{"id":14805,"date":"2021-11-02T10:31:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T14:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=14805"},"modified":"2021-11-02T16:41:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T20:41:12","slug":"episode-458-robert-emmet-meagher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-458-robert-emmet-meagher","title":{"rendered":"Episode 458 – Robert Emmet Meagher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 458:
\nRobert Emmet Meagher<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_458_-_Robert_Emmet_Meagher.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

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“As I grew as a thinker, as a scholar, as a teacher, I took Camus with me, and my appreciation of him grew as I did.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With Albert Camus and the Human Crisis<\/a> (Pegasus Books), professor Robert Emmet Meagher<\/a> distills a half-century of reading and teaching Camus’ work to show us how the writer and thinker continues to resonate 60+ years after his untimely death. We get into his accidental origins with Camus and how Camus speaks to us today, the Human Crisis speech Camus gave in 1946 and how it remains relevant, why no one paid attention to Camus’ protests that he wasn’t an existentialist, Camus’ uneasy pacifism and Bob’s own antiwar activism (and how it affected his career). We also talk about why I was a dummy not to take Bob’s class on Camus when I was an undergrad at Hampshire (I did take his Sense & Spirit<\/em> class in 1992), the Camus novel Bob had to grow into, his speculation on how Camus & his writing would have developed had he not died so young, and mortality, deathfulness, & how, as Camus put it, philosophy used to teach us how to die, but now teaches us how to think. In addition to Camus, we discuss Bob’s work with veterans and healing moral injury<\/a>, why exactly Achilles in the Iliad<\/em> is “swift-footed” and the moment my mythic\/tragic view of him gets dashed on the rocks of Bob’s experience with soldiers, his draft-dodging conundrum and the deus ex machina that kept him out of Vietnam, his decision to teach & write about the subjects that interest him, rather than following academic trends, his status as a professor-in-waiting (but not retired!), how he’s been coping with the pandemic, and how this book was his melodramatic Final Class. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read Albert Camus and the Human Crisis<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“One of the remarkable things about Camus is that he wasn’t embarrassed when he changed his mind. And when he did change his mind, even over very strong public statements he had made, he would own up to it publicly. If he had embraced a position he now rejected, he wanted others to reject it too.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n