Born on November 7, 1913 in Mandoui, Algeria, Albert Camus earned a worldwide reputation as a novelist and essayist and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. Though his writings, and in some measure against his will, he became the leading moral voice of his generation during the 1950’s. Camus died at the height of his fame, in an automobile accident near Sens, France on January 4, 1960.
Camus’s deepest philosophical interests were in Western philosophy, among them Socrates, Pascal, Spinoza, and Nietsche. His interest in philosophy was almost exclusively moral in character. Camus came to the conclusion that none of the speculative systems of the past could provide and positive guidance for human life or any guarantee of the validity of human value. Camus also concluded that suicide is the only serious philosophical problem. He asks whether it makes any sense to go on living once the meaninglessness of human life is fully understood.
Camus referred to this meaninglessness as the “absurdity” of life. He believed that his “absurdity” is the “failure of the world to satisfy the human demand that it provide a basis for human values-for our personal ideals and for our judgments of right and wrong.” He maintained that suicide cannot be regarded as an adequate response to the “experience of absurdity.” He says that suicide is an admission of incapacity, and such an admission is inconsistent with that human pride to which Camus openly appeals.
The Essay on Meaning to Human Life
Is there any meaning to human life? After listening to the first two lectures I gathered what I felt to be Professor Amrbosio’s definitions of the hero and the saint. I took notes and after going back through and reading them it helped me to put a few things together. He asks the question about whether or not human existence is meaningful or absurd. We live in a hostile and deadly environment so ...
Camus states, “there is nothing equal to the spectacle of human pride.” Furthermore, Camus also dealt with the topic of revolution in his essay The Rebel. Camus rejected what he alls “metaphysical revolt,” which he sees as a “radical refusal of the human condition as such,” resulting either in suicide or in a “demonic attempt to remake the world in the image of man.”
Although often considered an existentialist, Camus had his own way of thinking and often disagreed with many existentialist thinkers. Camus was a brilliant writer as well as a philosopher and although complicated his views will always be inspiration for further thought.
