Albert Camus: life, personality, works

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Vladimir State University named after Alexander Grigorievich and Nokolai Grigorievich Stoletovs

ALBERT CAMUS: LIFE, PERSONALITY, WORKS

Andreeva K.A. - student,

Matayr T.I. - scientific supervisor

Abstract

The author of this article considers life story of Albert Camus, a great existentialist philosopher. The article also deals with the number of his well-known works, their content and main ideas.

Key words: Albert Camus, existentialism, “The Rebel”, “The Myth of Sisyphus”

Аннотация

АЛЬБЕР КАМЮ: ЖИЗНЬ, ЛИЧНОСТЬ, ТВОРЧЕСТВО

Андреева К.А. - студентка, Матяр Т.И. - научный руководитель, доцент

В данной статье автор рассматривает биографию великого философа экзистенциалиста - Альбера Камю. Так же приведены ряд его известных произведений и их содержание.

Ключевые слова: Альбер Камю, экзистенциализм, «Бунтующий человек», «Миф о Сизифе».

The main text

I felt enormous powers inside. It was only necessary to find a place to apply them. My poverty could not be an obstacle for my powers, because the sun and see cost nothing in Africa, rather an obstacle could be a prejudice and foolishness.

Albert Camus “The Wrong Side and the Right Side” (L'Envers et l'endroit) Albert Camus is a French thinker, well-known journalist, author and playwright. Throughout his life, he refused to call himself an existentialist, and denied being a philosopher in a broader sense. The first point can be explained by the fact that while developing his creative ideas he gradually moved away from existentialism and his existentialist points of view. Second point is explained by the fact that Camus has not created any philosophical system. His works have no accurate definitions and conceptual analysis. Although, surprisingly enough, his unconventional thinking is clear to any philosopher. One should not leave unnoticed the fact that Camus received a philosophical education, but he never taught philosophy. However, he has a number of philosophical works: "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1943), "The Rebellion Note" (1945), "Letters to a German Friend" (1945), "The Rebel" (1951).

He ignored or opposed systematic philosophy, had little faith in rationalism, asserted rather than argued many of his main ideas, presented others in metaphors, was preoccupied with immediate and personal experience, and brooded over such questions as the meaning of life in the face of death.

Albert Camus was born in 1913 in a small town of Mondovi in French Algeria into an ordinary family of agricultural workers. Soon the World War I started and his father was recalled to military service and later on died of shrapnel wounds suffered at the battle of the Marne. After his father's death, Camus, his mother, and older brother moved to Algiers, which at that time was the centre of the department of the same name. Camus's mother got a job as a laundress, washing linen for the local aristocrats. Her wages were hardly enough to raise all her sons. In 1924, Camus finished elementary school in a poor area of Algeria and continued his studies in the French high school, which allowed graduates to enter university without examination.

After graduating from the French high school, Camus entered the philosophical and historical faculty of the local university. At that time he read books by Jaspers, Nietzsche, Shestov, Dostoyevsky and many other philosophers. For graduation, Camus wrote his thesis, which was called "Christian metaphysics and Platonism." The main theme of his diploma was the relationship of Christian and pagan thought that would be an important part of Camus philosophizing. His work “The Rebel" contains pages dedicated to his thesis work, in addition in this work he considers the systematic revolt development from the metaphysical and historical revolt and up to the revolt in art. The main idea that the author himself wants to convey is that of freedom, which is expressed in a riot and gives meaning to human life. philosophical camus uprising metaphysical

In his student years Camus became a Communist Party member, but he was denounced as a Trotskyite and expelled from the party. After his disillusionment with and eventual expulsion from the Communist Party, Camus took interest in the theater. He reorganized his dramatic company and renamed it the Thйвtre de l'Equipe (the Theater of the Team). The name meant a new emphasis on classic drama and avant-garde aesthetics and a shift away from labor politics and agitprop. After his success in the theater there came a turning point in Camus's life. The 1940's witnessed Camus' gradual ascendance to the rank of world-class literary intellectual. He became an internationally recognized novelist, dramatist, journalist, philosophical essayist, and champion of freedom. This period of his life began inauspiciously - war in Europe, the occupation of France, official censorship. In December of 1940 he returned to Algeria. To make ends meet he taught part-time at a private school. At that time he was finishing his first novel L'Etranger (The Stranger), which was finally published in 1942 and propelled him into immediate literary renown. Camus returned to France in 1942 and a year later began working for the clandestine newspaper Combat, the voice of the French Resistance movement. During this period he also published Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), his philosophical anatomy of suicide and the absurd.

Many believe that the thoughts of the life meaning and suicide came to the writer because of the hard current life situation. However it was not only his personal bad luck that inspired him to write this book, but also the dominant political situation in the world. "The Myth of Sisyphus" begins with the words, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer." An important issue to study for Camus was whether the life meaning depended on human biological factors or their own human values. That was an important ethical and in its way philosophical question that Camus put at the time, when in 1940s there was the reassessment of human values and the current political situation because of the German fascism. Anyone striving to understand his life meaning or find it looks for an answer in the surrounding world. Man studying the surrounding world i. e the nature realizes its striking difference from himself. Studying it, with the naked eye one can see its indifference to one's concerns. Camus interprets this fact as "initial hostility of the world." Man is not able to understand the things around him. Camus describes the world around as irrational. He states that a man should fight with the world, its irrationality, but he also says that this struggle will not be a success. According to Camus Sisyphus is the symbol of the human condition. Sisyphus was condemned by the Greek gods to heavy and useless labor: every day he rolled a heavy stone onto the top of a very high mountain only to watch it roll back to bottom. Sisyphus then had to trudge down the mountain to begin the task again, repeating this for all eternity. Camus was fascinated by this myth, because it seemed to him to epitomize something of the meaninglessness and absurdity of our lives.

Camus says that Sisyphus greatness arose from the fact that he knew about his work endlessness, but humbly endured this punishment, and did not ask for gods' forgiveness. According to Camus, Sisyphus is a free man, who revolted against the gods, thus choosing his destiny. "But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Camus tells about the tragic optimism, noting that the desperate struggle of man against inhumanity is the highest source of joy and happiness. Camus's thoughts are not groundless. They reflect the political, economic and social situation formed in France during its occupation by Nazi Germany and the Second World War. His work expressed the French people adamant refusal to accept the "new order" and their willingness to wage a fierce struggle against the enemy.

In late 1940s his other books such as La Peste (The Plague), 1947, L'Йtat de siиge (The State of Siege), 1948, Les Justes (The Just Assassins), 1949, were published. The Plague tells the story of a plague sweeping the Algerian city of Oran. It raises the questions of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, from doctors and vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace. The Plague is in part a historical allegory, in which the plague signifies the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944 during World War II.

In 1957 Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize “For his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our time“. Presenting the Prize to Camus a representative of the Swedish Academy Andres Esterling noted that “Camus's philosophic views reflected the acute contradiction between acceptance of human existence and awareness that death is real”. Delivering his reciprocal speech Camus said that the purpose of all his writings had been „to avoid outright lies and to oppose oppression”. When Camus received the Nobel Prize, he was only forty-four and he himself admitted that by that time he had reached the point of creative maturity. He had extensive creative plans as evidenced by his notebooks and recollections of his friends. But these plans were not destined to have been realized. Early in 1960 the write died in a road accident in the south of France.

Camus' writings remain the primary reason for his continuing importance and the chief source of his cultural legacy. Camus was a writer of remarkable integrity who lived an extraordinary life, and offers a moral outlook that speaks to our time. His words and actions taken together embody liberal democratic values - tolerance, justice, liberty, open-mindedness, respect for individuality, condemnation of violence, and resistance to tyranny.

On a literary level, one of Camus' most original contributions to modern discourse is his distinctive prose style. Terse and hard-boiled, yet at the same time lyrical, capable of emotion and feeling, Camus' style represents an attempt to unite the clarity, elegance, and precision of the French philosophical tradition with manner traditional of 19th century Romantic fiction. When we read Camus we encounter the plain syntax, simple vocabulary, and biting aphorism typical of modern theatre or noir detective fiction. This reconciliation or union of opposing styles is not just an aesthetic gesture on the author's part. It is also a moral and political statement as well. It says that the life of reason and the life of feeling need not be opposed; that intellect and passion can, and should, operate together.

At Stockholm Camus concluded his Nobel acceptance speech with a stirring reminder and challenge to modern writers. “The nobility of our craft,” he declared, “will always be rooted in two commitments, both difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression.” He left behind his work faithful to his own credo that the arts of language must always be used in the service of truth and liberty.

Reference

1. В.Н. Кузнецов. Французская буржуазная философия. Из-во «Мысль». Москва, 1970.

2. Мыслители ХХ века. Альбер Камю «Бунтующий человек». Изд-во политической литературы. Москва, 1990.

3. Albert Camus "The Myth of Sisyphus" http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Sisyphus-otherEssays/.

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