On ‘Revolt, Freedom and Passion’ of Camus

Albert Camus

The man who taught us freedom, existence and rebellion, each of which seems lacking in our contemporary lives, is none other than the French Nobel Prize–winning philosopher and novelist Albert Camus (1913-1960), the great contributor to the rise of Absurdism.

November 7 was the 102nd birthday of this great mind.

Born in Algeria, to a poor agricultural worker father and a mother of Spanish descent, Camus had to work his way to get admitted to the University of Algiers.

Usually perceived as a nerd, not many are aware of his athletic side. He played as a goalkeeper for a prominent Algerian University football team. He was once asked by his friend Charles Poncet about his preference between football and the theatre, and he replied, "Football, without hesitation."

Camus played for the Racing Universitaire d'Alger junior team from 1928 to 1930 and won both the North African Champions Cup and the North African Cup twice each in the 1930s. The sense of team spirit, fraternity, and common purpose appealed to Camus.

But his football career and ambitions ended when he contracted tuberculosis at the age of 17. The affliction, then incurable, caused Camus to be bedridden for long and painful periods of time.

When Camus was asked by an alumni sports magazine in the 1950s for a few words about his time with the RUA, his response was the following:

 “After many years during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport and learned it in the RUA.”

Well, he was referring to a sort of simplistic morality written about in his early essays, the principle of valuing bravery and fair-play and sticking up for fellow beings. 

Camus’s love and skill for football is shown in The Plague where a professional footballer appears as a character in and football is discussed in the dialogue.

Camus's belief was that political and religious authorities, to serve their own needs, try to confuse us with over-complicated moral systems.

Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times". His unforgettable pieces are The Outsider (1942), The Plague (1947), The Fall(1956),Caligula(1938), The Myth of Sisyphus (1943), Betwixt and Between (1937) .

Albert Camus’s philosophy Absurdism is introduced in his famous essay The Myth of Sisyphus. He believed that mankind’s search for meaning in life is futile. Because life and its purpose is unintelligible and will forever remain so as it’s devoid of God or ultimate moral values. He concerned his essay with the argument if the necessary discovery of this ultimate truth should or not result into suicide. Camus’s answer is “No, it requires revolt”.

Camus’s Absurdism doesn’t mean practical or logical impossibility of something but something that is humanely impossible. Absurd arises when the mankind’s natural quest for meaning and the meaninglessness of the universe collides. And that is when the tragedy happens.

The human conscience’s ultimate habitual search for meaningful ending and the urge to take control of one’s own life tends to end in suicide as the only option. But there Camus disagrees. Camus also disagrees on what he calls the “philosophical suicide”; that is the abstract belief in a realm, being or idea which is beyond absurd, therefore meaningful. And Camus, as he is, obviously rejects that idea too. The idea that Camus endorses manifestly in almost all of his writings, is the one to revolt. Camus wants us to take the Absurd seriously which means to know it and to continue to live by constantly acknowledging it. That is how one is to reach the second stage after ‘revolt’- ‘freedom’.

According to Camus, the contradiction between human desire for meaning and the lack of it must be lived. Reason and its limitations both must be understood and accepted without any false hope. Only then one can attain freedom in a very concrete sense— no longer being bound by hope for a better future or eternity, without a need to pursue life's purpose or to create meaning, "he enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules".

Without a meaning in life, there is no scale of values. "What counts is not the best living but the most living."

Then how does Camus suggest the absurd man live? Clearly, no ethical rules apply, as rules are based on higher powers or on justification. "Integrity has no need of rules."

Camus says, “’Everything is permitted’ is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact."

He also presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd”.

Camus once said, “I never complained that my birthday was overlooked; people were even surprised, with a touch of admiration, by my discretion on this subject. But the reason for my disinterestedness was even more discreet: I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself. Once my solitude was thoroughly proved, I could surrender to the charms of a virile self-pity.”

We want to allow him every bit of charm that he found in his short period of absurd life of 47 years.