Camus and COVID-19

What can Camus teach us about facing the pandemic?

Note: No spoilers are below!

Reposted this one from my journal-style Substack to Medium because I think it meets the quality bar.

The Plague, set in the 1940s, is the (fictitious) story of the city of Oran during an outbreak of bubonic plague. The story is stitched together by a mysterious narrator based on his personal experience, as well as journals and anecdotes from those around him. The plot, as is typical in Albert Camus’ writing, serves to point out the contradictory actions humans take as we struggle to create meaning in a world that is out of our control.

Camus did not consider himself a philosopher, due to his skepticism of systematic thought. In this sense, he can almost be seen as being early to postmodernism. Instead, Camus preferred the label “Artist” to “Philosopher”. I’d like to respect Camus in his refusal to be labeled a philosopher, but I can’t. Camus may not be trying to system build in the way typical philosophers do, but, through his stance on meaninglessness, Camus still gives us heuristics we can live by that are highly philosophical.

This might sound bizarre if you haven’t read Camus before. Meaninglessness might seem, by definition, the single most uninspiring conclusion one could draw from a piece of…