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Camus

1913-1960

•  French-Algerian journalist, playwright, novelist, philosophical essayist, and Nobel laureate.

•  Not a “philosopher”…BUT he made important, forceful contribuJons to a wide range of issues in moral philosophy in his novels, reviews, arJcles, essays, and speeches—from terrorism and poliJcal violence to suicide and the death penalty.

•  He is oMen described as an existenJalist writer, though he himself disavowed the label.

•  PoliJcal journalist and as an actor, director, and playwright in his naJve Algeria.

•  While living in occupied France during WWII, he became acJve in the Resistance and from 1944-47 served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Combat.

•  By mid-century, based on the strength of his three novels (The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall) and two book-length philosophical essays (The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel), he had achieved an internaJonal reputaJon and readership.

•  In these works he introduced and developed the twin philosophical ideas—the concept of the Absurd and the noJon of Revolt—that made him famous.

The Absurd

The Absurd can be defined as a metaphysical tension or opposiJon that results from the presence of human consciousness.

The Absurd

Because we are conscious beings, we tend to be aware of our internal and constant demand for order and meaning in life.

The Absurd

BUT… We live in an essenJally meaningless and indifferent universe! So we search for meaning where no meaning is to be found.

The Absurd

•  Camus considered the Absurd to be a fundamental and even defining characterisJc of the modern human condiJon.

Revolt

•  The noJon of Revolt refers to both a path of resolved acJon and a state of mind.

•  It can take extreme forms such as terrorism or a reckless and unrestrained egoism (both of which are rejected by Camus)

•  But basically it consists of an a\tude of heroic defiance or resistance to whatever oppresses human beings.

Nobel Prize

•  In awarding Camus its prize for literature in 1957, the Nobel Prize commi_ee cited his persistent efforts to “illuminate the problem of the human conscience in our Jme.”

•  He was writer of conscience and a champion of imaginaJve literature as a vehicle of philosophical insight and moral truth.

Death

•  He was at the height of his career—at work on an autobiographical novel, planning new projects for theatre, film, and television, and sJll seeking a soluJon to poliJcal turmoil in Algeria—when he died tragically when he was hit by a car in January 1960.

The Absurd

•  What then is meant by the noJon of the Absurd? Contrary to the view conveyed by popular culture, the Absurd, (at least in Camus’s terms) does not simply refer to some vague percepJon that modern life is fraught with paradoxes, incongruiJes, and intellectual confusion. (Although that percepJon is certainly consistent with his formula.)

The Absurd

•  The Absurd expresses a fundamental disharmony, a tragic incompaJbility, in our existence.

The Absurd

•  In effect, he argues that the Absurd is the product of a collision or confrontaJon between our human desire for order, meaning, and purpose in life and the blank, indifferent “silence of the universe”.

The Absurd

•  “The absurd is not in man nor in the world,” Camus explains, “but in their presence together…it is the only bond uniJng them.”

•  So here we are: poor creatures desperately seeking hope and meaning in a hopeless, meaningless world. Sartre, in his essay-review of The Stranger provides an addiJonal gloss on the idea: “The absurd, to be sure, resides neither in man nor in the world, if you consider each separately. But since man’s dominant characterisJc is ‘being in the world,’ the absurd is, in the end, an inseparable part of the human condiJon.”

•  The Absurd, then, presents itself in the form of an existenJal opposiJon. It arises from the human demand for clarity and transcendence on the one hand and a cosmos that offers nothing of the kind on the other.

•  We inhabit a world that is indifferent to our sufferings and deaf to our protests.

The Absurd

•  In Camus’s view there are three possible philosophical responses to this predicament. Two of these he condemns as evasions, and the other he puts forward as a proper soluJon.

The Absurd

•  The first choice is blunt and simple: physical suicide. If we decide that a life without some essenJal purpose or meaning is not worth living, we can simply choose to kill ourselves.

The Absurd

•  Camus rejects this choice as cowardly. In his terms it is a repudiaJon or renunciaJon of life, not a true revolt.

The Absurd

•  The second choice is the religious soluJon of posiJng a transcendent world of solace and meaning beyond the Absurd. Camus calls this soluJon “philosophical suicide” and rejects it as transparently evasive and fraudulent.

The Absurd

•  To adopt a supernatural soluJon to the problem of the Absurd (for example, through some type of mysJcism or leap of faith) is to annihilate reason, which in Camus’s view is as fatal and self-destrucJve as physical suicide.

The Absurd

•  Instead of removing himself from the absurd confrontaJon of self and world like the physical suicide, the religious believer simply removes the offending world and replaces it, via a kind of metaphysical abracadabra, with a more agreeable alternaJve.

The Absurd

•  The third choice—in Camus’s view the only authenJc and valid soluJon—is simply to accept absurdity, or be_er yet to embrace it, and to conJnue living.

The Absurd

•  Since the Absurd in his view is an unavoidable, indeed defining, characterisJc of the human condiJon, the only proper response to it is full, unflinching, courageous acceptance. Life, he says, can “be lived all the be_er if it has no meaning.”

The Absurd

•  The example par excellence of this opJon of spiritual courage and metaphysical revolt is the mythical Sisyphus of Camus’s philosophical essay.

The Absurd

•  Doomed to eternal labor at his rock, fully conscious of the essenJal hopelessness of his plight, Sisyphus nevertheless pushes on. In doing so he becomes for Camus a superb icon of the spirit of revolt and of the human condiJon.

The Absurd

•  To rise each day to fight a ba_le you know you cannot win, and to do this with wit, grace, compassion for others, and even a sense of mission, is to face the Absurd in a spirit of true heroism.

The Absurd

•  Camus examines the Absurd from mulJple perspecJves. We’ll focus on the strangely aloof and yet simultaneously self-absorbed Mersault, who seems indifferent to it even as he exemplifies and is finally vicJmized by it.

Start reading The Stranger.