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With a worldview formed amid the unfathomable human suffering of the early 20th century, Albert Camus’s writings reflect on the inherent absurdity of the human condition, including his best-known work, the novella The Stranger (1942). But the arc of his career, from his ‘cycle of the absurd’ and his ‘cycle of revolt’ to his ‘cycle of love’ – left unfinished after Camus himself met a rather meaningless end in a car accident – points towards a humane philosophy, centred on a defiant pursuit of freedom and value in a futile, incomprehensible universe. This animation from TED-Ed scopes Camus’s career, outlook and cultural influence, shedding light on how, where he might have found hopelessness, he instead found inspiration. For more on Camus’s life, including how his worldview clashed with those of his existentialist contemporaries, watch the Aeon original animation Sartre vs Camus.
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
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Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
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Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
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Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
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Biology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
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Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes
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War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
9 minutes
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Life stages
What Michelangelo’s late-in-life works reveal about his genius – and his humanness
13 minutes