Philosopher Albert Camus
French-Algierian Novelist and Nobel Prize Laureate
French-Algerian philosopher and novelist Albert Camus lived from 1913 to 1960. He was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria. His father died during World War I, and his nearly deaf mother had to move in with ill relatives to raise her children, even in extreme poverty. Camus buried himself in his studies and in sports to escape his home life. He attended the University of Algiers until he was stricken with tuberculosis in 1930. He continued to attend lectures part time until 1953.
Albert Camus's Life
Throughout his life, Albert Camus had joined and left the Communist party, written for a socialist paper called Combat, joined the French Resistance Movement, and became friends with noted existential philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre. But his friendship with Sartre ended with the publishing of his book The Rebel in 1951.
Camus wrote The Fall in 1956 and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. He died at the pinnacle of his writing career in a freak automobile accident near Sens, France on January 4, 1960, making him the most short-lived Nobel laureate.
"I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions." (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)
Albert Camus's Philosophy
Many people mistakenly believe that Albert Camus was an Existentialist. This is not the case, as he refused to be an Existentialist. This is just a reminder that you can be a Humanist and an Existentialist, but you don't have to be an Existentialist to be a Humanist.
Camus's philosophy was absurdity. His famous 1942 book The Stranger deals with this idea. Camus defines absurdity as the given premise of all modern experience, an uneasy feeling above all a sense of contradiction. It is only the beginning of a perception of life, its meaning, and consequences. The Absurd is a pointless quest for meaning in a universe devoid of purpose. The feeling of absurdity is the separation between man and his life, an actor walking out on stage and not recognizing the scenery or knowing the lines of the play he is supposed to speak, a sense of permanent displacement and un-belonging.
Camus also presumes the absence of any kind of divine being. And without divinity, he says there can be no presumed code of conduct for human beings, nor any explanation of life's meaning. He speaks, like Heidegger, of thrownness. People are simply thrown into this world, and the outcome is death, pure and simple. There is only life before, and nothing beyond.
For more information on Albert Camus, visit Dividing Line or Nobel Prize.
