If you believe in religion or a divine power,
you may have a clear path between life and afterlife. You may have a neat little story
that explains life’s ultimate meaning and purpose. But, what if you don’t believe
in god? What’s your story as an atheist? How do you find meaning? One of the biggest human dilemmas is our deep
urge or quest for meaning in life, yet when you ask the universe for meaning, it doesn’t
answer. It’s like you spend your entire life writing letters to someone who never
replies. At the core of every human being there is this desire for meaning, but the
world doesn’t care. Philosophers have tried to come up with a
good answer. One of the most logical answers has been nihilism.There is no meaning or purpose.
Then this begs the question, why live if life has no meaning? Yet we all do. 99.9% of us
continue living. So what’s going on? Of course, some thinkers like Dostoevsky returned
to religion and tradition as a response to nihilism. Other philosophers like Nietzsche
offered artistic creativity and philosophical endeavor, but it only applies to a select
minority of artist geniuses who are capable of creating values in society that transcend
their own lives. What about the rest of us? The other 95%? Albert Camus, the French novelist and philosopher,
however, offered an alternative to both religion and nihilism that applies to the majority
of us. He argued that life is absurd, meaningless, contradictory, and it sucks. However, despite
its meaninglessness, absurdity, and contradictions, we grow to love life. Why? To answer this,
Camus, just like his mentor Nietzsche, returned to pre-Christian ancient Greece for an answer.
Nietzsche argued that religions, Christianity in particular, had corrupted the human mind
by obsessing over and giving priority to after-life. As a result, we neglect this life, always
thinking the grass is greener in heaven. The ancient Greeks, however, valued this life
despite believing in an after-life. Today, I’ll look at Albert Camus’s life,
summarize his 4 novels, 2 of his essays, and tell you ten philosophical ideas and secrets
we can learn from his life and writings. I will also answer why later in life Camus’s
understanding of art shifted his views away from revolutionary Marxism, an ideology he
was deeply drawn to in his youth and his philosophy of offering a solution to the meaning of life
for the ordinary people was highly influenced by Marxism. So sit back and pour some coffee
into your French wine and let’s talk absurdism…and Albert Camus. Life
Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in Algeria to a French family. His father died
a year later during WW1, leaving Camus’s mother to care for him and his brother. They
lived in a poor neighbourhood of the capital Algiers with his grandma and his disabled
uncle. At primary school, he met a teacher who helped
him get a scholarship to enter a prestigious school in 1923. Some 30 years later, in his
Nobel Prize speech, Camus dedicated the prize to that same teacher. Despite his working class background, his
European heritage allowed him certain privileges like a good education, enrolment in a football
club that were not available to most local Arab Algerians. But when it comes to health,
there is no privilege. In 1930, Camus aged 17 contracted TB, which put an abrupt stop
to his education and football career, so he moved out of his family home to avoid infecting
others and went to live with his butcher uncle. For Camus, the isolation but most crucially,
the illness, as well as seeing animals being killed to feed people gave him a sharp existential
focus about the nature of life so he became deeply interested in philosophy, specifically
the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, and the atheistic philosophy of Nietzsche
and the egalitarian philosophy of Marx. Through Nietzsche, particularly his influential book,
The Birth of Tragedy, he also discovered Ancient Greek philosophers. I should point out that Anton Chekhov, the
Russian genius also lived with TB for a long period of his life, as a result he also had
a very bleak and pessimistic view of life. Both, however, turned that pessimism to optimism,
Camus mostly through philosophy and Chekhov through storytelling. Not just that, both
Camus and Chekhov were deeply interested and involved in theatre. In 1933, Camus entered the University of Algiers
and not surprisingly he studied philosophy and wrote his thesis on Plotinus, the ancient
Egyptian-born Greco-Roman philosopher who like Plato emphasised ideas over matter, mind
over body. Plotinus was influenced by eastern philosophy as he traveled to Persia and learned
about Indian enlightenment to escape the cycle of reincarnation. Plotinus was also the pioneer
of Neoplatonism which gave Plato’s philosophy an eastern flavour by emphasising unity of
mind and body, and the idea of one universal being. In his university thesis, Camus juxtaposed
Christianity with Ancient Greek philosophy, arguing that the Christian promise of afterlife
made this life almost meaningless and redundant because you could die at birth and go straight
to heaven. Living a long life can only increase your chance of committing more sins which
would take you to hell. It makes sense not to live very long, if heaven is guaranteed
for babies. So basically, for Camus most religions didn’t value this life. Only treated as
a test for afterlife. Camus understood that the Greeks, on the other hand, celebrated
this life despite their belief in a divine power. And no surprise that Camus, just like
Nietzsche, returned to Ancient Greece to find a true atheistic meaning for life in one his
most famous work, The Myth of Sisyphus which I will discuss later. Outside study, Camus had two passions. Actually
three. First, he played goalkeeper in a professional football or soccer team in Algeria. As a goalkeeper,
you have a clear view of the entire football pitch, which gives you a better perspective
in terms of who is who and where they stand, which must have helped him with the power
of philosophical and artistic observation. For Camus football also represented a small
tribe that gave him a sense of belonging, and togetherness with a common purpose and
goal (pun intended). But unfortunately, his football career was cut short after he was
infected with TB. Such is life. From the midst of football tribalism he retreated to an isolated
corner of a butcher’s house like some injured animal. Life’s really absurd. His second passion also involved tribalism,
the theatre and communism. Camus in 1936, joined the French Communist Party and later
the Algerian Communist Party, so he organised a workers’ theatre. After he was expelled
from the party, he continued his theatre involvement because it allowed him that sense of togetherness
and teamwork. Camus was drawn to Marxism because it emphasises group bond. Later in life he
continued to work with theatre and he famously and quite ironically staged Dostoevsky’s
Demons, a novel that questions a communist revolution which I have discussed here. By
then Camus was no longer a communist because he had grown old enough to see the other side
of a communist revolution that began suppressing individual freedom in the USSR. His third passion and perhaps the most important
one too, of course, as a French man or any man, was sex. He married twice, but also had
a lot of sex on the side. I guess a man’s ultimate purpose in life is to pass on his
genes. Camus was blessed with good looks. He was handsome, masculine and had a status
as a successful writer which allowed him access to many women. In 1940, many French were fleeing the French
capital from the German occupation, Camus, however, instead of escaping the fire, moved
to Paris to work for a newspaper. It paid off, as his writing became more popular, he
grew more well-known. In Paris he met the other existentialist giant, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Now, interesting to point out, Camus and Sartre came from two polar opposites: Sartre from
a wealthy bourgeois family while Camus from relative poverty but both found Marxism very
appealing. But later they fell out due to their ideological differences. Sartre was
keen on a Maoist-style revolution while Camus wanted a peaceful reform. His 1942 novel, The Stranger made him a celebrity.
So much so that people paid to attend his lectures. Not just that, he received the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1957, aged 44 making him the second youngest writer ever to receive
the prize after Rudyard Kipling who was 41 in 1907. Such is the absurdities of life, when you
go up, you always have to come down, just like the boulder of Sisyphus. At the height
of his fame and success, in 1960 while returning back from a holiday, the car he was traveling
in crashed into a tree killing him instantly. In his pocket, the police found an unused
train ticket to Paris. He was supposed to travel by train with his wife and kids, but
for some bizarre reason he had chosen to travel by a car, driven by his publisher, Gallimard
who also died in the crash. They also found a 144-page manuscript of his novel in progress,
The First Man, an autobiographical novel about his life growing up in Algeria, perhaps a
novel similar to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, taking a more artistic approach to fiction
and less philosophical. Today Albert Camus is considered one of the
most influential novelist-philosophers of the 20th century. Now I will discuss 4 of his most famous novels
and two of his philosophical essays before I tell you 10 philosophical lessons we can
draw from them. A Happy Death
Albert Camus’s first novel A Happy Death was written sometime between 1936 and 1938
but was published after his death in 1971. Basically, in this novella, Camus is trying
to respond to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Schopenhauer argued that on a deeper level
humans are driven by a blind will to life. We can’t help but continue living despite
how miserable it might be. Nietzsche thought this will to life or survival was too passive
so he changed the will to life to will to power to energise it a bit and give it a bit
of oomph. Albert Camus, however said life is not about surviving or conquering but it
is about our deep desire to be happy. So will to happiness is the premise of the novel. First thing, it is a short novella in two
parts. Part one, titled ‘Natural Death’ is about Patrice Mersault, incidentally the
same name as the protagonist in Camus’s most famous novel, the Stranger. He has a
boring life, boring job and a partner he doesn’t love. It’s very much an early version of
the Stranger. Upon meeting a wealthy yet a disabled man, he decides to kill him to take
his money. This is like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, except that Raskolnikov never
manages to use the money he steals. Part 2 is titled ‘Conscious Death’ depicts
Mersault’s life after he is rich. He still fails to find happiness, despite seeking it
anywhere and everywhere. At the end he becomes seriously ill and on the verge of death, he
is finally happy. It’s an ironic tale of a man seeking a happy life, who ends up getting
happiness when he’s close to death. Albert Camus reverses natural death with conscious
death. The murder in part one is titled a natural death because in nature death comes
somewhat abruptly while dying of an illness in part two is a conscious death because we
are aware of it. The novel raises some important questions like how much we strive for happiness
yet we fail to be happy. In other words, we seek happiness but we don’t know how to
be happy. It’s like a book collector who collects endless books yet cannot read. The Stranger
Published in 1942, The Stranger is Camus’s most famous novel. It tells the story of Mersault,
a French man who lives in Algeria. The story has three main plot points or three deaths:
the death of Mersault’s mother, the murder of an Arab man, and finally his own execution. The awareness of death makes humans unique
in the animal kingdom, so each death awakens something in Mersault from his animal state
of indifference and gives him clarity of sort. If Sartre said we are condemned to be free,
Camus says we are condemned to death, but also to be guilty. So at the heart of the novel is this central
question which Camus poses himself. Quote: "In our society any man who does not weep
at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death." In other words, Mersault
is not only guilty for killing someone, but also because he didn’t cry at his mother’s
funeral. That’s the kind of man he is. Emotionally unavailable. A term used by women today to
describe some men. Mersault gets the news that his mother has
died of old age. He takes time off work to be at her funeral, but contrary to common
societal expectation he doesn’t cry or show sadness. He acts as though nothing has happened.
He drinks, he smokes and he has sex with girlfriend. He even helps his neighbour, Raymond, to have
a revenge sex with an Arab woman who might have betrayed him. Not only that when Raymond
is arrested for assaulting the girl, Mersault helps his friend, parroting his friend’s
words to the police that the woman was unfaithful. Mersault doesn’t ask questions and does
not think if his action might hurt someone. He simply does what he feels at the moment.
In other words, he feels no guilt of what has happened in the past, because he is always
in the present so to speak. For example he is shocked to hear that people negatively
judged him when he sent his mother to live in a nursing home. When Mersault’s boss asks him if he wants
to work in the company’s branch in Paris, he says: whatever. When his girlfriend Marie
asks him if they should get married, his answer is the same: whatever makes you happy. He
doesn’t care either way. His indifferent attitude to life is a real time-bomb, so Camus
cranks it up a notch. One day on a beach, Mersault’s friend, Raymond
is attacked by the brother of the Arab woman he had assaulted with a knife. Raymond gets
his gun to shoot but Mersault grabs the gun from him to stop the murder. Incidentally,
none of the Arab characters are named in the novel. Whether conscious or subconscious on
Camus’s part, it shows the disparity of life between the French and Arabs in Algeria
back then. Later that day, Mersault, while walking on the beach, encounters the same
Arab man with a knife. Mersault still has Raymond’s pistol so he shoots the Arab man,
not one time but five times. He is arrested and put in prison. He promptly confesses to
the murder. But why did you kill him? His only explanation is that the sun was too hot
and bright so he acted instinctively and somewhat reflexively. That’s it. While in prison, days turn to weeks, then
months and years, as he waits for his trial. In court, the focus is not so much on the
murder of an Arab man, but more on Mersault’s inability to cry at his mother’s funeral.
Camus inadvertently shows the disparity of life in Algeria. An actual Arab man is murdered,
yet the prosecutor is more focused on him not crying at his European mother’s funeral.
To be fair to Camus, he perhaps wanted to expose the legal system not from a racial
viewpoint but from an existential viewpoint that if someone doesn’t know how to cry,
he is guilty. If women can cry, why can’t men? That’s the main question the novel
poses. Because he failed to cry, the prosecutor portrays
him as a remorseless monster. He is sentenced to death. As he waits for his execution, Mersault
refuses to see a priest because he doesn’t believe in God and sees no physical way out
of a certain death. As Dostoevsky said in his novel The Idiot, in nature when you face
death, either a wild beast attacking you or your enemy in wars, there is always some hope
of survival because you can battle or struggle to live, but when the state condemns you to
death, there is no hope, no chance of escape. Death is the only certainty. Mersault spends days soul-searching to understand
his fate. Finally he settles on one incredible conclusion. Mersault tells the priest that
we can escape from everything, but nobody can escape death. It doesn’t matter how
you die, but we all do. This fate is sewn in us from the day we are born. This simple,
yet profound conclusion allows Mersault to accept his fate. Not only that, the mere act
of expressing himself, or yelling these words at the priest, also liberates Mersault, in
a kind of Freudian talking therapy or church confession. He reflects, perhaps for the very
first time in his life. He is finally awakened to the human condition. He was an animal but
now he realises death as a human experience. Mersault’s finally happy. Not only that,
he is looking forward to his execution to hear the hatred of the crowd, so he won’t
be alone while dying. In the Stranger, Albert Camus raises two important
issues: our human awareness of death and feeling guilt. The novel has three deaths, one natural,
one illegal murder and one legal murder or execution. The first death, the death of his
mother, arouses little in Mersault. He’s also indifferent to the second death which
he causes. But when it comes to his own execution, he finally wakes up and is completely lucid.
Evolutionarily speaking, humans are perhaps the only species aware of its own death, which
heightens our sense of consciousness. As Martin Heidegger said, the awareness of death makes
human life authentic and meaningful. Albert Camus echoes that arguing that death brings
clarity to our lives. It makes us more conscientious to live a fuller life. The second issue in the novel is guilt. Mersault
is on trial for the murder but the focus is mainly on him not crying at his mother’s
funeral. Camus, perhaps, just like his later compatriot Michel Foucault, was pointing out
that modernity replaced physical punishment with psychological punishment. Pre-modern
world generally punished criminals through physical ordeals, while the modern legal system
stopped physical punishment for the most part, and instead it introduced psychological punishment
by making sure one feels guilt. This is perhaps due to the modern man being too rational.
Mersault is an honest man who confesses to the murder without going through the Raskolnikov
ordeal in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. But his confession is not enough, so the prosecution
tries to break Mersault’s indifference, icy interior by making him feel guilty. So
Camus says to be a modern man is not to be free as his fellow writer Sarte said, but
to be guilty and cry. Modernity, on a fundamental level, is an attempt
to tame nature to benefit humans. But modernity also wants to domesticate man and break their
spirit by making them accept guilt, feel vulnerable and cry. So during the trial, all effort was
on making sure Mersault felt guilt, not so much for the murder, but for not crying at
his mother’s funeral. Today, if men don’t cry or show vulnerability or emotions, they’re
sometimes labeled as toxically masculine. Mersault’s indifference or care-free attitude
towards others makes him dangerous to society, so one has to tame him. By depicting Mersault as a complex character,
Camus recognises that making him feel guilty is a process of taming the wild animal, turning
a wolf into a domestic dog. While it makes the society safer, it can also break the spirit
of others. When a person is on trial, the focus is not on him but others, making him
an example to others. Judicial process is less about punishing the criminal on trial
but more about taming the rest of the society through fear of punishment. Mersault is not tamed. Guilt doesn’t tame
a man. Even death doesn’t tame him. Death makes you realise you’re not a stranger,
but like everyone else, just another human being understanding and anticipating death.
He understands that he’s no different from his mother. Knowing that he’s connected
to others by experiencing death is liberating and finally brings him happiness. He’s part
of a bigger picture. The Plague
The Plague, published in 1947, is also set in Algeria, in the town of Oran, where people
are confronted with a plague epidemic caused by rats. It’s a Kafkaesque novel about how
individual humans are at the mercy of their fate and society and how death is cruel and
random. The novel starts with scores of dead rats
appearing on the streets of Oran. Then the first human death, and soon more deaths follow.
There is panic, but the authorities try to downplay the seriousness of the situation.
Once the death toll rise, the town gates are closed. Nobody can come in or get out, turning
the city into a giant prison. How do people react? When life is good, everyone
is good. When things go south, the real people come out. Some characters like the doctor
genuinely try to help people while the priest uses the opportunity to spread his religious
belief by blaming people’s sins for the plague. Criminals get rich by finding underground
routes smuggling people in and out of town. You throw a plague at them and humans use
the situation to benefit themselves. Except a journalist, who is ironically a stranger,
a visitor in town so he tries to escape the city to see his wife. But when he gets the
chance to escape the fire, he cannot bring himself to see others suffer while he can
be free. He’s the polar opposite of Mersault. He realises that his own happiness would be
tainted if others are not happy. So by him staying in town, Camus shows a glimpse of
humanity, a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of hope. As time passes, things get worse. People who
try to flee town are shot dead. People are physically and psychologically exhausted.
Deaths everywhere. After almost a year, things improve. But the town has changed forever
and those who survive the plague are no longer the same people. In The Plague, Camus looks at the relationship
between the individual and the collective. Is society a bunch of individuals or are we
connected on a deeper level? Can we be individually happy when we see others suffer? The novel
is an allegory of the German occupation of France in the 1940s. Just like the dangers
of Nazism, when the town gets the news of the plague, first they ignore, but by the
time they realise, it is too late. Germany has occupied France and the plague has taken
over the town of Oron. Individual French people could lead a happy
life if they fled France or accepted or collaborated with the Germans. However, Camus says that
individual happiness is somewhat shameful because of a profoundly deeper connection
between humans. Self-sacrifice is deeply embedded in nature. Parents sacrifice for their children,
soldiers for their country. When life’s peaceful, we forget this, but when we face
a real trial, we rise up to the challenge and find that there’s a greater purpose
than saving our own arse. At the beginning, the plague turned saints into sinners and
sinners into saints. But as time passed, the cream rose to the top. Camus shows that we
are not static human beings, but human becoming as Nietzsche said. Our circumstance dictates
a lot of what we are. But at the core, we cannot be happy when we see others bleed.
This only comes at the time of crisis, while in peacetime, we bicker over petty things. But
when there is a genuine social crisis, some rise up to become greater than themselves. The Fall
Published in 1956, The Fall is the last complete novel by Albert Camus. The story is a confession
of a fallen judge, set not in warm Algeria, but in the cold of Paris and Amsterdam. Clamence is a lawyer in Paris. He’s at the
top of his game. He has got money, fame and power. But one night he witnesses a woman
committing suicide by jumping into the river. He does nothing to stop or intervene. He goes
home and forgets it. Days go by, then weeks, then months and years. But the incident has
left a dent in him, a hole in his soul or being. Despite his best effort to forget it,
he feels something inside. Every time there is a negative incident happening to him, he
goes back to that night. A kind of superstition, like a cancer cell, grows inside him that
all the negative things that happen to him can be attributed to his failure to do the
right thing that night. Helping the woman. It gets to the point that he questions himself.
His whole life, he has been nothing but selfish. Every good deed he has done has been for his
own selfishness. Not only that, he also wanted to inflict terrible things onto others. At
least he thought about inflicting pain onto others. His shiny surface life hides a sinister
and dark hidden side where he is nothing but a terrible person, just like in Oscar Wilde’s
novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Upon realisation, his whole shiny castle of
himself crumbles inside him. He stops working. Soon he can no longer keep it. Tolstoy said,
disillusioned men join wars. He considers joining the French residence against the Germans
but sees no point in that. He decides to flee Paris for London, but takes a bizarre Celinesque
route through North Africa, where the issue of religion and god come into focus. But despite
him concluding that God is truly dead and life is truly meaningless, he comes to a deeper
realization that to be human in modern times is to be… you guessed it. Guilty. Yes, a
modern man is always condemned to be guilty. It has nothing to do with religion or god.
It comes from within. That’s where the novel ends. On the outside he lived a successful life,
but it was his own deeper psyche that turned against him, just like in Dostoevsky’s Crime
and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s own inner torment forced him to confess that sealed
his fate. The guilt of not saving the woman, our hero is forever condemned to feel guilty.
You only get one chance in life. Such is the cruelty of existence. One mistake will follow
you for the rest of your life, like some dark shadow at night. I think this novel shows
Camus’s own struggle with women. He was married but also had affairs which must have
made him feel guilty. Nature has dealt men a bad but extremely horny card, with two sacks
producing millions of sperms daily, who all want to get out, and once they are out, you
have to deal with the consequences, the guilt that comes after. Here’s a quote: “I simply
took refuge among women. As you know, they don't really condemn any weakness; they would
be more inclined to try to humiliate or disarm our strength. This is why woman is the reward,
not of the warrior, but of the criminal. She is his harbor, his haven; it is in a woman's
bed that he is generally arrested. Is she not all that remains to us of earthly paradise?”
—The Fall by Albert Camus. In the Stranger, Camus’s protagonist, Mersault
was guilty for killing someone but also for not crying at his mother’s funeral, but
in The fall, the protagonist is guilty not for his action but for his inaction. So to
be or not to be or to do or not to do, either way you’re doomed. So not only are we guilty
for what we do, we are also guilty for what we do not do. Now I will discuss two of his most famous
essays.
The Myth of Sisyphus The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay
by Albert Camus published in 1942 in which he introduces his philosophy of absurdism.
Sisyphus was a Greek titan who was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain. The boulder
would fall down and he would have to go back down and push it back up the mountain. A process
he repeats forever without any hope of change or stop, showing the futility and absurdity
of life. Absurdism simply means we humans seek meaning or purpose in life but the universe
has no answer for it. Since there is no meaning to be found outside, ending one’s life is
the only logical conclusion. If life has no meaning, then why live? But being human, the kind of creature we are,
we are not satisfied with the absurd so according to Camus we have three options. One, to find
freedom by manufacturing hope like in Dostoevsky’s or Franz Kafka’s novels. But this manufactured
hope goes against the absurd which in essence negates future hope. The second option is
to revolt and conquer power, wealth or territory, but unfortunately they don’t last very long.
Just as you gain them, you can also be taken them. The third option is passion, to live
a full life, but it too is temporary and fleeting. Camus’s ultimate answer is to understand
and accept the absurdity of life like Sisyphus. Every time he goes down to get the boulder,
he understands the futility of his life but he accepts it. He doesn’t stop, but pushes
the boulder for eternity. Life in essence is absurd, contradictory and futile. But for
that absurdity, contradictions and futility to exist, human life is necessary. In other
words, because life is absurd, it gives us the impetus to continue living. The alternative
would be a religious view of the afterlife in heaven, which negates this life as meaningless.
As I said earlier, if babies go straight to heaven, then this life is not worth living.
So Camus argues that the absurdity of this life makes it even more worth living. For Camus, life’s happiness is not in its
meaning or purpose but in the struggles of life itself. In other words, we find joy,
not in life being easy or a straight path, instead our truest joys come from life being
a struggle, contradictions and absurd. Camus concludes, quote: ”The struggle itself ... is
enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”. Why? Because he accepts
the absurdity of life. The Rebel
The Rebel is another philosophical essay by Albert Camus published in 1951. Here, too,
Camus tries to answer the inherent injustice of the world. Despite being an atheist, Camus
inherits a deeply Christian value of universal justice from Marxism. I have said this before,
Marxism is a materialist re-interpretation of Christianity as they both emphasise a future
utopia with universal equality and justice. So in this essay, Camus tries to bridge the
huge gap between Marx and Nietzsche. Marx argued that material inequality is the root
cause of all social evils. So we must rebel to correct this by creating a just and equal
society where everyone has equal share of the material resources. Nietzsche, however,
argued, forget about injustice and inequality. We need a hierarchical society that allows
geniuses to flourish and be creative. For Nietzsche an egalitarian society punishes
geniuses and stifles creativity. For Nietzsche, because nature is highly unjust, it allows
creativity to flourish. Marx wanted to tame nature and society and
Nietzsche wanted to celebrate wild creativity of nature and individual freedom. Towards
the end of his life, Camus moved closer to Nietzsche as he was disillusioned with a Marxist
revolution that surpassed freedom. But at the same time, he was deeply concerned about
social injustice and inequality. He says: ”The true rebel is not the person who conforms
to the orthodoxy of some revolutionary ideology but a person who could say “no” to injustice.”
Albert Camus So Camus finally settled on reform as the
best way of rebellion. In other words, Camus wants evolution, not revolution. Marxists
for the most part failed to fully grasp human evolutionary biology so to make a revolution
successful, brute force was used to bend the human will with some disastrous consequences,
killing and imprisoning millions. In other words, a Marxist revolution cannot succeed
without a giant prison next door to send those who disagree. So Camus understood that human
nature is more geared for evolution and reform, not so much for a bloody revolution. Next I will discuss 10 lessons we can learn
from Albert Camus, from his life and his philosophy conveyed through his fiction as well as non-fiction. 10 Lessons
Ok, I have already talked about Albert Camus’s life, summarised his 4 novels and 2 essays.
Now, I will discuss 10 lessons we can learn from his life as well as his writings. One: We’re all strangers on this planet
Albert Camus was born in Algeria into a French family. You could say he was born in the wrong
country. Not just that, his father was French and his mom had Spanish heritage. He later
moved to Paris when it was occupied by the Germans. In some way, he was a stranger in
all these places. We humans cannot choose our family, country, language and culture
we are born into. For Camus, being a stranger also gave him the opportunity to question
his existence. Not just his own, but the entire human existence. What it means to be human
and what it means to seek meaning in life. His unique cultural background gave him a
unique perspective on life. It’s no surprise that he titled one of his novels, The Stranger.
In essence, we are all strangers on this little rock of a planet. We often get bogged down
in cultural differences or dividing people into nationalities, gender or something else,
but fundamentally we are all strangers trying to come to terms with our existence. We are
the true aliens in the world. We have no idea where we have come from. How life started
and how it will end. Yet we don’t lose sleep over it. It’s what it is. So nobody is at
home here, everyone is a stranger. Two: Be part of a team.
The French Revolution had three messages: liberty, equality and fraternity. While freedom
and equality have become buzz words in politics of socialism versus liberalism but it’s
fraternity that is perhaps less understood. It’s more psychological. Albert Camus played
football as a teenager but aged 17, illness meant he had to live in isolation. This solitude
taught him an important lesson. He was happiest when he was part of something bigger than
himself. A team. A tribe. Or a group with a single aim working together to achieve something
big. Be it a football game or even winning a war. Quote: “Everything I know about morality
and the obligations of men, I owe it to football.” — Camus. The desire to belong is incredibly
strong among us. Despite trying to have a more free and solitary life in today’s world,
we seek comfort when we are part of the team. We want to be picked by others. To compensate
for the fact that Camus couldn’t play football after his illness, he joined the Communist
Party, which is a tribe in itself. Even after he became a famous writer, he continued to
work in the theatre to stage works by other writers like Dostoevsky and Faulkner. So for
Camus being part of something bigger than yourself, with a unified goal, gave him fulfillment.
Nietzsche’s philosophy, set forth in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is that of a lone wolf
in a mountain cave, but Camus’s philosophy is communitarian. Throughout history men physically
and psychologically survived in tribal settings, and the sense of camaraderie brought them
together, but in today’s world it’s lost, as families and communities have fallen apart.
In the workplace, loyalty and allegiance have become more transactional and less spiritual,
which has created loneliness resulting in an increase in alcoholism, addiction and consumerism.
So being part of something bigger than yourself teaches you loyalty, responsibility and respect.
In return you feel more fulfilled. Three: Create art.
Albert Camus studied philosophy to become a teacher, but soon found writing to be his
vocation. Just like for Franz Kafka, writing allowed him to cope better with the absurdities
of life. In the absence of meaning, one has to create something. He created four major
novels and many works of nonfiction. Of course, there is debate whether he was a better philosopher
than a novelist, but there is no doubt that through writing fiction he made a dent in
the literary universe which won him The Nobel Prize in Literature. His novels are not the
most artistic like Proust or thrilling like Dostoevsky, but they make up with philosophical
depth. I think Camus also understood storytelling and art are as powerful as food. And I think
this shifted his attitude towards Marxism and socialism. Marxists have a more utilitarian
view of work as a means to an end so there is no value in the work itself but what it
produces. The artist Camus saw profound meaning in the work, in the creation and in the craft
as well as the final product. Material success can feed your stomach but the process of art
creation can nourish your soul. Since the universe doesn’t care, it is incumbent upon
us to care and create something meaningful for ourselves. And art is perhaps the best
way to give life meaning. By art, I don’t mean painting but it can be any craft. The
root of the word art is skilled work or craft so we can find meaning in our work and craft.
Camus even said living is an art form. Quote: “It takes time to live. Like any work of
art, life needs to be thought about.” A Happy Death by Albert Camus. Four: Life’s miseries are random.
Albert Camus supposedly said that dying in a car accident is the most absurd death. Yet,
that is precisely how he died. This is not unique in this case. A lot of famous novelists
have died in ironic ways. Two of the most famous Russian writers, Alexander Pushkin
and Mikhail Lermontov died in a duel which they had fictionalised in their own novels.
Nikolai Gogol went mad which he had written about in his short story, A Madman’s Diary.
But what is interesting in Camus’s case is that he understood that life is for the
most part pretty random. As a result, pain and suffering are also pretty random. Nobody
signs up to be sick. Yet, aged 17 he fell ill. As I said before, he had a train ticket
in his pocket when he died, yet he decided to go by car. When we face hardships, illnesses,
tragedies, or accidents, we often question the unfairness of it. Yet that’s what life
is. It’s for the most part unfair. Camus died at the height of his fame, only three
years after winning the Nobel Prize. He was 46 years old. Yet, it could have been worse.
He could’ve died aged 17 with TB. His attitude was to embrace life with its randomness and
absurdities. Because the value of life is not in its happiness but the life itself.
Quote: “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? But in the end one needs more
courage to live than to kill himself.” A Happy Death by Albert Camus. Camus’s philosophy
was that one must accept the absurdities of life, but also its miseries not by closing
your eyes but… Five: Ignorance is not bliss
Fyodor Dostoevsky and Albert Camus have a lot in common. Both had to deal with the idea
of meaninglessness and nihilism that was spreading in Europe. However, Dostoevsky returned to
faith and tradition on the one hand, and innocence and naivety on the other. So fundamentally
Dostoevsky was against questioning traditions and religion, instead preferred blissful innocence
and faith. Camus, however, was an atheist. For him, religion or naivety was not the answer.
You had to know the cold hard truth of life. He didn’t believe in god. Unlike Dostoevsky,
Camus thought knowledge was liberating. Dostoevsky didn’t want Russians to get exposed to bad
ideas coming from the west. For Camus, that boat had already sailed. You cannot close
your eyes and pretend life is all good and there is a god that would protect you. For
Camus, we are not only in the wilderness, but we are the wilderness, and we have to
come up with a solid solution in our pursuit of meaning, just as we have to build shelter
and find food. But Camus says, a cold shower is always better than no shower. So Camus,
just like Nietzsche, preferred painful truths than comforting lies or blissful naivety. Six: Fearing death is like fearing life
In his first major novel, A Happy Death, Albert Camus talks about two deaths. The first death
is the murder of a crippled man and the second a natural death after an illness. In this
novel, Camus tries to show that we are driven not by our desire to live long as Schopenhauer
said or dominate others as Nietzsche argued, but by our desire to be happy. Quote: "The
craving for happiness seemed to me the noblest thing in man's heart. In my eyes, that justified
everything.” Yet despite his best effort, even committing a murder, he fails to find
happiness. But when he faces his own death, he realises something deeper inside him. Death
is just part of life, just another phase of it. Death often means misery, pain and struggle,
yet it can be happy. Just as the Greek philosopher Epicurus said since we do not and cannot know
death, we should not fear it either. It’s what it is. The fear of death is like having
a monkey on your back which makes you fear life itself. In two of Camus’s novels, when
his protagonists face the real prospect of death, they finally realise they’re happy.
So I guess Camus says, to be really happy, one must fully and completely accept death. Quote:
“He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror
meant to be afraid of life.” Seven: One lives in here and now
In the Stranger, Meursault thinks he cannot change things in life. It makes no difference
whether he loves his girlfriend or not, move to Paris or not. He leaves all those things
to other people to decide. Quote: “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be
sure.” The Stranger—Albert Camus. Even the most crucial act in the novel, the murder,
he says happened because the sun was shining too bright. He lives a dull, indifferent life,
does a dull job and has a dull relationship. You could say, Mersault is a typical human
animal who lives in here and now just millions of us around the world. A good example is
Charles Bukowski who lived his life in somewhat similar fashion, of course he didn’t murder
anyone, but he did live his life as an outsider or stranger who didn’t give an F to anything.
He drank, gambled, had sex, worked dull jobs and wrote poetry and fiction. He didn’t
pretend he was a saint and often confessed at being a dirty bastard. Albert Camus shows
us the animalistic side of our human life. Despite years and centuries of rational thinking
being hammered in us through our education system, most of us just live our lives on
a daily basis. We don’t think about the future and try not to think about the past.
If the past or future makes us anxious, we use alcohol, drugs or social media to bring
us back to the present in order to numb the pain of the past or the anxiety of the future.
So in reality life happens in the here and now. For the most part. Quote: “Maman used
to say that you can always find something to be happy about. In my prison, when the
sky turned red and a new day slipped into my cell, I found out that she was right.”
The Stranger—Albert Camus. We often think of a glass as half empty. It could be much
worse. Mersault in his prison cell, while facing death penalty, finds joy in the shifting
sunlight on the prison wall. So happiness is not out there, it is in here and now. It
only depends on if you can see it or how you see the world. Eight: Crises give us the opportunity to become
greater than ourselves In his novel, the Plague, Camus pits an individual's
desire to be free against society’s goal to continue. In other words, an individual
animal’s desire to live his best life versus the survival of the species as a whole. When
the plague hits the town, people want to save themselves and their loved ones. But as the
plague persists and more people die, there is a switch—you could call it an evolutionary
switch— that is turned on among the people. More people put their own lives on the line
to save others. People say tragedies bring people together, wars unite, and plagues sharpen
our instinct for survival. In this novel, Camus highlights one of the most important
aspects of human life: courage. As we are becoming more rational, we become less and
less courageous. We put our own survival or interest before everyone else’s. However,
the history of humanity has been nothing but a series of calamities confronted by courageous
deeds of those who came before us. When a society faces a disaster, it takes a little
while for us to show our courage. Just like the plague virus that sits deep inside the
human species or nature, and needs a trigger strong enough to bring it out, human courage
is also present deep inside us and when it’s triggered we rise up to the challenge to become
greater than ourselves. The Plague, despite being a despairing novel, is also a hopeful
one about human nature. The courage to help others is closely tied to our survival instinct
as well as our desire to love others. Quote: “To state quite simply what we learn in
times of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.” The Plague—Albert
Camus. In a way you could argue, Camus was responding to the highly individualistic philosophy
of Nietzsche that sometimes the happiness of others can be incredibly meaningful for
an individual. A lone wolf artist has his place in human history but so does a caring
individual who sacrifices his or her happiness to bring joy to others. Quote: “What’s
true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above
themselves.” The Plague—Albert Camus Nine: Life’s meaningless but we are happy.
Albert Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus confronts the biggest absurdity or contradiction
of human existence. Humans seek meaning in life, yet the universe provides no answer.
Quote: “Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing
for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human
need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” The Myth of Sisyphus—Albert Camus. As I discussed earlier, Sisyphus is condemned
to endlessly push the boulder up a mountain. We all wake up, go to work, come home, sleep
and repeat the same things tomorrow. I read books, synthesise the ideas, turn them into
a video, upload, and start a new project and it goes on and on. Parts of the process I
enjoy, but parts of I dislike and even hate, but I have to do, partly to earn a living
and partly because of this primal human urge enjoying the struggle itself. If Sisyphus
were to look at me, he would think it as absurd as I see him pushing the boulder. Albert Camus, perhaps understood that our
religious past has made us a bit soft. Religions offered neat little stories about life’s
purpose which we got us very used to clear paths and solid stories explaining human existence.
So once the religious myth is destroyed by science and rationality, we still crave for
a new story that explains the meaning of life. But Camus says, we should not seek comforting
stories about life but find meaning in its hardship. We enjoy life not because it is
easy, we enjoy it more because it is a struggle. People who stay home all day and do nothing,
are not the happiest people. The happiest people are those who accept life’s struggles.
Life’s meant to be hard, we are meant to struggle and get on with it. The more you
cushion yourself from hardship, the harder life becomes. Sisyphus doesn’t crave for
a deeper meaning to his so-called futile existence. He finds meaning in the struggle itself. In
the work itself. But Camus doesn’t stop there. Ten: Life’s not meant to be passive acceptance
but an active rebellion. Quote: "I revolt, therefore we exist.” The
Rebel—Albert Camus. Albert Camus was torn between two divergent
philosophies, the socialist philosophy of Karl Marx and the radical individualist philosophy
of Friedrich Nietzsche. One heavily group-oriented and the other heavily individual. But what
both German philosophers had in common was an active rebellion against the modern condition.
Marx wanted a revolution against capitalism’s inequality, while Nietzsche on the other hand,
wanted a rebellion against western philosophical tradition of rationality, religion and nihilism.
These two rather opposing philosophies find themselves reconciled in Camus as he brings
together the Nietzschean existentialist rebellion seeking purpose with a Marxian social rebellion
seeking justice. The young Camus was more drawn to Marxism but later he rejected revolution
in favour of reform and became more Nietzschean in his philosophy. In his novel, the Stranger,
Camus raises an important development in modern societies: men’s spirit of rebellion is
broken through psychological infliction of guilt. To be a human, one must cry. Throughout
history, whenever an army conquered a place, they often killed all the men. Why? Because
able-bodied men were dangerous to the new rulers. For the same reason most people in
jail are men. Because men risk more to rebel or break the law. So modernity needs men to
conform, which kills men’s creative energy as well as rebellious spirit. For Camus our desire to be creative and find
meaning in life goes hand-in-hand with our deep desire to fight injustice, inequality
and repression. He saw an overlap between fighting for justice and being creative. Both
demanded a rebellious spirit which is getting crushed in the modern world. Camus says: "I
draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.” For Camus
human courage or heroism is a form of artistic rebellion seeking clarity. Life’s not meant
to be passive so we must be active rebels who push boundaries. That’s what he did
through his writings. Albert Camus dedicated his life to writing
novels and essays in an attempt to find a non-religious meaning. He finally settled
on a simple idea. Life’s not about finding meaning but being content or even happy that
it has no meaning. It’s liberating to know that there is no grand purpose we have to
adhere to or be bound by. He found his purpose in playing football, writing stories and essays,
producing plays, inspiring others and pushing the boundaries of human intellect. It doesn’t
matter which destination you have in mind, it is the dedication that matters. The process.
The work itself. Sisyphus does the most futile job in the world, pushing a boulder up a mountain
knowing that it would fall back down, but he takes the job on the chin and keeps pushing.
A river water only turns into a bog or quagmire and starts stinking, when it stops moving.
So life is meant to be lived, to the fullest. Push as hard as you can and that should bring
you joy and contentment. Because life itself is the biggest gift. Nothing else matters. Thank you for listening.
