Albert Camus Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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One of the most important figures associated with French existentialism, the Algerian-born Frenchman Albert Camus (1913–1960) made significant contributions to literature, philosophy, political analysis, drama, and journalism. An important critic of the capital punishment and totalitarianism, Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and died in a car crash three years later.

In 1942 Camus published the novel The Stranger and the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, two classics associated with existentialism. The point of departure for both is that humans are often unable to make sense of the world. In the shadow of the death of God (and his surrogates), announced by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the late nineteenth century, justifiable belief in absolute certainty has become virtually impossible, and the world exceeds the ability to make complete sense of it. Nevertheless, humans seek fundamental meaning, which, in what seems to be a fundamentally meaningless world, constitutes the relationship that Camus terms “the absurd” and also invites humankind to face. However, unable to face meaninglessness, some speculatively posit fundamental meaning, committing “philosophical suicide,” while others worry that life without fundamental meaning is not worth living and so consider actual suicide. In both cases, the absurd relationship that constitutes human existence in the world is denied. The challenge is to face the truth and seek meaning even though humans must continually fail, like the mythical Sisyphus who had to roll a boulder up a hill every day, only to have it roll back down each evening.

In Camus’s The Rebel (1951), the argument shifted from a critical rejection of suicide to one of political murder. The modern discovery of revolutionary meaning within the historical process suggests that the strategic removal of those who stand in the way of a better future for all is justified. However, all futures are speculative, and if humans are seduced by the utopian promise of the future, humankind will sacrifice real individuals to what may never be, which would amount to a failure to understand the meaning of revolt. Revolt is legitimate only insofar as it is the rejection of a transgression of the limits of endurable subjugation. The point at which subjugation becomes unendurable is the point at which an individual understands that no one should have to tolerate it. Thus, the rebel’s rejection contains an affirmation of human solidarity— “I rebel, therefore we exist”—that is inconsistent with the utopian promise of “we shall be” and its violent expediencies. To kill anyone is to violate the very principle on which the rebel stands. The challenge is to preserve the principle by resisting oppression, not to violate it by becoming another oppressor.

During the cold war, there seemed to be no alternative between world capitalism and world communism. Camus was critical of the latter, and The Rebel’s critique of strategic violence read like an assault on revolutionary communism and its sympathizers. This elicited a counterattack from Camus’s friend and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, and his colleagues, who continued to support communist possibilities against capitalist exploitation and imperialism. The ensuing debate, carried out in Sartre’s journal Les Temps moderns, was very public and acrimonious, ending the friendship and dividing intellectuals throughout France and the world on essential issues of progressive politics and theory.

Bibliography:

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays, translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Knopf, 1955.
The Rebel, translated by Anthony Bower. New York: Random House, 1956.
The Stranger, translated by Mathew Ward. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Sprintzen, David, and Adrian Van den Hoven, eds. Sartre and Camus: A Historic Confrontation. New York: Humanity Books, 2004.