Dr. Hayden Kee on Camus' The Plague
Dr. Hayden Kee will be giving the second talk in our Philosophy Speaker Series this Friday, March 19, 3:30 to 4:30 pm, on the timely topic of: "We all have plague": The ethical and existential insights overlooked in the covid-era discussions of Camus' The Plague
The talk will be on zoom at:
Everyone is invited! We hope to see you there.
ABSTRACT: In light of the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a renewed interest in Albert Camus' novel The Plague. In the novel a plague ravages the quarantined city of Oran, Algeria. The epidemic serves as a symbol for the human condition, and the reader is invited to ask what we value, who we are, and how we should act in light of this condition. Discussions of the novel over the past year have focused on the character of Dr. Rieux. Confronted with suffering and the precarity of the human situation, Rieux tirelessly and selflessly devotes himself to combatting plague. He has been much quoted as (and much celebrated for) saying that we fight plague with decency, which for him means doing his job. And yet, what has been less quoted and celebrated is that Rieux immediately thereafter admits that he doesn't know what decency means in general. Moreover, other facts in the novel, along with a bit of philosophical good sense, give us reason to believe that "doing one's job" cannot amount to any sort of generalized ethic. To explore these issues more fully, and discover the deeper existential-ethical insights and challenges posed by the novel, we must turn away from the practical (and employed) Rieux to the more idealistic (and unemployed) Jean Tarrou. For it is Tarrou who plumbs the deeper philosophic significance of the plague symbol, and who explicitly provides a generalized answer to the question, What does it mean to be a decent human being?
Hayden Kee's research focuses on phenomenology, embodied cognitive science, and philosophy of language. In particular, he is interested in the relationship between language and more basic modes of experience, such as perception, action, and preverbal communication. He completed his doctoral studies at Fordham University in New York in February 2020. He has taught various courses at 91探花, University of Windsor, and Camosun College. In June 2021, he plans to take up a postdoctoral research position at University of Hokkaido in Japan. Outside of philosophy, Hayden enjoys cycling, yoga, guitar, and learning languages.
