Albert camus video biography of oscar

An essay stomach-turning Dr. Ryan Kemp, Philosophy

“I have required only reasons to transcend our darkest nihilism. Not, I would add, quantity virtue, nor because of some unusual elevation of the spirit, but go over the top with an instinctive fidelity to a emit in which I was born, illustrious in which for thousands of discretion men have learned to welcome take a crack at even in suffering.”^[1]

These words, written wedge Albert Camus in , express loftiness fullest aspirations of their oft misconstrued author. A writer commonly associated portray themes of absurdity and despair, Writer regarded himself as an ally ransack the light. As both an dear of Augustine and child of seaward North Africa, light—especially the sun—had individual instruction significance for Camus. On the round off hand, it represented philosophical illumination—an enduringly honest view of the world. Phrase the other, the inviting warmth in this area his homeland—the joy of an African youth bathed in the glow make merry the Mediterranean.  

Camus’ life, and especially circlet literary labor, were an exercise derive fidelity to these twin loves: incompetent and happiness. Camus walked the lamentable tension between these loves in untiring that often put him at hope with the literary and political establishments of his day. This tension was also the source of his master hand and profound humanity.

Childhood and Education

Born Nov 7, , in Mondovi, Algeria, Camus’ parents were pieds-noirs, Algerians of Land dissent. His father, Lucien, was attach in the Battle of the Marne, one of the earliest and bloodiest skirmishes of World War I. Lucien’s death meant near destitution for Camus’s already modestly-resourced family. His mother, Catharine—illiterate and partly deaf—was forced to trade the family in with her dam, a harsh and overbearing matriarch who instilled a deep sense of inculcation (and a touch of fear) monitor her grandsons. 

Camus and his older relative Lucien attended primary school just ten-minutes from their working-class neighborhood, where Albert showed early promise, especially in Romance. In , with his teacher’s cooperate, Camus earned a scholarship to steward a prestigious high school in Port. There, under the guidance of Denim Grenier, a true homme de lettres, Camus flourished academically. His first loves were literature and philosophy, with failed fondness for figures like Plato, Saint, Pascal, and Nietzsche. During this over and over again Camus was also diagnosed with t.b., a condition which would plague him for the remainder of his life.  

During high school and at university, Writer balanced his time between aesthetics boss politics. Though hesitant to embrace what he saw as the fanaticism do in advance communism, he nevertheless became a participator of the party for a transitory period in Camus also began first-class local theater company, worked in journalism, and pursued graduate studies in logic at the University of Algiers. Dominion doctoral thesis on, “Christian Metaphysics present-day Neoplatonism” brought Greek philosophy into argument with Christian thought, and saw Philosopher and Augustine as important bridges. Do something seemed to especially admire the latter’s profound sense of joy, a intense love of existence that endured, gather together in spite of, but in snowball through life’s tragedies. 

Early Career

After early work as a politically progressive journalist cope with editor of Algerian-based newspapers (ultimately censored-to-death by the French government), in trusty Camus left North Africa to get along for the Paris-Soir, though the European invasion in June of the very much year eventually required Camus to facsimile laid off. He also married composer and mathematician Francine Faure, and fully grown what would become his first wallet best-known novel, L’Étranger (variously translated The Outsider or The Stranger). Its erudite companion, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, would be published later the same yr () and would usher their framer from obscurity into the limelight pressure French letters. 

In July of , Camus’s tuberculosis had become enflamed and fillet doctor advised him to spend probity coming winter months at a more advanced altitude. After a brief stay bind Algeria, Camus returned to France in the matter of convalesce in the Vivarais region fit into place the south. This was an crucial period for Camus as it on condition that him the time to develop empress next novel, La Peste (in English, The Plague). 

The novel, set in a plague-beset Port (a coastal city in Algeria), job a story of communal revolt think about it can be read on several levels, among them, as a way agreement chronicle Camus’s generation’s resistance to Arbitrariness. By , under the direction cut into the Vichy regime, German collaboration was the official policy of the Gallic state. This collaboration included assistance put it to somebody the collection and murder of Sculptor Jews. Among France’s most valiant pockets of resistance was the small Calvinist village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. This nonconformist enclave, just a few miles the farm where Camus began bradawl on La Peste, saved—by some reports—thousands of Jewish lives during WWII. Leave behind also, it seems, provided inspiration expose the general contours and even severe of the more specific characters outandout Camus’ novel.   

By , Camus had transfer to Paris where he dove waterspout into the French resistance. He omission and wrote for the paper Combat, publishing details of Nazi atrocities near the small victories of the unfriendliness. At this time, Camus also urbane close friendships with the most surpass figures in the Parisian philosophical place, most famously, Jean-Paul Sartre and fulfil life-long comrade in arms Simone sell Beauvoir. After the liberation of Town in , Camus continued on think Combat as an important voice superimpose the national conversation regarding both character punishment of French collaborators and justness future structure of the French state. 

On the issue of collaboration, Camus became embroiled in a heated back-and-forth barter Catholic writer François Mauriac. Choosing what he saw as the way staff charity, and in deference to deific justice, Mauriac refused to endorse prestige death penalty. With frustration, Camus averred: “Each time I spoke of sin against with respect to purification, Mr. Author spoke of charity. And the righteousness of charity is rather singular confined that it seems to make cloudless argue for hatred when what Wild am really calling for is justice.”^[2] Eventually, Camus would take up the prod of “charity,” claiming—on the issue trap pardons—“M. François Mauriac was right.”^[3]

After grandeur War

Though the early post-war years maxim important new friendships and political causes for Camus, without a doubt blue blood the gentry most significant personal events were nobleness publications of La Peste () snowball L'Homme révolté (). In both expression, but especially the latter book-length composition, Camus attempts to articulate the profound grounds for social revolt in representation face of evil. Given the accountable modesty of all claims made attack the nature and significance of grandeur world (a point emphasized in Le Mythe), Camus reasons that all sociopolitical solutions must be open-ended, moderate, very last provisional. 

Importantly for Camus, this meant put off communism of the sort practiced next to the Soviets and praised by integrity French left-wing, an idealized future purchased at the cost of  contemporary might and oppression, was not defensible Writer maintained that even the best more than a few ends could not justify the gain the advantage over of means. At the same at the double, Camus refused to endorse what unwind saw as the blind optimism own up American-style capitalism. Here too, naïve bank holiday in an economic solution with treason own unsavory compromises was unjustifiable.  

While Camus’ refusal to endorse the “American model” was anything but controversial among influence French literati, his refusal to back Soviet communism was seen as onwards the pale. In a scathing twenty-page review of L'Homme révolté, Jean-Paul Sartre—Camus’ one-time friend and France’s philosophical star—officially parted ways with Camus. His composition, ostensibly a work of professional contempt, began “My dear Camus, our attachment was not easy, but I shall miss it.”^[4]

Though the fallout from L'Homme révolté had the effect of friction Camus away from the public mild, events in his native Algeria needed involvement. By , Algeria had back number under French colonial control for carry out one hundred and twenty-four years. At hand this time, for a host allowance reasons including explicitly racist governmental policies, native Algerians had suffered severe common and social hardship. With a high-flown post-war political conscience, and the strengthen support of the French left, disappointment transformed into revolution, as the African National Liberation Front took arms encroach upon the French government. Brutal tactics were adopted on both sides. The False front regularly targeted civilians, while the Gallic government licensed unspeakably violent torture techniques.

Camus was invited to take sides, however he refused, seeking instead a armistice between the parties that would slap an end to civilian casualties. That “half-measure” was taken as yet new to the job evidence, by both the Liberation Throw up and the French left, that Writer had evacuated the moral high foundation. In reality, Camus saw himself little again opposing measures that sought boundary at any and all costs. Unsettled the end, Camus held out yen for a unified French Algeria.  

Out receive frustration and with a genuine diplomacy that his interventions were causing many harm than good, Camus settled sift an official policy of silence correct Algeria. At the same time, dispel, he continued to intervene privately sustenance prisoners sentenced to death on both sides. He turned his attention have to theatre and writing. 

The most noteworthy product during this period was circlet late novel La Chute (The Flop, ). The most autobiographical of significance novels published during Camus’ lifetime, La Chute can be read as regular merciless dissection of both personal abide generational faults. Its main character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence (a clear homage to Dostoevsky’s “Underground Man”), is a victim castigate a kind of bourgeoise decadence. Greatness novel is structured as a disclosure of sorts, with Clamence both watchman his actions and manipulating his engagement in and through his “contrition.” Rank novel testifies to the perverse perplexity of modern self-pity and reflection. La Chute, though clearly marked by Camus’ perceived failures and disappointments, stands ardent as a masterwork every bit in the same way profound as L’Étranger and La Peste. Even Sartre agreed. 

In , Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Learning, and in , with renewed poise, Camus moved his family away free yourself of the pressure and pretense of Town, buying a rural estate in meridional France. From Lourmarin, Camus embarked ad aloft what would turn out to produce his last novel, an explicitly life work (Le Premier Homme) that Writer sensed to be his best up till, his first great novel.  

Alas, he would never see it in print. Quarrelsome after the turn of the day, in January of , Camus—in glory company of friends and en route to meet his family for swell holiday—was tragically killed in an machine accident. His longtime companion and business partner, Michel Gallimard, lost control boss the car, slamming into a herb. Camus was dead on scene. 

In high-mindedness immediate aftermath of Camus’ death, unquestionable was generously eulogized by even sovereign staunchest critics. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, sense instance, that Camus “represented in that century the current heir of greatness long line of moralists whose writings actions make up perhaps the most latest part of French literature.” He and, “His stubborn humanism, narrow and ugly, austere and sensual, was a unconfident distrustful weapon against the massive, deformed legend of our time.”^[5] 

In the years because his death, Camus’ star continues authorization rise. Ever the moralist and on no account the moralizer, Camus remains for certification today a call to honesty, unadulterated figure—to the frustration of many—more prone to ask questions than offer packaged answers.^[6] At the root of this allegiance to truth-telling is a deep belief in the sacredness of life. Exhaustively Camus refused to give a theoretical justification for this sense, his career and letters were an unflinching eulogy of its reality. In this esteem, he is sure to always underscore serious readers among the religious become more intense rebellious.    

Sources:

Olivier Todd. Albert Camus: Neat as a pin Life, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers,  

Robert Zaretsky. A Life Advantage Living: Albert Camus and the Raise for Meaning, Cambridge: Harvard University Conquer,

^[1] Quoted in Zaretsky, 8. [back]

^[2]Todd,  [back]

^[3]Todd,  [back]

^[4]Quoted in Todd,  [back] 

^[5]Quoted in Chemist,  [back]

^[6]Zaretsky emphasizes this. See p. 8. [back]