Albert Camus:

Illuminating the Problem of the Human Conscience in Our Time

Note to students: Response is required in some portions of this presentation

O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible. -- Pindar, Greek poet, 5th century B.C.

The Early Years

Born in 1913 in Mondovi, a small French Algerian village. (Arab influence) Father died in 1914 from war wound. All he knew about him was that he had become violently ill at a public execution. (Reflected in The Stranger) Early schooling in Algiers influenced his beliefs about the outsider. (Saw the native Moslem society near school). Involvement with theater, art, literature, film, and soccer influenced his views about life.

I learned that a ball never arrives from the direction you expect it. That helped me later in life, especially in mainland France, where nobody plays straight.

The Later Years

In 1933 he enrolled at the University of Algiers and specialized in philosophy and sociology. (Dissertation was on the thoughts, writings of St. Augustine Christian influence) Never really held stable employment and contended with recurring bouts of tuberculosis. (This informed his views about life being a Sisyphean struggle and his sense of the Absurd). Critical of capital punishment, the Nazi Occupation, and Marxism-Leninism. (Became a outspoken champion of individual freedom). Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

. . . with what feelings (can I) accept this honor at a time when other writers in Europe . . . are condemned to silence, and even at a time when the country of (my) birth is going through unending misery?

January 4, 1960: Albert Camus is killed in a traffic accident outside of Paris.

I continue to believe that this world had no ultimate meaning, but I know that something in it has meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one.
-- Camus, from Letters to a German Friend

Camus Themes
The Absurd Revolt The Outsider Guilt and Innocence Christianity vs. Paganism Individual vs. History and Mass Culture Suicide The Death Penalty
As we go through the following screens, connect six of these to The Stranger.

Perhaps the greatest inspiration and example that Camus provides for contemporary readers is the lesson that it is still possible for a serious thinker to face the modern world . . . With hardly a grain of hope, yet utterly without cynicism. -- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Absurd

(comes from Latin surdis, meaning irrational. Also where we get mathematical term surd or an irrational number)

The concept of absurdity comes from the idea that there is a fundamental disharmony in our existence. It results from our human desire for meaning, order and purpose in life and the blank, indifferent silence of the universe. We inhabit a world that is deaf to our protests.
For Camus, there are three responses to this predicament: Physical suicide (he says this is cowardly) Religion (he calls this philosophical suicide) Acceptance (he says this is the only valid solution)

Revolt

(a spirit of opposition against any perceived unfairness, oppression, or indignity in the human condition)

The rebel, according to Camus, believes that there is a common good more important than his own destiny. It is a response to the absurd. This rebellion for the good of a community is a core principle of his ethics and it is one of the things that sets his philosophy apart from existentialism.

The Outsider
Camus works are often written from the viewpoint of the stranger or the outsider who seems to observe everything, even his own behavior, from an outside perspective. The perspective of the exile became his hallmark, giving a cool, objective (zero-degree) precision to his work. It was also what he longed for in friendships, community, and brotherhood.

 He concludes in the novel The Fall, that despite our belief that we are all righteous, the truth is everyone is guilty. But, Camus believes, no human being has a right to pass final moral judgment on another.

Guilt and Innocence

Christianity vs. Paganism

Camus had a pagan world view, but he also believed in the Augustinian sense of original sin, universal innocence, and the intrinsic beauty and value of life. Ultimately, he believes in the meaningfulness of man.

The Individual vs. History and Mass Culture

This is a major theme of early twentieth-century European literature, the idea that the rise of the modern mass civilization and its suffocating effects of alienation and dehumanization. Camus showed this by having his characters become by-products of an automated world. They became more like robots working through a meaningless type of life.

Suicide and Sisyphus

Camus ultimately felt that suicide was never an option. But he still had to address how man faces the absurdity of existence. He uses the myth of Sisyphus to explain. The myth figure survives the monotony of existence by finding value, rather than meaning in life. When we approach the meaningless with hope, it ceases to torment us. If our condition is unjust we have only one way of overcoming it we must be just.

The Death Penalty

Using Camus own words:

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminals deed, however calculated, can be compared.
Camus did not live to see the day the death penalty was abolished in Europe, but it is now an essential prerequisite for membership in the European Union.

So is he an existentialist?
Camus himself denied that he was an existentialist. What do you think? What would or would not make Albert Camus philosophy existential?

It would not, then, be much of an error to read The Stranger as a story of a man who, without any heroic posturing, is willing to die for the truth. Once, paradoxically again, I said that I tried to symbolize in my character the only Christ of which we are worthy. -- Albert Camus