Kafka vs Camus | Paul Muldoon, Andrea Elliott and Emma Sulkowicz
50Paul Muldoon, Andrea Elliott and Emma Sulkowicz debate who got it right - Kafka or Camus.
Do we have agency?
Watch the full debate at https://iai.tv/video/kafka-vs-camus?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description
00:00 Should we follow Camus and see freedom as essential to the human condition?
06:47 Was Kafka right in recognising that we're limited by culture,
upbringing and organisation?
Camus and Kafka have both been central to 20th century writing and thought. Both wrote about the relationship of the individual to society. But they had very different visions. Camus saw the individual as having the power to change and influence society. While Kafka honed in on the limitations of the individual to change anything and the power of the state and social organisation.
Who got it right? Should we follow Camus and see freedom and the ability to change the world as essential to the human condition? Or is this an illusion, and instead recognise that we are limited by culture, upbringing, and organisation, so that there is no room left for the lone individual to alter and change the character of society or the course of their lives?
#FreeWillPhilosophyDebate #DoWeHaveAgency #AreWeFreePhilosophy
Emma Sulkowicz is a performance artist, well-known for her year-long performance art project Mattress Performance: Carry That Weight protesting having to go to school with her rapist.
Andrea Elliott is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who writes for the New York Times as an investigative reporter, and is author of ‘An Invisible Child’.
Paul Muldoon is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and has served as both Professor of Poetry at Oxford University and the poetry editor of The New Yorker.
Janne Teller hosts.
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