Episode #234 ... The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

Stephen West· Host0:00

Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!. Patreon.com/philosophizethis if you value the show as an educational resource. Philosophical writing on Substack at Philosophize This! on there as well. I hope you love the show today. So in 1984, there was a Czechoslovakian writer that would create a book that would become legendary. This was a man that by this point in his life had not only been exiled from his home country for the work he did, he had been kicked out of the Communist Party twice 'cause his ideas were so against what it stood for. But this was also a man that chose to give up everything he had in life, multiple times, simply to keep writing about what he believed was most important to be writing about. The author was Milan Kundera, and the book was called The Unbearable Lightness of Being. By the end of the episode, we'll understand the kinds of ideas he wrote about that got him this sort of wonderful treatment in the first place. This episode's designed to be a kind of philosophical guide for someone that's trying to read this book, but it also stands alone as just a collection of the philosophy of Kundera during this time period. I mean, either way, people always ask me for a first book that they can read if they're trying to get into philosophy more, something that's maybe funny, interesting. Well, this book would be a really good candidate for that if you were looking for one. But as always, this podcast is not supposed to be a replacement for reading the actual book. There's no way I could ever cover how transformative this book can be over the course of 30 minutes, but I do think I can give you a pretty decent roadmap of the philosophy you're gonna be encountering if you do read it. Let's get into it, though. At its core, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a book that's about