How can existential philosophy, especially the works of Albert Camus, help us understand how we slip from running as a life-affirming activity to running as an obsession? Professor John Kaag visited the podcast and shared some thought provoking ideas on how existentialism can inform how we live our sport-lives.
In the American Scholar, professor John Kaag writes: “If you run too little you become a walker. If you run too much, you become injured. And basically intolerable. At a certain point, going the extra mile does not make you a better athlete. It just makes you an idiot. “
The essay where this quote is from, titled “How to Live with Dying”, was the starting point of our conversation. We were connected in Twitter via @IMSporticus and I was absolutely thrilled that prof. Kaag agreed to do a Meaningful Sport episode right away. He is the author of Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are (as well as other books) and we have both explored Sils Maria and the surrounding mountains where Nietzsche had spent several summers. For our episode, however, I was curious to learn more about John’s thoughts on another existential philosopher, Albert Camus, and how his thinking can expand our ways of being and doing in the world of physical activity and distance running in particular.
And I certainly was not disappointed. In the episode, you will hear about the key ideas and passages in Camus’s thought, such as “a philosophical suicide”, “the absurd”, and “the Myth of Sisyphus”. We also discuss ageing athletes and how we encounter – rather than run away from – our finitude through our sporting practices. But, faithful to existential thought, no guidelines are offered on how to find meaning in a meaningless world. It is the dilemma we all have to sort out by ourselves.
Part 2 here:
Author and philosopher John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has written several books including Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who you Are and American Philosophy: A Love Story.
You can follow John on Twitter @JohnKaag.