Albert Camus
Albert Camus ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January
1960) was a French Nobel Prize winning author,
journalist, and philosopher.
His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy
known as absurdism.
He wrote in his essay "The Rebel" that his
whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy
of nihilism while still delving deeply into
individual and sexual freedom.
Camus did not consider himself to be an existentialist
despite usually being classified as one (even
during his own lifetime).
In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any
ideological associations: "No, I am not an
existentialist.
Sartre and I are always surprised to see our
names linked...".
Camus was born in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir
family.
He studied at the University of Algiers, where
he was goalkeeper for the university association
football team, until he contracted tuberculosis
in 1930.
In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International
Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement
after his split with Garry Davis's Citizens
of the World movement.
The formation of this group, according to
Camus, was intended to "denounce two ideologies
found in both the USSR and the USA" regarding
their idolatry of technology.
Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for
Literature "for his important literary production,
which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates
the problems of the human conscience in our
times".
Early years
Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in
Dréan (then known as Mondovi) in French Algeria
to a Pied-Noir family.
His mother was of Spanish descent and was
half-deaf.
His father Lucien, a poor agricultural worker,
died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during
World War I, while serving as a member of
the Zouave infantry regiment.
Camus and his mother lived in poor conditions
during his childhood in the Belcourt section
of Algiers.
In 1923, Camus was accepted into the lycée
and eventually he was admitted to the University
of Algiers.
After he contracted tuberculosis in 1930,
he had to end his football activities (he
had been a goalkeeper for the university team)
and reduce his studies to part-time.
To earn money, he also took odd jobs: as private
tutor, car parts clerk and assistant at the
Meteorological Institute.
He completed his licence de philosophie (BA)
in 1935; in May 1936, he successfully presented
his thesis on Plotinus, Néo-Platonisme et
Pensée Chrétienne (Neo-Platonism and Christian
Thought), for his diplôme d'études supérieures
(roughly equivalent to an MA thesis).
Camus joined the French Communist Party in
the spring of 1935, seeing it as a way to
"fight inequalities between Europeans and
'natives' in Algeria".
He did not suggest he was a Marxist or that
he had read Das Kapital, but did write, "We
might see communism as a springboard and asceticism
that prepares the ground for more spiritual
activities."
In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian
Communist Party (PCA) was founded.
Camus joined the activities of the Algerian
People's Party (Le Parti du Peuple Algérien),
which got him into trouble with his Communist
party comrades.
As a result, in 1937 he was denounced as a
Trotskyite and expelled from the party.
Camus went on to be associated with the French
anarchist movement.
The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced
him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des
Étudiants Anarchistes (Anarchist Student
Circle) as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist
thought.
Camus wrote for anarchist publications such
as Le Libertaire, La révolution Proletarienne
and Solidaridad Obrera (Workers' Solidarity,
the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (National
Confederation of Labor)).
Camus stood with the anarchists when they
expressed support for the uprising of 1953
in East Germany.
He again allied with the anarchists in 1956,
first in support of the workers' uprising
in Poznań, Poland, and then later in the
year with the Hungarian Revolution.
Marriages
In 1934, Camus married Simone Hié, but the
marriage ended as a consequence of infidelities
on both sides.
In 1935, he founded Théâtre du Travail (Worker's
Theatre), renamed Théâtre de l'Equipe (Team's
Theatre) in 1937.
It lasted until 1939.
From 1937 to 1939 he wrote for a socialist
paper, Alger-Républicain.
His work included an account of the peasants
who lived in Kabylie in poor conditions, which
apparently cost him his job.
From 1939 to 1940, he briefly wrote for a
similar paper, Soir-Republicain.
He was rejected by the French army because
of his TB.
In 1940, Camus married Francine Faure, a pianist
and mathematician.
Although he loved her, he had argued passionately
against the institution of marriage, dismissing
it as unnatural.
Even after Francine gave birth to twins, Catherine
and Jean, on 5 September 1945, he continued
to joke to friends that he was not cut out
for marriage.
Camus conducted numerous affairs, particularly
an irregular and eventually public affair
with the Spanish-born actress María Casares.
In the same year, Camus began to work for
Paris-Soir magazine.
In the first stage of World War II, the so-called
Phoney War, Camus was a pacifist.
In Paris during the Wehrmacht occupation,
on 15 December 1941, Camus witnessed the execution
of Gabriel Péri; it crystallized his revolt
against the Germans.
He moved to Bordeaux with the rest of the
staff of Paris-Soir.
In the same year he finished his first books,
The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus.
He returned briefly to Oran, Algeria in 1942.
Literary career
During the war Camus joined the French Resistance
cell Combat, which published an underground
newspaper of the same name.
This group worked against the Nazis, and in
it Camus assumed the nom de guerre Beauchard.
Camus became the paper's editor in 1943.
He first met Sartre at the dress rehearsal
of Sartre's play, The Flies, in June 1943.
When the Allies liberated Paris in August
1944, Camus witnessed and reported the last
of the fighting.
Soon after the event on 6 August 1945, he
was one of the few French editors to publicly
express opposition and disgust to the United
States' dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
He resigned from Combat in 1947 when it became
a commercial paper.
After the war, Camus began frequenting the
Café de Flore on the Boulevard Saint-Germain
in Paris with Sartre and others.
He also toured the United States to lecture
about French thought.
Although he leaned left, politically, his
strong criticisms of Communist doctrine did
not win him any friends in the Communist parties
and eventually alienated Sartre.
In 1949, his TB returned and Camus lived in
seclusion for two years.
In 1951, he published The Rebel, a philosophical
analysis of rebellion and revolution which
expressed his rejection of communism.
Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries
in France, the book brought about the final
split with Sartre.
The dour reception depressed Camus; he began
to translate plays.
Camus's first significant contribution to
philosophy was his idea of the absurd.
He saw it as the result of our desire for
clarity and meaning within a world and condition
that offers neither, which he expressed in
The Myth of Sisyphus and incorporated into
many of his other works, such as The Stranger
and The Plague.
Despite his split from his "study partner",
Sartre, some still argue that Camus falls
into the existentialist camp.
He specifically rejected that label in his
essay "Enigma" and elsewhere (see: The Lyrical
and Critical Essays of Albert Camus).
The current confusion arises, in part, because
many recent applications of existentialism
have much in common with many of Camus's practical
ideas (see: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death).
But, his personal understanding of the world
(e.g., "a benign indifference", in The Stranger),
and every vision he had for its progress (e.g.,
vanquishing the "adolescent furies" of history
and society, in The Rebel) undoubtedly set
him apart.
In the 1950s, Camus devoted his efforts to
human rights.
In 1952, he resigned from his work for UNESCO
when the UN accepted Spain as a member under
the leadership of General Franco.
In 1953, he criticized Soviet methods to crush
a workers' strike in East Berlin.
In 1956, he protested against similar methods
in Poland (protests in Poznań) and the Soviet
repression of the Hungarian revolution in
October.
Camus maintained his pacifism and resisted
capital punishment anywhere in the world.
He wrote an essay against capital punishment
in collaboration with Arthur Koestler, the
writer, intellectual and founder of the League
Against Capital Punishment.
He was consistent in his call for non-aggression
in Algeria.
When the Algerian War began in 1954, Camus
was confronted with a moral dilemma.
He identified with the pied-noirs such as
his own parents and defended the French government's
actions against the revolt.
He argued that the Algerian uprising was an
integral part of the 'new Arab imperialism'
led by Egypt and an 'anti-Western' offensive
orchestrated by Russia to 'encircle Europe'
and 'isolate the United States'.
Although favouring greater Algerian autonomy
or even federation, though not full-scale
independence, he believed that the pied-noirs
and Arabs could co-exist.
During the war he advocated a civil truce
that would spare the civilians, which was
rejected by both sides, who regarded it as
foolish.
Behind the scenes, he began to work for imprisoned
Algerians who faced the death penalty.
From 1955 to 1956, Camus wrote for L'Express.
In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
literature "for his important literary production,
which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates
the problems of the human conscience in our
times", not for his novel The Fall, published
the previous year, but for his writings against
capital punishment in the essay "Réflexions
sur la Guillotine" (Reflections on the Guillotine).
When he spoke to students at the University
of Stockholm, he defended his apparent inactivity
in the Algerian question; he stated that he
was worried about what might happen to his
mother, who still lived in Algeria.
This led to further ostracism by French left-wing
intellectuals.
Revolutionary Union Movement and Europe
As he wrote in The Rebel (in the chapter about
"The Thought on Midday"), Camus was a follower
of the ancient Greek 'Solar Tradition' (la
pensée solaire).
In 1947–48, he founded the Revolutionary
Union Movement (Groupes de liaison internationale
– GLI) a trade union movement in the context
of revolutionary syndicalism (Syndicalisme
révolutionnaire).
According to Olivier Todd, in his biography,
'Albert Camus, une vie', it was a group opposed
to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement
of André Breton.
For more, see the book Alfred Rosmer et le
mouvement révolutionnaire internationale
by Christian Gras.
His colleagues were Nicolas Lazarévitch,
Louis Mercier, Roger Lapeyre, Paul Chauvet,
Auguste Largentier, Jean de Boë (see the
article: "Nicolas Lazarévitch, Itinéraire
d'un syndicaliste révolutionnaire" by Sylvain
Boulouque in the review Communisme, n° 61,
2000).
His main aim was to express the positive side
of surrealism and existentialism, rejecting
the negativity and the nihilism of André
Breton.
From 1943, Albert Camus had correspondence
with Altiero Spinelli who founded the European
Federalist Movement in Milan—see Ventotene
Manifesto and the book "Unire l'Europa, superare
gli stati", Altiero Spinelli nel Partito d'Azione
del Nord Italia e in Francia dal 1944 al 1945-annexed
a letter by Altiero Spinelli to Albert Camus.
In 1944 Camus founded the "French Committee
for the European Federation" (Comité Français
pour la Féderation Européene – CFFE) declaring
that Europe "can only evolve along the path
of economic progress, democracy and peace
if the nation states become a federation."
From 22–25 March 1945, the first conference
of the European Federalist Movement was organised
in Paris with the participation of Albert
Camus, George Orwell, Emmanuel Mounier, Lewis
Mumford, André Philip, Daniel Mayer, François
Bondy and Altiero Spinelli.
This specific branch of the European Federalist
Movement disintegrated in 1957 after Winston
Churchill's ideas about the European integration
rose to dominance.
Death
Camus died on 4 January 1960 at the age of
46, in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand
Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin.
In his coat pocket was an unused train ticket.
He had planned to travel by train with his
wife and children, but at the last minute
he accepted his publisher's proposal to travel
with him.
The driver of the Facel Vega car, Michel Gallimard,
who was Camus's publisher and close friend,
also died in the accident.
In August 2011, the Milan newspaper Corriere
della Sera reported a theory that the writer
had been the victim of a Soviet plot, but
Camus's biographer Olivier Todd did not consider
it credible.
Camus was buried in the Lourmarin Cemetery,
Lourmarin, Vaucluse, France.
He was the second-youngest recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling.
He was survived by his wife and twin son and
daughter, Jean and Catherine, who hold the
copyrights to his work.
Two of Camus's works were published posthumously.
The first, entitled A Happy Death (1970),
featured a character named Patrice Mersault,
comparable to The Stranger's Meursault.
There is scholarly debate as to the relationship
between the two books.
The second was an unfinished novel, The First
Man (1995), which Camus was writing before
he died.
The novel was an autobiographical work about
his childhood in Algeria.
Summary of absurdism
Many writers have addressed the Absurd, each
with his or her own interpretation of what
the Absurd is and what comprises its importance.
For example, Sartre recognizes the absurdity
of individual experience, while Kierkegaard
explains that the absurdity of certain religious
truths prevent us from reaching God rationally.
Camus regretted the continued reference to
himself as a "philosopher of the absurd".
He showed less interest in the Absurd shortly
after publishing Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The
Myth of Sisyphus).
To distinguish his ideas, scholars sometimes
refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring
to "Camus's Absurd".
His early thoughts appeared in his first collection
of essays, L'Envers et l'endroit (Betwixt
and Between) in 1937.
Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication
in his second collection of essays, Noces
(Nuptials), in 1938.
In these essays Camus reflects on the experience
of the Absurd.
In 1942 he published the story of a man living
an absurd life as L'Étranger (The Stranger).
In the same year he released Le Mythe de Sisyphe
(The Myth of Sisyphus), a literary essay on
the Absurd.
He also wrote a play about Caligula, a Roman
Emperor, pursuing an absurd logic.
The play was not performed until 1945.
The turning point in Camus's attitude to the
Absurd occurs in a collection of four letters
to an anonymous German friend, written between
July 1943 and July 1944.
The first was published in the Revue Libre
in 1943, the second in the Cahiers de Libération
in 1944, and the third in the newspaper Libertés,
in 1945.
The four letters were published as Lettres
à un ami allemand (Letters to a German Friend)
in 1945, and were included in the collection
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.
Ideas on the absurd
Camus presents the reader with dualisms such
as happiness and sadness, dark and light,
life and death, etc.
He emphasizes the fact that happiness is fleeting
and that the human condition is one of mortality;
for Camus, this is cause for a greater appreciation
for life and happiness.
In Le Mythe, dualism becomes a paradox: we
value our own lives in spite of our mortality
and in spite of the universe's silence.
While we can live with a dualism (I can accept
periods of unhappiness, because I know I will
also experience happiness to come), we cannot
live with the paradox (I think my life is
of great importance, but I also think it is
meaningless).
In Le Mythe, Camus investigates our experience
of the Absurd and asks how we live with it.
Our life must have meaning for us to value
it.
If we accept that life has no meaning and
therefore no value, should we kill ourselves?
In Le Mythe, Camus suggests that 'creation
of meaning', would entail a logical leap or
a kind of philosophical suicide in order to
find psychological comfort.
But Camus wants to know if he can live with
what logic and lucidity has uncovered – if
one can build a foundation on what one knows
and nothing more.
Creation of meaning is not a viable alternative
but a logical leap and an evasion of the problem.
He gives examples of how others would seem
to make this kind of leap.
The alternative option, namely suicide, would
entail another kind of leap, where one attempts
to kill absurdity by destroying one of its
terms (the human being).
Camus points out, however, that there is no
more meaning in death than there is in life,
and that it simply evades the problem yet
again.
Camus concludes, that we must instead 'entertain'
both death and the absurd, while never agreeing
to their terms.
Meursault, the absurdist hero of L'Étranger,
has killed a man and is scheduled to be executed.
Caligula ends up admitting his absurd logic
was wrong and is killed by an assassination
he has deliberately brought about.
However, while Camus possibly suggests that
Caligula's absurd reasoning is wrong, the
play's anti-hero does get the last word, as
the author similarly exalts Meursault's final
moments.
Camus made a significant contribution to a
viewpoint of the Absurd, and always rejected
nihilism as a valid response.
Camus's understanding of the Absurd promotes
public debate; his various offerings entice
us to think about the Absurd and offer our
own contribution.
Concepts such as cooperation, joint effort
and solidarity are of key importance to Camus,
though they are most likely sources of 'relative'
versus 'absolute' meaning.
In The Rebel, Camus identifies rebellion (or
rather, the values indicated by rebellion)
as a basis for human solidarity.
Opposition to totalitarianism
Throughout his life, Camus spoke out against
and actively opposed totalitarianism in its
many forms.
Early on, Camus was active within the French
Resistance to the German occupation of France
during World War II, even directing the famous
Resistance journal, Combat.
On the French collaboration with Nazi occupiers
he wrote: "Now the only moral value is courage,
which is useful here for judging the puppets
and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the
name of the people."
After liberation, Camus remarked, "This country
does not need a Talleyrand, but a Saint-Just."
The reality of the bloody postwar tribunals
soon changed his mind: Camus publicly reversed
himself and became a lifelong opponent of
capital punishment.
Camus's well-known falling out with Sartre
is linked to this opposition to totalitarianism.
Camus detected a reflexive totalitarianism
in the mass politics espoused by Sartre in
the name of radical Marxism.
This was apparent in his work L'Homme Révolté
(The Rebel) which not only was an assault
on the Soviet police state, but also questioned
the very nature of mass revolutionary politics.
Camus continued to speak out against the atrocities
of the Soviet Union, a sentiment captured
in his 1957 speech, The Blood of the Hungarians,
commemorating the anniversary of the 1956
Hungarian Revolution, an uprising crushed
in a bloody assault by the Red Army.
Football
Camus was once asked by his friend Charles
Poncet which he preferred, football or the
theatre.
Camus is said to have replied, "Football,
without hesitation."
Camus played as goalkeeper for Racing Universitaire
d'Alger (RUA won both the North African Champions
Cup and the North African Cup twice each in
the 1930s) junior team from 1928–30.
The sense of team spirit, fraternity, and
common purpose appealed to Camus enormously.
In match reports Camus would often attract
positive comment for playing with passion
and courage.
Any aspirations in football disappeared at
age 17, upon contracting tuberculosis—then
incurable, Camus was bedridden for long and
painful periods.
When Camus was asked in the 1950s by an alumni
sports magazine for a few words regarding
his time with the RUA, his response included
the following:
Camus was referring to a sort of simplistic
morality he wrote about in his early essays,
the principle of sticking up for your friends,
of valuing bravery and fair-play.
Camus's belief was that political and religious
authorities try to confuse us with over-complicated
moral systems to make things appear more complex
than they really are, potentially to serve
their own needs.
Works
Novels
The Stranger (L'Étranger, often translated
as The Outsider) (1942)
The Plague (La Peste) (1947)
The Fall (La Chute) (1956)
A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse) (written
1936–1938, published posthumously 1971)
The First Man (Le premier homme) (incomplete,
published posthumously 1995)
Short stories
Exile and the Kingdom (L'exil et le royaume)
(collection) (1957)
"The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère")
"The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat
ou un esprit confus")
"The Silent Men" ("Les Muets")
"The Guest" ("L'Hôte")
"Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste
au travail")
"The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")
"The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère")
"The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat
ou un esprit confus")
"The Silent Men" ("Les Muets")
"The Guest" ("L'Hôte")
"Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste
au travail")
"The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")
Non-fiction books
Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism (1935)
Betwixt and Between (L'envers et l'endroit,
also translated as The Wrong Side and the
Right Side) (Collection, 1937)
Nuptials (Noces) (1938)
The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe)
(1942)
The Rebel (L'Homme révolté) (1951)
Notebooks 1935–1942 (Carnets, mai 1935 —
fevrier 1942) (1962)
Notebooks 1943–1951 (1965)
Notebooks 1951–1959 (2008) Published as
"Carnets Tome III : Mars 1951 – December
1959" (1989)
Plays
Caligula (performed 1945, written 1938)
Requiem for a Nun (Requiem pour une nonne,
adapted from William Faulkner's novel by the
same name) (1956)
The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu) (1944)
The State of Siege (L' Etat de Siège) (1948)
The Just Assassins (Les Justes) (1949)
The Possessed (Les Possédés, adapted from
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Demons) (1959)
Essays
Create Dangerously (Essay on Realism and Artistic
Creation) (1957)
The Ancient Greek Tragedy (Parnassos lecture
in Greece) (1956)
The Crisis of Man (Lecture at Columbia University)
(1946)
Why Spain?
(Essay for the theatrical play L' Etat de
Siège) (1948)
Reflections on the Guillotine (Réflexions
sur la guillotine) (Extended essay, 1957)
Neither Victims Nor Executioners (Combat)
(1946)
Collected essays
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1961) –
a collection of essays selected by the author,
including the 1945 Lettres à un ami allemand
(Letters to a German Friend) and A Defense
of Intelligence, a 1945 speech given at a
meeting organized by Amitié Française
Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
Youthful Writings (1976)
Between Hell and Reason: Essays from the Resistance
Newspaper "Combat", 1944–1947 (1991)
Camus at "Combat": Writing 1944–1947 (2005)
Albert Camus Contre la Peine de Mort (2011)
