See also: Camus

Albert Camus , born the November 7th 1913 with Mondovi in Algeria and dead the January 4th 1960 with Villeblevin in the Yonne, was a writer and Philosophe French.

He developed in his very diverse work a Humanisme founded on the awakening of the absurdity of the human condition. He received the Nobel Prize of literature in 1957.

Biography

Lucien Camus, father of Albert, work in a wine field, close to Mondovi, for a wine trader of Algiers. It is in this Département of Constantine that the writer is born. Lucien Camus is mobilized in September 1914. Wounded in the Battle of the Marne, he dies in the military hospital of Saint-Brieuc the October 17th 1914. Of his father, Albert will know only one photograph and a significant anecdote: its dislike in front of the spectacle of a capital execution. The family settles in Algiers. His/her mother is deaf. Albert there made his studies, encouraged by its professors of which Jean Attic - which will make him discover Nietzsche - and, before the teacher Louis Germain who will make so that it can go to the College. It will keep a great recognition with this one and its speech of Nobel Prize will dedicate to him. It déclame in this one a word which will remain famous: " My fatherland, it is the French language. " It starts to write very young person and its first texts appear in the review Southern in 1932. After the baccalaureat it obtains a diploma of higher learning in Letters, section philosophy. But the Tuberculose prevents it from passing the aggregation.

In 1935, it begins the writing of Back and the place , which will be published two years later. In Algiers, it founds the Theater of the Work, which it replaces in 1937 by the Theater of the Team. In same time it leaves the Communist party, to which it had adhered two years earlier. It enters to the newspaper Algiers Républicain, body of the Popular front, created by Pascal Pia. Its investigation Misère of the Kabylie will have a resounding action. In 1940, the General Government of the Algérie prohibits the newspaper and influences so that Albert Camus does not find any more work. It settles with Paris and works as sub-editor to Paris-Evening . It is during this period that it makes appear to the novel the Foreigner (1942) and the test the Myth of Sisyphus (1942) in whom it exposes his philosophy. According to its own classification, these works belong to the “cycle of the absurdity” - cycle which it will supplement by the plays the Misunderstanding and Caligula (1944). In 1943, he is reader at Gallimard and takes the direction of Combat when P. Pia is destined for other functions in the Résistance. The August 8th 1945, he is the intellectual Westerner to only denounce the use of the atomic bomb two days after the attacks on Hiroshima in a leading article remained famous, in Combat. In 1946, Camus binds friendship with Rene Char. Its literary work continues with the production of the “cycle of the revolt”, which includes/understands one of its most known novels, the Plague (1947), but also two plays and a test quite as famous: the State of siege (1948), Right the (1949) and the Man revolted (1951).

The rupture with Jean-Paul Sartre takes place in 1952, after the publication in Modern times of the article of Jeanson which reproaches the revolt of Camus for being “ deliberately static ”. In 1956, to Algiers, it launches its “ Appel for the civil truce ”, whereas outside, one howls of the death threats. It should be noted that it was ignored of alive sound by its compatriots, the Pieds-Noirs in Algeria and, after independence, by Algerian who reproached him for not having militated for this independence. Questioned by an Algerian in Stockholm, he will say: “ I believe in justice, but not with the bombs. Between my mother and justice, I prefer my mother ”, which will be often reproached to him. Always in 1956, it publishes the Fall , delivers pessimistic in which it begins some with the Existentialisme without to save itself. It is one year later, in 1957, qu ' it receives the Nobel Prize of literature.

The January 4th 1960, with Small the Villeblevin, in the Yonne, Albert Camus finds death in a traffic accident on board a Facel Vega FV3 led by his/her friend Michel Gallimard, the nephew of the editor Gaston. The car leaves the road and strikes a tree which borders it. The newspapers of the time evoke an excessive speed (130 km/h), a faintness of the driver or the bursting of a tire, but Rene Étiemble affirms: “  I inquired a long time and I had the evidence that this Facel-Vega was a coffin. I sought in vain a newspaper which wants to publish my article…   ”

Albert Camus is buried with Lourmarin, in the Vaucluse - where it had bought a house in the area which his/her friend had made him discover the poet Rene Char. In margin of the philosophical currents, Camus continued a reflection on the human condition. Refusing to formulate an act of faith as a God, the history or the reason, he was opposed simultaneously to the Christianisme, the Marxisme and the Existentialisme. He did not cease fighting against all the ideologies and the abstractions which divert the human one. In this direction, it incarnates one of the highest moral consciences of the XXe century - the humanism of its writings having been forged in the experiment of the worst moments of the mankind.

}}. In this sentence the power of a conflict is concentrated, of a confrontation which supports and carries the work of Camus. Two forces which are opposed: the human call to know its raison d'être and the absence of answer of the medium where it is. The alive man in a world of which it does not include/understand the direction, of which it is unaware of all, until its raison d'être.

The human call, it is the search of a coherence, but for Camus there is no answer to this request for direction. At least is there no satisfactory answer, because only which could satisfy the writer should have an human dimension: I then to include/understand only in human terms. Thus the Religions which define our origins, which create direction, which poses a framework, do not offer an answer for the absurd man: I do not know if this world has a direction which exceeds it. But I know that I do not know this direction and that it is impossible for me for the moment to know it. What means for me significance out of my condition. The absurd man does not accept divine prospects. He wants answers human.

The absurdity is not a knowledge, it is a state acquired by confrontation conscious of two forces. To maintain this state requires a clearness and requires a work, the absurdity it is the Conscience always maintained of one fracture between the world and my spirit Camus writing in the Myth of Sisyphus. Thus the absurd man must be obstinated not to listen to the prophets (i.e. to have enough imagination not to blindly accept their representation of the hell or the paradise) and to utilize only what is certain, and if nothing is it, this at least is a certainty.

The absurd man could escape from his state only by denying one of the contradictory forces which gives birth to it: to find a direction with what is or to make conceal the human call. However none of these solutions is realizable.

A manner of giving direction would be to accept the religions and the gods. However the latter do not have an influence on the absurd man. The absurd man feels innocent, he wants to do only what he includes/understands and for an absurd spirit, the Raison is vain and there is nothing beyond the reason.

Another manner of finding direction would be to inject some: to make projects, to establish goals, and consequently to believe that the life can move. But again all that is contradicted in a vertiginous way by the nonsense of a possible death. Indeed, for the absurd man there are not future, only account here and now.

The first of the two contradictory forces, namely unreasonable silence of the world cannot thus be denied. As for the other contradictory force allowing this confrontation of which is born the absurdity, which is the human call, the only manner of making it conceal would be the suicide. But this last is excluded because with its manner the Suicide solves the absurdity. However the absurdity should not be solved. The absurdity is generating of an energy. And this refusal of the suicide, it is the exaltation of the life, the passion of the absurd man. This last does not abdicate, it revolts.

An answer, the revolt

Yes, it is necessary to maintain the absurdity, not to try to solve it, because the absurdity generates a power which is carried out in the revolt. The Revolt, here manner of living the absurdity. The revolt is to know our fatal destiny and nevertheless to face it, it is the intelligence with the catches with the unreasonable silence of the world, it is condemned to died which refuses the suicide. This is why written Camus: One of the only coherent philosophical positions, it is thus the revolt.

The revolt is also to offer an enormous field of possibilities of actions. Because if the absurd man deprives himself of an eternal life, it is released from the constraints imposed by an improbable future and gains there in liberty of action. The more the future is restricted and the larger the possibilities of actions “difficulty and nunc” are. And thus the absurd man enjoys a major freedom. The absurd man lives a world in which it must accept that “ all the being gets busy anything to complete}}, although Camus does not attach any importance to the future: a following day ago, its revolt is not therefore amorale. The solidarity of the men is based on the movement of revolt and this one, in its turn, finds justification only in this complicity. All is not allowed in the revolt, the thought of Camus is Humaniste, the men revolts against death, the injustice and tries to find itself in the only value which can save them Nihilisme, the long complicity of the men to the catches with their destiny. Indeed, Camus lays down with the revolt of the man a condition: its clean limiting. The revolt of Camus is not against all and all. And Camus to write: The end justifies the means? That is possible. But which justifies the end? This question, that the historical thought leaves hanging, the revolt answers: means.

Genealogy

  • Father: Lucien, Auguste Camus, cavist
  • Mother: Catherine Sintes, maidservant
  • maternal Grandparents: Estève Sintes; Catalina Maria Cardona
  • paternal Grandparents: Baptist Jules Marius Camus; Marie-Hortense Cormery

Principal works

  • Revolt in Asturies (1936) Test of collective creation.
  • Back and the place (1937)
  • Weddings (1939) collection of tests and impressions
  • the Myth of Sisyphus (1942) test on the absurdity
  • the Foreigner (1942)
  • Caligula (1944) Part in 4 acts.
  • the Misunderstanding (1944) 3-act play.
  • Reflections on the Guillotine (1947)
  • the Plague (1947; Price of criticism in 1948)
  • the State of siege (1948) Spectacle in 3 parts.
  • Letters with a German friend (1948; published under the pseudonym of Louis Neuville)
  • Right the (1950) Part in 5 acts.
  • Current I, Chronicles 1944-1948 (1950)
  • the Man revolted (1951)
  • Current II, Chronicles 1948-1953
  • the Summer (1954) Test.
  • the Fall (1956)
  • the Exile and the kingdom (Gallimard, 1957) new ( the adulteress , the renegade , the dumb men , the host , Jonas , stone which pushes )
  • Réflexions on the capital punishment (1957) In collaboration with Arthur Koestler.
  • Chronic Algerian, Current III, 1939-1958 (1958)
  • Had the (1959) adaptation to the theater of the novel of Fedor Dostoïevski
  • Notebooks I, May 1935 - February 1942 (1962)
  • Notebooks II, January 1942 - March 1951 (1964)
  • happy Death (1971) Romance
  • the First Man (Gallimard, 1994; published by his/her daughter) Romance unfinished

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