Albert Camus

1) His Biography:

A representative of non-metropolitan French writing was Albert Camus (1913–1960). His Algerian heritage and his experiences there in the 1930s heavily influenced his ideas and creative output. He immigrated to France at the age of twenty-five and settled there. He was born to semiproletarian parents, was raised in intellectual circles with strong revolutionary leanings, and had a deep interest in philosophy (only a stroke of luck prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field).

Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and worked as a columnist for the newspaper Combat after the liberation. The man and the era were meant to be. However, his journalism had primarily been a reaction to the needs of the period; after leaving political journalism in 1947, Camus became very active in the theatre as a producer and playwright in addition to penning his fiction and essays (e.g., Caligula, 1944). Additionally, he translated plays by Calderon, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Requiem for a Nun by Faulkner.

His involvement with the Algerian theatre troupe L’Equipe, whose “collective creation,” R.volte dans les Asturies (1934), was outlawed for political reasons, can be linked to his love of the theatre. In the 1942 essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), Camus elaborates on the idea of the absurd and how to accept it by describing it as “the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement – and a conscious dissatisfaction”. A large portion of this article is illustrated by Meursault, the main character in L’.tranger (The Stranger), 1942: man as the sickened victim of the ludicrous orthodoxy of habit, later – when the young murderer confronts execution – tempted by despair, hope, and salvation.

Dr. Rieux, who patiently cares for the Oran residents who are afflicted by the plague in La Peste (The Plague), 1947, represents the uprising against an absurd and unfair society and echoes Camus’s declaration that “We refuse to despair of mankind. We still wish to serve men, but without the irrational desire to save mankind. La Chute (The Fall), from 1956, and L’Exil et le royaume, from 1957, are two of Camus’ other well-known novels. The classicism of his art served as the visual counterpart to his austere quest for moral order. He was a stylist of exceptional purity, sharp focus, and reason. On January 4, 1960, at the age of 46, Camus was killed in an automobile accident in the village of Villeblevin, near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard. There is no evidence to support the popular theory that the Soviet Union was behind the catastrophe. Camus left behind his wife and two daughters.

Posthumously, two of his works were released. Among them, the 1971 publication “A Happy Death” was originally written in the late 1930s. The other was “The First Man,” which Camus was working on when he passed away in 1995. His creations continue to be his legacy today.

2) Main Works:

The Stranger:

Described as “a citizen of France domiciled in North Africa, a man of the Mediterranean, an homme du midi yet one who hardly partakes of the conventional Mediterranean culture,” Meursault, the titular character, is a jaded French settler in Algeria. He murders an Arab guy in French Algiers who was engaged in a dispute with one of Meursault’s neighbours a few weeks after the funeral for his mother. After a trial, Meursault receives a death sentence. The narrative is split into two sections that tell the story from Meursault’s first-person perspective before and after the murder, respectively.

The Plague:

Camus set the story in the 1940s while drawing inspiration from the cholera pandemic that decimated a significant section of Oran’s population in 1849. Before Camus published his book, various diseases repeatedly afflicted Oran and its surrounding area. An academic study claims that the bubonic plague destroyed Oran in 1556 and 1678, but all subsequent outbreaks (in 1921: 185 cases; 1931: 76 cases; and 1944: 95 cases) were significantly smaller than the epidemic depicted in the book.

Camus disliked the term “existentialist classic,” but The Plague is nonetheless regarded as one. The inability of the individual individuals to change their fates is emphasised throughout the book.

The Myth of Sisyphus:

Camus presents his absurdist philosophy, which was influenced by thinkers like Sren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The absurdity is in the contrast between our primal desire to give meaning to life and the universe’s “unreasonable silence” in response.

Does acknowledging the absurd compel one to commit suicide? “No,” Camus responds, “it requires revolt.” He continues by outlining many perspectives on the ludicrous life. In the final chapter, Camus contrasts the folly of human existence with the fate of the Greek mythological character Sisyphus, who was forced to carry out the same pointless job of hoisting a boulder up a mountain eternally just to watch it roll back down.

The Fall:

The Fall is a collection of dramatic monologues delivered to a stranger by Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a self-described “judge-penitent.” In what essentially amounts to a confession, Clamence describes his accomplishments as a well-to-do defence attorney in Paris who was well-liked by his peers. His dilemma and eventual “fall” from grace were intended to allude, in a secular sense, to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Innocence, confinement, non-existence, and truth are among the issues examined in The Fall.

The Rebel:

Camus examines a number of “countercultural” figures and movements from the history of Western thought and art, noting the significance of each in the overall development of revolutionary thought and philosophy. Camus examines both rebellion and revolt, which may be seen as the same phenomenon in personal and social frames. He examines the societal significance of the monarch, god, and virtue’s decline as well as the rise of nihilism.

3) Main Themes in his writings:

The Irrationality of the Universe:

Despite being a work of fiction, The Stranger strongly echoes Camus’s philosophical understanding of absurdity. In his works, Camus argues that human existence in general and individual lives have no logical purpose or structure. People struggle to accept this idea, thus they make ongoing attempts to find or develop reasonable structure and significance in their life. Humanity’s vain struggle to create rational order where none already exists is referred to as absurdity.

The principles of absurdity are present throughout The Stranger even if Camus does not mention them clearly. Both the outside world in which Meursault lives and his inner universe of thoughts and attitudes lack any sense of logic. Meursault makes decisions like choosing to marry Marie and choosing to kill the Arab without any apparent justification.

Despite this, society makes an effort to create or impose rational justifications for Meursault’s irrational behaviour. The notion that events occasionally have no purpose or cause for occurring is upsetting and dangerous for society.

In Part Two of the book, the trial sequence symbolises society’s endeavour to create logical order. Both the prosecutor and Meursault’s attorney provide rational, cause-and-effect-based justifications for Meursault’s crimes. However, these justifications are attempts to dispel the unsettling notion that the universe is irrational and has no validity in reality. The entire trial is a prime example of absurdity since it represents humanity’s fruitless attempt to impose reason on a nonsensical universe.

The Meaninglessness of Human Life:

The notion that life has no redeeming value or goal is a key part of Camus’ absurdist worldview. According to Camus, the only thing that is definite in life is death, and since everyone will die at some point, all lives are equally pointless. Throughout the course of the book, Meursault gradually comes to this conclusion, but it is not until his confrontation with the chaplain in the final chapter that he truly understands it. Meursault understands that the universe is equally indifferent to him as he is to most of it. Like all persons, Meursault has existed, will pass away, and is no longer significant.

Ironically, Meursault can only find happiness after coming to this seemingly depressing understanding. He will realise that it doesn’t matter whether he is put to death by lethal injection or if he survives to an advanced age and passes away naturally. Meursault can put aside his delusions of avoiding execution by winning a court appeal thanks to this understanding.

He understands that these phantom hopes, which had previously consumed his thoughts, would only serve to give him the mistaken impression that death is preventable. Meursault realises that his desire for a long life has proven to be a burden. His release from this erroneous hope allows him to enjoy life as it is and make the most of the time he has left.

Suffering:

In The Plague, suffering takes centre stage. We observe how people respond to adversity, deal with it, and grow as a result. This final point is crucial because one of the characters even describes pain as his best instructor. So, other than the useful tip that we should always keep anti-plague serum on hand, what do we exactly learn? that the unending, senseless agony of man is not noticed by the world. The Plague’s solution is that, despite the fact that we are fighting a lost cause, we must do our best to alleviate suffering and stand up for humanity.

4) The Myth of Sisyphus:

Summary:

Sisyphus’s punishment in the underworld is arguably more well-known than anything he accomplished during his lifetime. According to the Greek tale, Sisyphus is destined to roll a boulder up a mountain, but every time he reaches the summit, the rock rolls back down to the bottom. Camus contends that the gods were clever in realising that an eternity of pointless toil would be a dreadful punishment.

There are several legends that explain how Sisyphus came to get his punishment in the underworld; these traditions are not mutually exclusive. One myth claims that Aegina, a mortal lady and the daughter of Asopus, was taken away by Zeus. In his hometown of Corinth, Sisyphus saw this kidnapping take place. In exchange for Asopus providing a freshwater spring for the fortress at Corinth, Sisyphus agreed to reveal who had abducted Aegina. Sisyphus gained earthly prosperity and happiness for himself and his people while incurring the wrath of the gods by striking this agreement and testifying against Zeus.

Another legend describes how Sisyphus imprisoned the spirit of Death, preventing any human deaths throughout his confinement. Sisyphus was Death’s initial victim when the gods released him, as is only natural. Sisyphus allegedly instructed his wife not to perform any traditional funeral rites after he passed away.

He protested to Hades when he got to the underworld about how his wife hadn’t followed these rituals, and he was given permission to go back to earth and correct her. Sisyphus was given a second chance at life, but he refused to go back to the underworld and instead lived to a ripe old age before going back to the underworld once more to face his eternal punishment.

Sisyphus is described by Camus as the prototypical ludicrous hero because of both of his actions on earth and of the punishment he received in the underworld. He exhibits contempt for the gods, an aversion to dying, and a love of life. He will be forced to struggle in vain for all of eternity as his punishment.

We are left to speculate as to how Sisyphus bears his punishment in the underworld because we are not told. The thought process of Sisyphus in the instant after the rock rolls away from him at the summit of the mountain interests Camus. He is conscious and conscious of the absurdity of his position as he descends the mountain, briefly liberated from his labour. Because he is aware of his predicament and has no chance of escape, it can only be said that his fate is tragic. The clarity he gains as a result of this understanding also elevates him beyond his circumstances.

Sisyphus, according to Camus, might even embrace his duty with joy. When he considers the world he has left behind or when he hopes or desires for happiness, he experiences sad or depressed moments. But when Sisyphus accepts his fate, its sadness and gloom disappear. The eternity and futility of his fate, according to Camus, are “crushing truths” that can be made less painful by just accepting their existence. He makes reference to Oedipus, who after going through so much suffering, is able to “conclude that all is well.”

According to Camus, happiness and absurdity are strongly related. The realisation that there is no hope and that our life is entirely what we make of it is the common thread connecting them. Sisyphus is well cognizant of his fate as he makes his way down the mountain. The author Camus says, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Main themes:

Man’s pursuit of knowledge:

The protagonist, Sisyphus, is at odds with the gods at the start of Camus’ first story because Sisyphus steals their secrets and is driven by a quest for knowledge that the gods view as haughty and menacing. They therefore try to punish him. Because Camus thinks life is absurd and meaningless by nature, this clash is intriguing within his body of work. That would cause the reader to view learning as a pointless endeavour as well, but Camus contends in this article that learning is essential to man’s valiant struggle against his own futility and mortality. Then, knowledge turns into a form of bravery. The ludicrous hero is conscious of and actively involved in rejecting the effects of the truth, whereas fear prevents individuals from accepting their own fate.

According to another version, however, he was inclined to practise the career of highwayman. Camus contrasts observations about Sisyphus’ hunger for knowledge and his purported profession as a thief. The following phrase expresses Camus’ opinion on the two themes: “I see no contradiction in this.” This demonstrates Camus’ assertion that knowledge is a form of theft. Of fact, taking someone else’s information is a form of robbery even though you don’t actually take their knowledge away. When you discover something for yourself, you wrest control from the person who hid it from you. Even though Sisyphus’ primary issue is not addressed by his awareness of it, this is a fundamental tenet of the ludicrous hero: he gets control over his own fate by studying it. But what makes him a hero is his understanding of the reality of his own existence.

The futility of human existence:

Camus portrays the main conflict as Sisyphus’ fatal task in the underworld of rolling a stone up a hill every day only to see it tumble back to where it started as his major conflict. A few lines regarding the interval between his enslaving Death and his capture, however, come before it in the story: But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness.”

Another observation—possibly the most prominent one—that life is lived most valiantly when we acknowledge our triviality and make the decision to go on despite it is made when Sisyphus is finally consigned to labour for nothing in the depths of the underworld. You have already realised that Sisyphus is the absurd hero, as Camus blatantly states in his statement.

He is, both as a result of his desires and his suffering. That sentence reveals to us his belief that herocism encompasses desire and futility. He thinks that Sisyphus’ heroism derives mostly from his realisation that his life has no meaning or significance, yet he nonetheless finds serenity in this realisation and still yearns to live. In the final sentence of the essay, Camus asserts, “One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well.”

The central argument of Camus is a refutation of the futility of life. He contends that man should hate his lot and resist life’s whims by being aware of his miserable condition and continuing to pursue his own selfish ambitions. Secondarily, the essay incorporates a defence of those who rely on religious belief rather than factual information.

Man and love:

Camus makes a few succinct yet perceptive remarks regarding romanticism. This is how he reinterprets part of the myth: “It is stated that Sisyphus, being close to death, rashly wished to test his wife’s love. He gave her the directive to place his unburied remains in the centre of the square.”

In the underworld, Sisyphus found himself awake. He then asked Pluto for permission to return to earth in order to correct his wife since he was irritated by and offended by obedience that was so incompatible with human love. This paragraph sheds light on the story’s thematic meaningsince it discusses the tragedy of human romance and contrasts Sisyphus’ own dissatisfaction with the failure of romantic relationships with the dark, solitary punishment that defines his story.

In Camus’ story, the wife honours Sisyphus’ request despite Sisyphus’ genuine aspirations, illustrating the contradiction of romance. This is a profound illustration of the intricacy of love, showing how different our wants and needs are. Sisyphus’ response suggests that he feels betrayed by her for not trying to fulfil his wishes despite his clear instructions. The piece doesn’t offer an easy answer to the dilemma because there isn’t one. That there is no consolation or justification for Sisyphus’ marriage to his wife may be the most remarkable aspect of his annoyance. Instead, he spends time admiring nature’s splendour at the shore. He exhibits a serene acceptance of the shortcomings that come with interpersonal interactions in this way. His destiny is not multifaceted. Love, like religion, is not provided as a simple answer to the issues of human existence; it is his own struggle against his own foolishness.

5) His relation to Sartre and existentialism:

In addition to rejecting religion, staging unsettling plays, encouraging readers to live truthfully, and writing about the absurdity of the world—a world devoid of meaning and worth—Sartre, Camus, and their intellectual colleagues. Only “stones, flesh, stars, and those truths the hand can touch” exist, according to Camus. To make sense of this world, we must decide to exist in it and to ascribe to it our own significance and worth. People are thus both free and burdened by it since freedom comes with the dreadful, even crippling, responsibility of living and acting genuinely.

Philosophically, Camus and Sartre were tied by the concept of freedom, but politically, they were joined by the pursuit of justice. They were dedicated to exposing and eliminating injustice, and they believed that the proletariat, or working class, was the group that had experienced the worst forms of injustice. They were seen by Camus and Sartre as being bound to their labour and dehumanised. It takes the creation of new political structures to set them free.

The Rebel by Camus was released in October 1951. He gave expression to a crudely sketched “philosophy of revolt” in it. This wasn’t so much a philosophical theory as it was a synthesis of philosophical and political principles, including the following: everyone is free, but freedom is a relative concept; one must accept boundaries, moderation, and “calculated risk”; absolutes are anti-human. Camus strongly opposed violent revolution. Even if he backed the French war effort, using violence to influence history is utopian, absolutist, and a betrayal of your own values. Violence may be employed in extreme situations.

According to Camus, “Absolute freedom is the right of the strongest to dominate,” while “absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction: therefore it destroys freedom.” It was necessary to constantly rebalance justice and freedom, practise political moderation, and accept and celebrate what most restricts us: our humanity. In order to shape who we are, he said, “to live and let live.”

Sartre was disgusted as he read The Rebel. He believed that it was possible to attain perfect justice and freedom, and that communism had done just that. Workers couldn’t be free under a capitalist system or while they were poor. They had two unpleasant and terrible choices: work a merciless and isolating job or perish. However, communism enables each person to live without material want and so gives them the freedom to select how they can best realise themselves by removing the oppressors and generally giving the workers their autonomy back.

They become free as a result, and it is also right due to the unwavering equality. Camus advocated for a peaceful socialism without the use of revolutionary violence with the publishing of The Rebel. He was horrified by the reports coming out of the USSR: it was a country with no freedom at all, not a country of communists living side by side in freedom. Sartre, on the other hand, was ready to support violence in order to struggle for communism.

The two friends’ disagreement made headlines. The journal Sartre edited, Les Temps Modernes, which reviewed The Rebel critically, sold out three times. Both Le Monde and L’Observateur covered the parting in breathless detail. Today, it would be difficult to envision an intellectual debate drawing that much public interest, but many readers were able to see themselves reflected in the political difficulties of the day.

6) His relevance in our times:

Our generation encourages us to express our emotions and achieve our goals by celebrating individuality. While attempting to take into account conventional moral values, it seeks to foster happiness. However, concentrating on one’s own existence merely heightens the threat posed by the knowledge that death is inevitable.

Our celebration of personal fulfilment simply serves to highlight the need of precisely, that religious solace that public life is increasingly denying as we are torn between an antiquated religious tradition and a secular world on the rise. This is the only way to make sense of the astonishing phenomenon of fundamentalist religious rebirth in a time when its existence is so out of date.

Albert Camus discovered the “death of god,” or, in Nietzsche’s words, the knowledge, often only subliminally, that the Christian god has ceased to be believable,” at least for educated people imbued with the spirit of modernity, as the core of this state. What reasonably remains of the traditional faith in divine transcendence and providential design after 350 years of ongoing social transformations driven by industrialization, capitalism, global social revolutions, and the advancement of modern science, aside from a deep-felt, almost “ontological” yearning for transcendent meaning?

The meaning of life must now be confronted by individuals without the sure guidance of a transcendent purpose and direction, and the daily struggle to “make ends meet” condemns the majority to a life of “repetition,” in the words of Kierkegaard, governed by habit and social convention. The more we seek to be unique, the more we want to break free from societal convention and routine, and the more dramatic our inevitable encounter with death becomes.

Westerners have a growing need and expectation for life to have a higher purpose for which our current experience no longer provides justification. The world today is strongly marked by the consequent sensation of absence. The ludicrous is merely a contemporary interpretation of the Greeks’ tragic vision. Collectively, we are cosmic aliens, cognizant beings doomed to death who are unaware of any higher purpose.

Living and creating “without the aid of eternal values which are absent or distorted in contemporary Europe” is the problem of modernity. Although Camus believes that the “absurd” best describes the modern world, he never saw it as a conclusion, rather as “a point of departure.” Instead, he attempted to emphasise the fundamental Western experiences in an effort to discover the way to a rebirth of human living, or a “renaissance,” in the everyday lives of people. His concern for the community is thus to be realised in a “dialogic civilization” based in the workplace and neighbourhood.

This theory of human beings serves as the foundation for democracy and upholds a favourable view of free expression. It is mutually deciding and validating for means and ends. Although freedom is a prerequisite for any justice that is deserving of the term, it is nothing more than a pretence in isolation from the equitable resource distribution that empowers.

No one or many may receive justice without it first being a reliant gift for an impoverished recipient. Justice must reflect the unrestricted exercise of individual and group preferences, even if those preferences are put forth at the expense of others. Politics is never completely resolved or concluded. It is the permanent and pervasive aspect of social existence over time. No surprise given democracy’s importance.

Thus, Camus envisioned a society where liberty and justice are seen as complements rather than as rival ideologies. Justice is the fair allocation of the opportunities and resources that make effective liberty possible. Liberty is the unending capacity to realise our potential and live out our hopes.

We cannot be saved by a perfect utopia or messianic vision. Instead, there are “relative utopias” that reject didactic adherence to any precise definition of the ideal society in favour of an ongoing process in which human beings exercise their freedom in dialogic cooperation. This democratic vision is based on a process of communal self-definition and development that is rooted in maximum worker and community self-management, rather than a particular type of government. It is a metaphysical ideal that responds to the rebellion’s ontological need for dignity.

Camus continued to be connected to his working class roots by sensitivity and vision, almost alone among traditional intellectuals. His moral principles were more influenced by the shared experiences of college soccer than by the abstract ideas of our greatest thinkers. He saw the contours of a truly equitable society in the egalitarian cooperative effort of theWorkers Theater, where stars did not take bows after performances and everyone contributed to the staging. As editor of Combat, he also tried to divide up the work involved in journalism while treating the production team with the respect and care that was due to their contribution and dignity. Hierarchy was to be determined by function and level of performance rather than status and deference. The collective involved was to make choices while upholding the rights and interests of each participant.

The renaissance, for Camus, always meant the qualitative transformation of daily life, the creation of dialogic communities at work and at home that gave voice and sustenance to the struggles for dignity of ordinary people. Camus did not despise the arts of “high culture,” though he was always quite uncomfortable with their mores.

He persisted in his belief that human existence can only hope to realise its highest ideals and our lives can find the collective meaning and purpose that alone can truly sustain us in the face of an infinite and indifferent universe when the dignity of the worker and the respect for intelligence are accorded their proper place.

7) Some Quotes:

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead Walk beside me… just be my friend” ― Albert Camus

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” ― Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” ― Albert Camus

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.” ― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.” ― Albert Camus, The First Man