Albert Camus
Albert Camus (/kæmˈuː/[2] kam-OO; French: [albɛʁ kamy] ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist,[3] and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.
"Camus" redirects here. For other uses, see Camus (disambiguation).
Albert Camus
7 November 1913
4 January 1960 (aged 46)
The Stranger / The Outsider
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Rebel
The Plague
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Simone Hié(m. 1934; div. 1936)
Nobel Prize in Literature (1957)
Ethics, human nature, justice, politics, philosophy of suicide
Camus was born in Algeria during the French colonization, to pied-noir parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union because of their totalitarianism. Camus was a moralist and leaned towards anarcho-syndicalism. He was part of many organisations seeking European integration. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), he kept a neutral stance, advocating a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position that was rejected by most parties.
Philosophically, Camus' views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. Some consider Camus' work to show him to be an existentialist, even though he himself firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime.
Political stance[edit]
Camus was a moralist; he claimed morality should guide politics. While he did not deny that morals change over time, he rejected the classical Marxist view that historical material relations define morality.[53]
Camus was also strongly critical of Marxism–Leninism, especially in the case of the Soviet Union, which he considered totalitarian. Camus rebuked those sympathetic to the Soviet model and their "decision to call total servitude freedom".[54] A proponent of libertarian socialism, he stated that the Soviet Union was not socialist and the United States was not liberal.[55] His critique of the Soviet Union caused him to clash with others on the political left, most notably with his on-again/off-again friend Jean-Paul Sartre.[53]
Active in the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, Camus wrote for and edited the Resistance journal Combat. Of the French collaboration with the German occupiers, he wrote: "Now the only moral value is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the name of the people."[56] After France's liberation, Camus remarked: "This country does not need a Talleyrand, but a Saint-Just."[57] The reality of the postwar tribunals soon changed his mind: Camus publicly reversed himself and became a lifelong opponent of capital punishment.[57]
Camus had anarchist sympathies, which intensified in the 1950s, when he came to believe that the Soviet model was morally bankrupt.[58] Camus was firmly against any kind of exploitation, authority, property, the State, and centralization.[59] However, he opposed revolution, separating the rebel from the revolutionary and believing that the belief in "absolute truth", most often assuming the guise of history or reason, inspires the revolutionary and leads to tragic results.[60] He believed that rebellion is spurred by our outrage over the world's lack of transcendent significance, while political rebellion is our response to attacks against the dignity and autonomy of the individual.[60] Camus opposed political violence, tolerating it only in rare and very narrowly defined instances, as well as revolutionary terror which he accused of sacrificing innocent lives on the altar of history.[61]
Philosophy professor David Sherman considers Camus an anarcho-syndicalist.[62] Graeme Nicholson considers Camus an existentialist anarchist.[63]
The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes ('Anarchist Student Circle') in 1948 as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought. Camus wrote for anarchist publications such as Le Libertaire ('The Libertarian'), La Révolution prolétarienne ('The Proletarian Revolution'), and Solidaridad Obrera ('Workers' Solidarity'), the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, 'National Confederation of Labor').[64]
Camus kept a neutral stance during the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962). While he was against the violence of the National Liberation Front (FLN), he acknowledged the injustice and brutalities imposed by colonialist France. He was supportive of Pierre Mendès France's Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and its approach to the crisis; Mendès France advocated for reconciliation. Camus also supported a like-minded Algerian militant, Aziz Kessous. Camus traveled to Algeria to negotiate a truce between the two belligerents but was met with distrust by all parties.[65] In one, often misquoted incident, Camus confronted an Algerian critic during his 1957 Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, rejecting the false equivalence of justice with revolutionary terrorism: "People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother."[66][67] Critics have labelled the response as reactionary and a result of a colonialist attitude.[68]
Camus was sharply critical of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[69] In the 1950s, Camus devoted his efforts to human rights. In 1952, he resigned from his work for UNESCO when the UN accepted Spain, under the leadership of the caudillo General Francisco Franco, as a member.[33] Camus maintained his pacifism and resisted capital punishment anywhere in the world. He wrote an essay against capital punishment in collaboration with Arthur Koestler, the writer, intellectual, and founder of the League Against Capital Punishment entitled Réflexions sur la peine capitale ('Reflections on Capital Punishment'), published by Calmann-Levy in 1957.[70]
Along with Albert Einstein, Camus was one of the sponsors of the Peoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place between 1950 and 1951 at Palais Electoral in Geneva, Switzerland.[71][72]
Philosophy[edit]
Existentialism[edit]
Even though Camus is mostly connected to absurdism,[83] he is routinely categorized as an existentialist, a term he rejected on several occasions.[84]
Camus himself said his philosophical origins lay in ancient Greek philosophy, Nietzsche, and 17th-century moralists, whereas existentialism arose from 19th- and early 20th-century philosophy such as Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger.[85] He also said his work, The Myth of Sisyphus, was a criticism of various aspects of existentialism.[86] Camus rejected existentialism as a philosophy, but his critique was mostly focused on Sartrean existentialism and – though to a lesser extent – on religious existentialism. He thought that the importance of history held by Marx and Sartre was incompatible with his belief in human freedom.[87] David Sherman and others also suggest the rivalry between Sartre and Camus also played a part in his rejection of existentialism.[88] David Simpson argues further that his humanism and belief in human nature set him apart from the existentialist doctrine that existence precedes essence.[89]
On the other hand, Camus focused most of his philosophy around existential questions. The absurdity of life and that it inevitably ends in death is highlighted in his acts. His belief was that the absurd – life being void of meaning, or man's inability to know that meaning if it were to exist – was something that man should embrace. His opposition to Christianity and his commitment to individual moral freedom and responsibility are only a few of the similarities with other existential writers.[90] Camus addressed one of the fundamental questions of existentialism: the problem of suicide. He wrote: "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide."[91]
Camus viewed the question of suicide as arising naturally as a solution to the absurdity of life.[53]
Absurdism[edit]
Many existentialist writers have addressed the Absurd, each with their own interpretation of what it is and what makes it important. Kierkegaard suggests that the absurdity of religious truths prevents people from reaching God rationally.[92] Sartre recognizes the absurdity of individual experience. Camus's thoughts on the Absurd begin with his first cycle of books and the literary essay The Myth of Sisyphus, his major work on the subject. In 1942, he published the story of a man living an absurd life in The Stranger. He also wrote a play about the Roman emperor Caligula, pursuing an absurd logic, which was not performed until 1945. His early thoughts appeared in his first collection of essays, Betwixt and Between, in 1937. Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication in his second collection of essays, Noces (Nuptials) in 1938. In these essays, Camus reflects on the experience of the Absurd.[93] Aspects of the notion of the Absurd can also be found in The Plague.[94]
Camus follows Sartre's definition of the Absurd: "That which is meaningless. Thus man's existence is absurd because his contingency finds no external justification".[92] The Absurd is created because man, who is placed in an unintelligent universe, realises that human values are not founded on a solid external component; as Camus himself explains, the Absurd is the result of the "confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world".[95] Even though absurdity is inescapable, Camus does not drift towards nihilism. But the realization of absurdity leads to the question: Why should someone continue to live? Suicide is an option that Camus firmly dismisses as the renunciation of human values and freedom. Rather, he proposes we accept that absurdity is a part of our lives and live with it.[96]
The turning point in Camus's attitude to the Absurd occurs in a collection of four letters to an anonymous German friend, written between July 1943 and July 1944. The first was published in the Revue Libre in 1943, the second in the Cahiers de Libération in 1944, and the third in the newspaper Libertés, in 1945. The four letters were published as Lettres à un ami allemand ('Letters to a German Friend') in 1945, and were included in the collection Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.
Camus regretted the continued reference to himself as a "philosopher of the absurd". He showed less interest in the Absurd shortly after publishing The Myth of Sisyphus. To distinguish his ideas, scholars sometimes refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring to "Camus's Absurd".[97]
Revolt[edit]
Camus articulated the case for revolting against any kind of oppression, injustice, or whatever disrespects the human condition. He is cautious enough, however, to set the limits on the rebellion.[98] The Rebel explains in detail his thoughts on the issue. There, he builds upon the absurd, described in The Myth of Sisyphus, but goes further. In the introduction, where he examines the metaphysics of rebellion, he concludes with the phrase "I revolt, therefore we exist" implying the recognition of a common human condition.[99] Camus also delineates the difference between revolution and rebellion and notices that history has shown that the rebel's revolution might easily end up as an oppressive regime; he therefore places importance on the morals accompanying the revolution.[100] Camus poses a crucial question: Is it possible for humans to act in an ethical and meaningful manner in a silent universe? According to him, the answer is yes, as the experience and awareness of the Absurd creates the moral values and also sets the limits of our actions.[101] Camus separates the modern form of rebellion into two modes. First, there is the metaphysical rebellion, which is "the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation". The other mode, historical rebellion, is the attempt to materialize the abstract spirit of metaphysical rebellion and change the world. In this attempt, the rebel must balance between the evil of the world and the intrinsic evil which every revolt carries, and not cause any unjustifiable suffering.[102]
Tributes[edit]
In Tipasa, Algeria, inside the Roman ruins, facing the sea and Mount Chenoua, a stele was erected in 1961 in honor of Albert Camus with this phrase in French extracted from his work Noces à Tipasa: "I understand here what is called glory: the right to love beyond measure" (French: Je comprends ici ce qu'on appelle gloire : le droit d'aimer sans mesure).[108]
The French Post published a stamp with his likeness on 26 June 1967.[109]