Albert%20Camus%20

1
Albert Camus An Absurd Hero

• Michel

It's better to bet on this life than on the
next.
2
Albert Camus and Politics

• Spoke out against totalitarianism.
• Despite joining The French Communist Party in
  1935, eventually rejected communism with his book
  The Rebel in 1951.
• He was a pacifist
• Fervently fought against capital punishment

3
Albert Camus and Politics

• During the 1950s he devoted himself mostly to
  Human Rights, primarily speaking against the
  Soviet Unions treatment of its citizens.
• Left UNESCO after the UN accepted Spain and its
  leader Francisco Franco as a member because he
  refused to recognize a fascist country in the UN.

4
World War II

• Albert Camus was a well known resistance fighter.
• Directed the famous resistance journal Combat
  which railed against French cooperation with the
  Nazi occupiers.
• During the Liberation of Paris from occupation,
  he covered the fighting for eventual publication
  in Combat.

5
The Rebel

• A treaties on the motivation for revolution and
  rebellion. This work, more than others, servers
  the friendship between himself and several
  companions who sympathized with the communist
  ideals.

6
Reflections on the Guillotine

• An essay which outlines his reasoning for the
  complete rejection of capital punishment. Forms
  the basis for his belief that government does not
  have the right to plan and carry out murder,
  including war.

7
Neither Victims nor Executioners

• A series of articles written in the French
  Resistance paper Combat in which he details the
  role of murder and violence in the life of
  political beings.

8
The State of Siege

• A play about a town gripped in the rule of a
  leader who keeps them in line through fear.

9
The Tenets of Absurdism

• There is such a thing as meaning or value.
• If there is inherent meaning in the universe,
  humans cannot understand it.
• Individuals can create meaning in life
  themselves, but it is not essential.

10
The Tenets of Absurdism

• The pursuit of intrinsic or extrinsic meaning in
  the universe is not possible, but it may add
  meaning to the personal life
• There is a solution to the individual's desire to
  seek meaning, and it is the acknowledgement and
  embracing of absurdity.

11
Camus View of Absurdism

• Life is not useless or without purpose.
• The universe lacks logic.
• Meaning in life comes from a persons ability to
  affect his/her own destiny.
• Human existence is defined by our relationships
  with each other, not an absurd and illogical
  universe.

12
Absurdism and Religion

• Religion and absurdism is a paradox. The absence
  of God in a persons life can simultaneously be
  accompanied by a longing for salvation and
  meaning that only God can provide.

13
Absurdism and Religion

• Camus was influenced by the ideas of St.
  Augustines work Confessions, where Augustine
  promotes the idea of a connection between God and
  the rest of the world.
• Camus identified with the idea that a personal
  experience could become a reference point for his
  philosophical and literary writings.

14
Absurdism and Religion

• This gave birth to his practice of exploring
  absurdist philosophy by writing about individuals
  caught up in an absurd world.

15
An Important Decision

• The Absurd arises out of the fundamental
  disharmony between the individuals search for
  meaning and the apparent meaninglessness of the
  universe.

16
An Important Decision

• Humans have three ways of resolving the dilemma
• Suicide
• Religious belief in a transcendent reality,
  commonly called the leap of faith.
• Acceptance of the Absurd

17
Suicide

• (Escaping existence) Camus dismissed the
  viability of this option because death only adds
  to the absurdity of the Universe it does not
  solve the riddle.

18
Religious belief

• Camus called this option Philosophical Suicide
  because it requires the individual to reject
  their personal ability to seek out meaning
  rationally.

19
Acceptance of the Absurd

• One must accept and even embrace the Absurd and
  continue to live in spite of it, Camus endorsed
  this option deciding that life can be given
  meaning through its struggle against the Absurd
  and meaninglessness.

20
The Mount Everest Allegory
21
Work Cited

• Camus, Albert. "Niether Victims nor
  Executioners." November 1946. Online Texts. 10
  April 2010 lthttp//www.spunk.org/library/writers/c
  amus/sp001174.txtgt.
• . "The Blood of Freedom." 24 August 1944. Online
  Texts. 10 April 2010 lthttp//members.bellatlantic.
  net/samg2/freedom.htmlgt.
• . "The Myth of Sysiphus." 1942. Online Texts. 10
  April 2010 lthttp//members.bellatlantic.net/samg2
  /sysiphus.htmlgt.
• . "The Night of Truth." 24 August 1944. Online
  Texts. 10 April 2010 lthttp//members.bellatlantic.
  net/samg2/truth.htmlgt.
• Camus, Catherine. SPIKE interviews Catherine
  Camus, daughter of Albert Camus Russell
  Wilkinson. October 1995.
• Crystal, Garry. Who is Albert Camus? - WiseGEEK.
  24 April 2010 lthttp//www.wisegeek.com/who-is-albe
  rt-camus.htmgt.
• May, William F. "Albert Camus Politcal
  Moralist." 24 November 1958. Religion Online
  Website. 24 April 2010 lthttp//www.religion-online
  .org/showarticle.asp?title397gt.
• The European Graduate School. Albert Camus -
  Biography. 10 April 2010 lthttp//www.egs.edu/media
  /library-of-philosophy/albert-camus/biography/gt.

22
Further Readings

• Camus, Albert. The Plague. The Plague, The Fall,
  Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays. New
  York Everyman's Library, 2004.
• Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. The Plague,
  The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected
  Essays. New York Everyman's Library, 2004.