Albert Camus Radio (Eric Berg, Ph.D.)

A book review of the graphic novel version of Camus' The First Man. A look at the text and the visual images created by the artist Jacques Ferrandez. It is a short episode so you can tune in when you have limited time to listen.

Enjoy and keep reading Camus. 

In this episode I take up a very interesting work, Camus' American Journals. In 1946 Camus traveled to North America (primarily New York City) and in 1949 he traveled to South America.  In this episode I will take a look at the context and content of the journals. He makes many very interesting observations about his time in the United States and South America weaving a narrative that is worth reading. 

Also available as a video on Albert Camus Radio the blog. 

Enjoy!

Episode #6 covers Camus' extraordinary text The Myth of Sisyphus.  In this podcast I will cover the context of the text and focus specifically on the philosophical arguments and themes that Camus wishes to explore.  This podcast accidentally ran a bit longer (25 minutes)  than the others but I really go on a roll with some of points I wised to cover.

Enjoy! 

A fantastic episode. An interview with one of my last MacMurray College students. Brock independently took up the study of Camus with me reading almost everything available in English . Enjoy this fresh perspective on Camus!

A very short answer to a very important question. Why pick this podcast out of many others? Why read Camus? 

In this episode Dr. Simon Lea gives us a fascinating look into not only the idea of myth philosophically and in Camus' works specifically, he makes several groundbreaking connections to Nietzsche. Enjoy!

In this episode I review an adaptation of Camus' The Stranger in to a graphic novel form.  In 2013 The Stranger was made into a beautiful work illustrated by Jaques Ferrandez and translated by the talented Sandra Smith. 

Part 2 of the fascinating interview with Simon Lea of London. Settle in and take your time listening to this one! We cover much fertile ground in this one linking Camus to artistic movements and his intellectual heritage.  I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did live.

In this address Dr. Eric Berg presents a challenging reading of the often-venerated Dr. Rieux of The Plague. Dr. Berg makes the case that we should morally and professionally re-evaluate Dr. Rieux in light of his findings. This address and following publication in The Journal of Camus Studies should stimulate our conventional view of Dr. RIeux.

Enjoy!

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

A look at what I consider Camus' most challenging work, The Rebel. A book-length philosophical essay that looks at the origin of rebellion and revolt and considers why it is a part of human nature. A sweeping tour of the history and causes of revolt.  Enjoy a bit about "A human in revolt" or The Rebel. 

Episode #4 covers four plays written by Camus over his lifetime. Plays are a very important part of Camus' body of work as they are his first creative outlet and where he went to feel free to create and make a point. Most of his novels contain elements of the theater like blocking, acts, and character development.  These four plays are still performed today and are a great read. One can learn much about Camus' work by reading and understanding these plays. This podcast is available as a video segment at the Albert Camus Radio blog. Enjoy! 

Here we have the first in a series of episodes from the annual meeting of the Albert Camus Society. These addresses took place in November of 2023 in Krakow Poland.

In this episode you will hear a world class expert on Camus make some interesting and innovative connections between Albert Camus and James Baldwin.

Enjoy.

In this episode you will find a fascinating conversation with Dr. Gordon Marino on Camus using my "20 Questions" format.  I am confident you will find Dr. Marino deeply engaging, lucid, insightful, and a very enjoyable conversationalist.

Dr. Marino earned his Ph.D., from the University of Chicago, M.A. University of Pennsylvania, and his B.A. from Columbia University.

His areas of specialization include History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Kierkegaard and clearly, a deep knowledge and understanding of Camus.

Professor Marino is the author of Kierkegaard in the Present Age and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard. His articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, American Poetry Review, and many other periodicals.

His most recent book is The Existentialist's Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age.

Dr. Marino is also the Curator of the Hong Kierkegaard Library, an incredible treasure that generations of scholars have benefited from over the years, including the author of this blog.

Enjoy this "20 Questions on Camus" interview:

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! 

Enjoy this question and answer session with one of the premier Camus scholars in the world, Dr. Peter Francev. 

Dr. Francev is the Chair of the English Department at Victor Valley College in California. Professor Francev holds an M.A in Philosophy from University College, Dublin, an M.A in English from California State University Polytechnic University, Pomona and his Ph.D. was granted in English from The University of Leicester. Dr. Francev has published multiple articles on Camus and he is the editor of two landmark text on Camus.

In this interview we discuss Camus's works and Camus as a person. Dr. Francev makes a number of very interesting observations and illuminates several aspects of Camus authorship that brings a new energy to his work. Take the time to learn from this distinguished scholar, and you can do it from your own home! Or while, driving across the country on a road trip! 

Simon Lea founded the Albert Camus Society and is the president of the United Kingdom group. He has consulted for a London production of the Camus play Cross-purposes, is the author of many stunning and ground-breaking articles on Camus, and is working on a Beginners Guide to Albert Camus as part of a series of Beginners Guides produced by a U.K. publisher.

Please set aside some time to listen to and enjoy this wide-ranging and highly informative part 1 of 2 episodes featuring Simon Lea. 

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

The first installment covering the works of Albert Camus. In this podcast I will give a very short (16 minutes) introduction to Camus' novel The Plague. 

I will offer some insight into the construction, context, and background of the text. Some listeners prefer to read the book first then listen, others use these podcasts and videos as an entry point to the text. You can see a video version of this talk by "clicking"  here: Albert Camus Radio blog.  

Enjoy the blog and these podcasts and please look for others podcasts covering all the work by Camus, a series of interviews with prominent Camus scholars from around the world, and podcasts on secondary sources about Camus. 

I wish you well,

Dr. Eric Berg

Professor James Woelfel received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of St. Andrews, became a member of the University of Kansas faculty in 1966, and served as Director of Humanities & Western Civilization from 1985 until July 2010.

His teaching and research have been primarily 19th and 20th century European philosophical and religious thought.  Among the books he has authored are Bonhoeffer’s Theology, Borderland Christianity, Albert Camus on the Sacred and the Secular, Portraits in Victorian Religious Thought, The Existentialist Legacy and Other Essays on Philosophy and Religion, and is an editor of Patterns in Western Civilization fourth edition.

Professor Woelfel was a 1997 recipient of the Kansas Humanities Council’s Silver Anniversary Public Scholar Award, and in 1998 received a Kemper Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching. He retired from KU in May 2015.

In this interview, I ask Dr. Woelfel 20 questions about Albert Camus. Enjoy this engaging interview with Dr Woelfel, my dissertation advisor!

In this episode I review the December 2022 publication of States of Plague: Reading Camus in a Pandemic by Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris, published by The University of Chicago Press. 

Enjoy!

In this episode of Albert Camus Radio I interview Dr. Kim Baltzer-Jaray, A noted and well published expert on Camus and award winning teacher who is a faculty member at Kings University Ontario, Canada. In this episode we chat about Camus' aspirations, his limitations, his best and worst work and art! The video of this interview is available on the blog: Albert Camus Radio. Enjoy the opportunity to hear from a deeply engaging and accomplished scholar on Camus.  

George Heffernan Professor of Philosophy at Merrimack College, he earned his B.A. and M.A. from The Catholic University of America and his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne, Germany. He also holds the highest degree in the German Language awarded by the Goethe Institute of Munich as well as the diploma of a State-Certified Translator and Interpreter for the German Language granted by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Bonn.

Enjoy this lively and engaging scholar of the very first order. Professor Heffernan has presented many papers on Camus and has been the skillful author of several articles on Camus that have shaped the way we think about Camus. especially: “‘Rien, rien n’avait d’importance et je savais bien pourquoi’ (‘Nothing, nothing mattered, and I well knew why’): The World According to Meursault—or A Critical Attempt to Understand the Absurdist Philosophy of the Protagonist of Albert Camus’s The Stranger”, Journal of Camus Studies 2 (2012), 221–259

A bit of a longer podcast at 1.37 but well worth your time. 

Enjoy this wonderful conversation about Camus. 

A review of a book that is very hard to find: Albert Camus and the Men of Stone from 1971. It is a series of illuminating interviews of men who worked with Camus as coy editors, editors, printers, and typesetters.

Enjoy! 

Here I chat briefly about the upcoming fourth season of Albert Camus Radio, review the 2023 meeting of the Albert Camus Society, and preview the 2024 meeting taking place in London in mid-November.

Dr Maciej Kałuża, in addition to a dear friend and a very gracious host, is the author of two books about Camus's notions of the absurd and revolt, editor for two collected volumes on Camus's philosophy. Founder of Polish Albert Camus society. During his research grants, he visited Albert Camus archives in France and studied unpublished works of Camus. He is currently working on a collection of philosophical essays, revolving around Camus's last published novel, "The Fall", and on a book on the concept of violence in French postwar philosophy. He loves cats, but, because life is actually quite absurd, he is allergic to cats.

Enjoy this engaging episode. 

A review by Dr. Berg of a new (2022) important book for the English reading audience. 34 lectures and speeches written by Camus on many important topics.

Enjoy! 

Greetings,

A very short introduction about these podcasts and a bit about me.

Enjoy.

Peter Francev: ‘Gushing Over Nature, or Janine’s Sexual Exhibitionism’

Abstract: For the past few years, I have been interested in the topic of Albert Camus and empathy and, rightfully so, as I am currently writing a monograph on the subject, it makes sense that I would be interested in such a subject. However, for as long as I have been formally and informally studying Camus (which is surpassing 25 years), I have always been plagued (no pun intended) by the seemingly hard-lined interpretation that the protagonist of one of Camus’s most recognizable short stories ‘The Adulterous Woman’, Janine has been largely contextualized as an unhappily married woman to her husband Marcel and has an ‘affair’ of sorts that is anything but sexual. In this paper, I plan to quickly examine what previous scholars have said about Janine, her mental state of mind and her supposedly adulterous actions, before I offer what seems to me a rather conventional and entirely plausible reading and interpretation of the short story, including Janine’s indeed adulterous actions. And this is not to say that Janine cannot be linked to previous Camusian characters who are both female and aware of their sexuality, namely Marie from The Stranger.

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! 

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 

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! 

Episode #2 on Camus' first novel The Stranger. Arguably Camus most famous work and a landmark of Western literature.  In this episode I will take a look at the construction, background, context, and themes presented in The Stranger.  All of these podcasts are supported by the blog Albert Camus Radio and a video version is available on that blog.  Enjoy!

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. 

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. 

Albert Camus, Edith Stein, and the Problem of Empathy in The Plague

Abstract: Whilst there is no mention of the phenomenology or ethics of Edith Stein (1891-1942) in the fiction and non-fiction of Albert Camus (1913-1960), 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 (1905-1980) or Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), 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 historical introduction to 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 analysis of Stein’s concept of empathy, from a phenomenological perspective, in Camus’s novel The Plague[2]. To say that 2020 has been an ‘uneventful’ year is a gross understatement. Clearly, the Covid-19 pandemic affected us in ways which we could have never imagined. One benefit of the pandemic, as you are probably aware, is, once again, the intense interest in The Plague[3]. As I plan to illustrate, the novel contains six major and minor characters (Dr. Rieux, Paneloux, Tarrou, Rambert, Grand, and Cottard) from which Camus utilizes in order to demonstrate an individual’s interaction with empathy in the midst of an epidemic; however, I would like to first look at Stein in order to provide the framework for the novel’s analysis.

[1] Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. Translated by Waltraut Stein (Springer: The Hague, 1964).

[2] Albert Camus, The Plague. Translated by Stuart Gilbert (Vintage: New York, 1948).

[3] According to the NY Times, The Plague has seen a resurgence on the best seller list. In addition to Vintage having an extremely difficult time keeping the novel in stock, Camus scholars Dr. Robert Zaretsky and Dr. Peter Francev were interviewed by National Public Radio’s Salt Lake City affiliate regarding Camus’s life and the significance of The Plague, respectively.

The tables are turned with the 20 Questions format!  I have been put on the spot and asked 20 questions about Camus by Dr. Peter Francev.  Enjoy this talk as I enjoyed having this conversation. 

In this episode I have uploaded my presentation to the Albert Camus Society annual meeting held on-line on October 23, 2020. 

Title: Four Character Studies from The Plague and Their American Counterparts During COVID-19

In this paper I will take a close look at four characters in Camus’ The Plague and situate them in the current (2020) American landscape while suffering under COVID-19. I will illuminate Father Panloux in relation to American Christian response to COVID, particularly the Baptist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Dr. Rieux and the American medical community paying special attention to the CDC; Cottard as the American radical right; and Rambert and the American press with attention given to the idea of “fake news” and social media. As a bonus, I will identify Dr. Castel and, although difficult, locate the American President Donald Trump in the text.  I will use a descriptive tool from Simone Weil known as decreation to help illuminate the normative aspects of this comparison.

Episode #5 is on Camus' last published novel, published after his death in 1994 in French and 1996 in English. Part of a proposed trilogy on his life this unedited novel gives the reader a deep insight into his early life as Camus constructs it through this narrative. Take care when reading this one as it as not approved for publication by Camus, it was very close to getting final approval, but respect the authors work and place an asterisk next to this one. 

A book review of Kamel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation. Published in 2013 in French and 2015 in English, The Meursault Investigation is a fascinating novel based on Camus' The Stranger.  Please turn the volume up a bit on this one. 

Enjoy! 

Luke Richardson completed a PhD titled ‘Camus the Athenian – Identity and Antiquity in the Literature of Albert Camus’ in 2014 at University College London where his supervisors were Miriam Leonard and Azzedine Haddour. He has written and published on Camus in the Cambridge 'Classical Receptions Journal' and the 'Journal of Camus' studies, as well as a chapter in the 2020 Brill 'Companion to Camus.' He taught in the humanities faculty at University College London between 2012 and 2016. He has been a member of the Camus Society since 2011.

Enjoy this engaging interview with a real rising star in Camus studies. 

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.

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. 

In this episode we have for you the President of the Polish Camus Society Maciej Kaluza's presentation to The Albert Camus Society in 2020. In this presentation we explore the issue of political violence and Camus. Enjoy!

It is in English

Episode #3 of Albert Camus Radio.  Camus' last finished novel and possibly his most intriguing. I this episode I will unpack this complex work and look at what drove Camus to write this book, the style he used, influences, and the themes he is working with.  The Fall is a very rewarding book and I hope this episode can help guide you through this work. Enjoy!