Literary Philosophy #3: Albert Camus

Literary Philosophy #3: Albert Camus: Tuesday 10 November 2026, 19:00–21:00, Hovedbiblioteket, Aarhus. Admission is free.

Philosophy can be written and thought in many ways: as logical argumentation, dialogue, fragment, diary, novel, manifesto, poetry, letters, and fables. What potential do different literary forms hold, and what makes them philosophical? Are there questions, situations, or ideas that require particular literary forms to be expressed at all?

This lecture series explores four existentialist thinkers - Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, and Simone Weil - who each approach philosophy in a literary way. Each lecture is followed by a shared discussion about the thinker in question and 'literary philosophy'.

This third lecture, titled "The Literature of Existence and the Philosophy of Literature", is held by cand.mag. Luka Rudež. Albert Camus (1913-1960) is often described as both a great writer and a great philosopher - one who wrote 'philosophical' novels and developed an existential philosophy through literary essays. But why do we so often separate philosophy and literature, and what is the actual difference? The lecture examines how this distinction breaks down in Camus' thinking, and how he himself tried to avoid these markers. We look at his essays on literature's potential - which draw on literary authors rather than philosophers - and at his novels and short stories, where philosophy in the form of logical argumentation always collapses when confronted with the absurd.

Luka Rudež (cand.mag. in the history of ideas) works with humanity's relationship to the sub- and superhuman, particularly the vegetative and the celestial, and their effects in the political sphere. He is especially concerned with a combined consideration of medieval and 20th-century philosophy.

Venue: Lille sal