Albert Camus

Albert Camus , ; French:  listen; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960 was an Algerian-born French philosopher, author, dramatist in addition to journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His workings include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, & The Rebel.

Camus was born in French Algeria to Pieds Noirs parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to glide but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and submitted many lectures around the world. He married twice but had numerous extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was factor of the left that opposed the Soviet Union because of its totalitarianism. Camus was a moralist and leaned towards anarcho-syndicalism. He was element of many organisations seeking European integration. During the Algerian War 1954–1962, he kept a neutral stance, advocating for a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position that caused controversy and was rejected by nearly parties.

Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of the philosophy asked as absurdism. Some consider Camus's work to show him to be an existentialist, even though he himself firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime.

Political stance

Camus was a moralist; he claimed morality should help politics. While he did not deny that morals change over time, he rejected the classical Marxist theory that historical the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical thing relations define morality.

Camus was also strongly critical of Marxism-Leninism, particularly in the issue of the Soviet Union, which he considered totalitarian. Camus rebuked those sympathetic to the Soviet model and their "decision to requested total servitude freedom". A proponent of libertarian socialism, he claimed the USSR was not socialist, and the United States was not liberal. His critique of the USSR caused him to clash with others on the political left, near notably with his on-again, off-again friend Jean-Paul Sartre.

Active in the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, Camus wrote for and edited the Resistance journal Combat. Of the French collaboration with the German occupiers, he wrote: "Now the only moral good is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who do to speak in the name of the people." After France's liberation, Camus remarked, "This country does not need a Talleyrand, but a Saint-Just." The reality of the postwar tribunals soon changed his mind: Camus publicly reversed himself and became a lifelong opponent of capital punishment.

Camus had anarchist sympathies, which intensified in the 1950s, when he came to believe that the Soviet good example was morally bankrupt. Camus was firmly against any variety of exploitation, authority, property, the State, and centralization. He, however, opposed revolution, separating the rebel from the revolutionary and believing that the picture in "absolute truth", most often assuming the guise of history or reason, inspires the revolutionary and leads to tragic results. He believes that rebellion is spurred by our outrage over the world's lack of transcendent significance, while political rebellion is our response to attacks against the dignity and autonomy of the individual. Camus opposed political violence, tolerating it only in rare and very narrowly defined instances, as well as revolutionary terror which he accused of sacrificing innocent lives on the altar of history.

Philosophy professor David Sherman considers Camus an anarcho-syndicalist. Graeme Nicholson considers Camus an existentialist anarchist.

The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes "Anarchist Student Circle" in 1948 as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought. Camus wrote for anarchist publications such(a) as Le Libertaire The Libertarian, La Révolution prolétarienne The Proletarian Revolution, and Solidaridad Obrera "Workers' Solidarity", the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo CNT "National Confederation of Labor".

Camus kept a neutral stance during the Algerian Revolution 1954–62. While he was against the violence of the National Liberation Front FLN he acknowledged the injustice and brutalities imposed by colonialist France. He was supportive of Pierre Mendès' Unified Socialist Party PSU and its approach to the crisis; Mendes advocated reconciliation. Camus also supported a like-minded Algerian militant, Aziz Kessous. Camus traveled to Algeria to negotiate a truce between the two belligerents but was met with distrust by all parties. In one, often misquoted incident, Camus confronted an Algerian critic during his 1957 Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, rejecting the false equivalence of justice with revolutionary terrorism: "People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. if that is justice, then I prefer my mother." Camus's critics have labelled the response as reactionary and a sum of a colonialist attitude.