopher that has not spent all of his time in Camus studies. It is a remarkable conversation with fresh insights. Enjoy.