Albert Camus is a famous French writer and philosopher. Albert Camus: Life is the creation of the soul Albert Camus plays

On January 4, 1960, Paris was shocked by terrible news. The car in which the famous writer Albert Camus was traveling with the family of his friend Michel Gallimard, returning from Provence, flew off the road and crashed into a plane tree near the town of Villebleuven, a hundred kilometers from Paris. Camus died instantly. Gallimard, who was driving, died in hospital two days later; his wife and daughter survived. The famous writer, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in 1957, died on the spot, he was only 46 years old.

“The Conscience of the West” – Albert Camus

Albert Camus is a French writer, journalist, essayist, philosopher, and member of the French Resistance movement. One of the key figures in world literature. He, along with Sartre, stood at the origins of existentialism. But later he moved away from him, becoming a continuer of the tradition of philosophical prose. Camus is one of the most ardent humanists in the history of literature. He was called the “conscience of the West.” His ethics prohibit murder, even if it is committed in the name of a great idea; Camus rejects those who pretend to be Prometheans and are ready to sacrifice others for the sake of building a bright future.

After the accident, rumors spread throughout Paris that it was not just an accident, but a contract killing. During his short life, Camus made many enemies. He led the resistance movement against colonialism. But he was against the terror unleashed in his homeland against the colonialists. He was not tolerated either by the right-wing French, who defended French colonial rule in Algeria, or by the terrorists who wanted to destroy the colonialists. He wanted to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Camus was born in Algeria on November 7, 1913 into a poor family of agricultural workers. My father was called to the front during the First World War, and two weeks later he was killed. An illiterate, semi-deaf mother moved with her children to a poor area.

In 1923, her son graduated from primary school and had to go to work to help his mother feed the family. But the teacher persuaded the mother to send the boy to the lyceum. The teacher said that someday her son would bring glory to the family. “He has an undoubted talent, you will be proud of him,” he insisted, and the mother agreed to send her son to the lyceum, where he showed his best side. Here his penchant for football was revealed; he showed great promise as an athlete.

After the Lyceum, Albert entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Algiers. Played soccer. He was predicted to have a brilliant sports future. But at the age of 17 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and had to say goodbye to football. The future was vague, but it belonged only to him. “I was somewhere halfway between sunshine and poverty. Poverty prevented me from believing that all was well in history. And the sun taught me that history is not everything. Change lives, yes, but not the world in which I will create.”

Studying had to be paid for and Albert did not disdain any kind of work: a private teacher, a salesman of spare parts, an assistant at a meteorological institute. He was successful with women. But Simone, his first wife, turned out to be a morphine addict. The marriage broke up.

In 1935, Camus became interested in Marxism and joined the Algerian Communist Party. He dreamed of liberating the working man. However, he quickly discovered that the policy of the Communist Party was opportunistic and tied to Moscow. In 1937 he left the party. Together with her theater troupe, the Theater of Labor, which was associated with communist cells, Camus traveled throughout Algeria. He was both a director and an actor. Wrote for the theater. I planned to study further. But worsening tuberculosis did not allow this. But he didn’t stop him from writing. Camus became a journalist for several newspapers. The main theme is the terrible situation of the indigenous population of Algeria. “I didn’t learn freedom from Marx,” he writes in his notebooks, “poverty taught me it.”

One after another, his books “The Inside Out and the Face”, “Marriage”, and the play “Caligula” began to be published.
In the spring of 1940, Camus moved to France. He headed the Paris Soir newspaper. He married his classmate Francine Faure. He so needed a quiet home and the care of a loving woman. Quiet family happiness did not last long. On June 25, 1940, France capitulated. Camus was fired from his post as editor. Left for evacuation. But two years later he returned to Paris and actively became involved in the activities of the French resistance. He became a member of the underground organization Comba and met the actress Maria Cazarez, for whom he developed a deep and passionate love. It was a dangerous and difficult time. He wrote, and before his eyes the defeat of Paris by the brown plague took place.

A cocktail of love and risk - that’s what Camus’ life was like at this time. The love idyll with Marie lasted a year. And in 1944, Francine returned to Paris to her husband. Marie was shocked, it turns out that her lover is married. She gave Camus a week to think about it so that he could make the final choice between her and Francine. It was unbearable. Albert was torn between love and duty. Essentially, he married Francine not for love, but because of his illness. He succumbed to weakness. But he was grateful to her for her care and warmth. Because she was there in difficult moments of life. Now his wife needed his protection. She was pregnant. He couldn't leave her. Maria made the decision. Having learned about the twins, she herself left Albert.

Camus suffered greatly. Wrote her long letters. Love and duty fought to the death inside him. This personal drama unfolded against the backdrop of events in Paris. At the end of the war, it was time for reckoning with those who supported the Nazis. A wave of lynchings and reprisals began. Camus was categorically against terror and revenge; he was convinced that one should not take the side of the guillotine. The witch hunt for those who collaborated with the fascists knocked him out of his creative rut. Every article about him in the newspapers is indignation: “Who are you with, Mr. Writer?”

And he is the only one among French writers who opposed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Camus was convinced that the bombing was not the final victory, it was the beginning of a new, more debilitating war. And she needs to be stopped.

In 1948, three years after the breakup, Albert one day saw Marie on the street. And it all started all over again. There was nothing they could do about it. It was a match made in heaven. Happiness, intoxicating and all-consuming, covered them, and nothing could separate them anymore. Now he is a famous writer. He is no longer perceived as the lover of a famous actress. He once said: “Not to be loved is just failure, not to love is misfortune.” He was lucky enough to experience both at the same time. And yet he was happy because he loved.

He never even thought about leaving Francine. But his wife annoyed him. Creativity saved him from family troubles and a double life. “He is free who does not have to lie,” wrote Camus. In his work, he was extremely honest with the reader and himself.

At this time, he wrote his famous work “The Rebel Man” - an essay about rebellion and man. In it, Camus explored the anatomy of rebellion and came to shocking conclusions. Rebellion against the absurd is natural and normal. But revolution is violence leading to tyranny. It is aimed at suppressing human rebellion against the absurd. This means revolution is unacceptable. So Camus debunked the Marxist idea. And he completely broke with the existentialists. He became a humanist.“I only hate executioners,” he wrote. - Other people are different. They act most often out of ignorance. They don’t know what they are doing, so most often they commit evil. But they are not executioners." This was an attempt to educate others.

“The Rebel Man” quarreled Camus with Sartre, although before that they had been inseparable for 10 years. Thanks to this friendship, Camus's work is still mistakenly attributed to the philosophy of existentialism. “I have too few points of contact with the fashionable teaching of existentialism, the conclusions of which are false” , wrote Camus.

Back in 1945, intoxicated by victory, he and Sartre argued fiercely about whether it was possible to sacrifice their inner feelings for the common good. Sartre stated: “It is impossible to make a revolution without getting your hands dirty.” Camus believed that “there is no accident in the choice of what can dishonor you”. In "The Rebellious Man" Camus encroached on the sacred. He criticized the ideology of Marxism.

He examines in this work what rebellion leads to. Yes, it can lead to liberation. But a side effect is that Human-Gods, Prometheans, appear, who then drive people into concentration camps. The scandal was unimaginable. Camus was criticized by both the left and the right. A frantic persecution of the writer began. L'Humanité declared Camus a "warmonger." Sartre published a play, The Devil and God, which ended with the words: “The kingdom of man begins, and in it I will be an executioner and a butcher”. Sartre finally went over to the side of the executioner. That is, he directly called himself the one whom Camus hated. Further relationships were impossible.

In the fall of 1957, Albert Camus was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the wording was: “for his enormous contribution to literature, highlighting the importance of human conscience.” It was like a bolt from the blue. Camus was at a loss. His “Rebellious Man” is not scolded unless he is lazy; he is bullied and ridiculed. And here is a prestigious award. Camus is confused.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Pasternak, Samuel Beckett, Andre Malraux were nominated. “Malraux will receive the prize,” Camus repeats like a spell. But he, the youngest of the nominees, had to go to Stockholm. He considered himself unworthy of such recognition. At some point I even wanted to refuse the prize and send my Nobel speech by mail. Friends convinced him to read it in person.

« Every generation is convinced that its destiny is to remake the world. Mine already knows that he cannot change this world. But his task is even greater. It is to prevent this world from perishing. I am too firmly attached to the galley of our time not to row with others, even if I am sure that the galley stinks of herring, and there are too many overseers in it, and the wrong course has been taken" The performance was met with applause.

One student from Algeria asked the writer: “You have written so many books, but have done nothing for your home country? Will Algeria be free? Camus replied: “I stand for justice. But I am against terror and, if I have the chance, I will not defend Algeria, but my mother.”

On the streets of his hometown, indeed, shots were heard and terrorist attacks took place, the victims of which were innocent people, his mother could have become.

Apart from a small house in Provence, my first home, the Camus Prize did not bring me any other joy. As soon as it became known that he had received the prestigious award, the newspapers were full of mocking headlines. “What are such outstanding ideas? His creations lack depth and imagination. The Nobel Committee rewards wasted talent!” The bullying began. “Look who was awarded the Nobel Prize? His own peace and his mother’s suffering are dearer to him than the whole country.” The Algerian rebels were seething with indignation. “He betrayed the interests of his native people.” The Soviet press reacted most negatively. “It is absolutely obvious,” Pravda wrote, “that he received the award for political reasons for attacks on the USSR. But I was once a member of the Communist Party.”
It is not surprising that after the death of Camus, many began to say that the accident was staged by KGB agents.

Or maybe Camus decided to take his own life? Family and love drama, break with Sartre, persecution in the press. “There is always something in a person that rejects love, that part of his being that wants to die. My whole life is a story of delayed suicide.” , he wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus.” But people who knew him well said that he was far from suicidal and would not risk the lives of his close friends who were sitting in the same car with him.

What happened on the road from Provence to Paris in 1960? Most likely an accident. “My most cherished desire is a quiet death, which would not make people dear to me worry too much,” he wrote shortly before his death. But there was no quiet death. The manuscript of the autobiographical novel “The First Man” was found in the writer’s travel bag. The author’s remark “The book must be unfinished” was preserved in the outlines. His last book remained unfinished, like his family life and love, like his whole life, which ended so suddenly. But, apparently, his soul was ready for this.

“If the soul exists, it would be wrong to think that it is given to us already created. It happens on earth throughout life. Life itself is nothing more than this long and painful birth. When the creation of the soul, which man owes to himself and to suffering, is completed, death comes.” (A. Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus).

Man is an unstable creature. He is characterized by a feeling of fear, hopelessness and despair. At least, this opinion was expressed by adherents of existentialism. Albert Camus was close to this philosophical teaching. The biography and creative path of the French writer is the topic of this article.

Childhood

Camus was born in 1913. His father was a native of Alsace, and his mother was Spanish. Albert Camus had very painful memories of his childhood. The biography of this writer is closely connected with his life. However, for every poet or prose writer, their own experiences serve as a source of inspiration. But in order to understand the reason for the depressive mood that reigns in the books of the author, which will be discussed in this article, you should learn a little about the main events of his childhood and adolescence.

Camus's father was a poor man. He did heavy physical labor at a wine company. His family was on the verge of disaster. But when a significant battle took place near the Marne River, the life of the wife and children of Camus the Elder became completely hopeless. The fact is that this historical event, although it culminated in the defeat of the enemy German army, had tragic consequences for the fate of the future writer. Camus's father died during the Battle of the Marne.

Left without a breadwinner, the family found itself on the brink of poverty. Albert Camus reflected this period in his early work. The books “Marriage” and “Inside and Out” are dedicated to a childhood spent in poverty. In addition, during these years, young Camus suffered from tuberculosis. Unbearable conditions and a serious illness did not discourage the future writer from striving for knowledge. After graduating from school, he entered the university to study philosophy.

Youth

The years of study at the University of Algiers had a huge influence on Camus’s ideological position. During this period, he became friends with the once famous essayist Jean Grenier. It was during his student years that the first collection of stories was created, which was called “Islands.” For some time he was a member of the Communist Party of Albert Camus. His biography, however, is more connected with such names as Shestov, Kierkegaard and Heidegger. They belong to thinkers whose philosophy largely determined the main theme of Camus’s work.

Albert Camus was an extremely active person. His biography is rich. As a student, he played sports. Then, after graduating from university, he worked as a journalist and traveled a lot. The philosophy of Albert Camus was formed not only under the influence of contemporary thinkers. For some time he was interested in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. According to some reports, he even played in an amateur theater, where he had the opportunity to play the role of Ivan Karamazov. During the capture of Paris, at the beginning of the First World War, Camus was in the French capital. He was not taken to the front due to a serious illness. But even during this difficult period, Albert Camus was quite active in social and creative activities.

"Plague"

In 1941, the writer gave private lessons and took an active part in the activities of one of the underground Parisian organizations. At the beginning of the war, Albert Camus wrote his most famous work. "The Plague" is a novel that was published in 1947. In it, the author reflected the events in Paris, occupied by German troops, in a complex symbolic form. Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for this novel. The wording is “For the important role of literary works that confront people with the problems of our time with penetrating seriousness.”

The plague begins suddenly. City residents are leaving their homes. But not all. There are townspeople who believe that the epidemic is nothing more than punishment from above. And you shouldn't run. You should be imbued with humility. One of the heroes - the pastor - is an ardent supporter of this position. But the death of an innocent boy forces him to reconsider his point of view.

People are trying to escape. And the plague suddenly recedes. But even after the worst days are over, the hero is haunted by the thought that the plague may return again. The epidemic in the novel symbolizes fascism, which killed millions of residents of Western and Eastern Europe during the war.

In order to understand what the main philosophical idea of ​​this writer is, you should read one of his novels. In order to feel the mood that reigned in the first years of the war among thinking people, it is worth getting acquainted with the novel “The Plague,” which Albert wrote in 1941 from this work - the sayings of an outstanding philosopher of the 20th century. One of them is “In the midst of disasters, you get used to the truth, namely, to silence.”

Worldview

At the center of the French writer’s work is consideration of the absurdity of human existence. The only way to fight it, according to Camus, is to recognize it. The highest embodiment of the absurd is the attempt to improve society through violence, namely fascism and Stalinism. In the works of Camus there is a pessimistic confidence that evil is completely impossible to defeat. Violence begets more violence. And rebellion against him cannot lead to anything good at all. It is precisely this position of the author that can be felt while reading the novel “The Plague”.

"Stranger"

At the beginning of the war, Albert Camus wrote many essays and stories. It’s worth saying briefly about the story “The Outsider.” This work is quite difficult to understand. But it is precisely this that reflects the author’s opinion regarding the absurdity of human existence.

The story “The Stranger” is a kind of manifesto that Albert Camus proclaimed in his early work. Quotes from this work can hardly say anything. In the book, a special role is played by the monologue of the hero, who is monstrously impartial to everything that happens around him. “The condemned person is obliged to morally participate in the execution” - this phrase is perhaps the key.

The hero of the story is a person who is in some sense inferior. Its main feature is indifference. He is indifferent to everything: to the death of his mother, to the grief of others, to his own moral decline. And only before death does his pathological indifference to the world around him leave him. And it is at this moment that the hero understands that he cannot escape the indifference of the world around him. He is sentenced to death for committing murder. And all he dreams of in the last minutes of his life is not to see indifference in the eyes of the people who will watch his death.

"A fall"

This story was published three years before the writer's death. The works of Albert Camus, as usual, belong to the philosophical genre. "The Fall" is no exception. In the story, the author creates a portrait of a man who is an artistic symbol of modern European society. The hero's name is Jean-Baptiste, which translated from French means John the Baptist. However, Camus's character has little in common with the biblical one.

In “The Fall” the author uses a technique characteristic of the impressionists. The narration is conducted in the form of a stream of consciousness. The hero talks about his life to his interlocutor. At the same time, he talks about the sins he committed without a shadow of regret. Jean-Baptiste personifies the selfishness and poverty of the inner spiritual world of Europeans, the writer’s contemporaries. According to Camus, they are not interested in anything other than achieving their own pleasure. The narrator periodically distracts himself from his life story, expressing his point of view regarding one or another philosophical issue. As in other works of art by Albert Camus, the plot of the story “The Fall” is centered on a person of an unusual psychological make-up, which allows the author to reveal in a new way the eternal problems of existence.

After the war

In the late forties, Camus became an independent journalist. He permanently ceased public activities in any political organizations. At this time he created several dramatic works. The most famous of them are “The Righteous”, “State of Siege”.

The theme of the rebellious personality in the literature of the 20th century was quite relevant. A person’s disagreement and his reluctance to live according to the laws of society is a problem that worried many authors in the sixties and seventies of the last century. One of the founders of this literary movement was Albert Camus. His books, written back in the early fifties, are imbued with a feeling of disharmony and a sense of despair. “Rebel Man” is a work that the writer dedicated to the study of human protest against the absurdity of existence.

If in his student years Camus was actively interested in the socialist idea, then in adulthood he became an opponent of the radical left. In his articles, he repeatedly raised the topic of violence and authoritarianism of the Soviet regime.

Death

In 1960, the writer died tragically. His life was cut short on the road from Provence to Paris. As a result of the car accident, Camus died instantly. In 2011, a version was put forward according to which the writer’s death was not an accident. The accident was allegedly staged by members of the Soviet secret service. However, this version was later refuted by Michel Onfray, the author of the writer’s biography.

Camus’s rhetoric is a separate issue that will probably remain lying on the closed tabletop of history for the rest of his life. Camus within the framework of historicism is predictable, as is his path of formation from the primary nihilistic to the final moralistic humanism of the level of the Autodidact de La Nausée, only the oxymoron of humanistic thought occurs when the humanist opens his mouth, the same thing happened with Camus.

“The content of the “Plague” is the struggle of the European Liberation Movement against fascism,” according to Camus, but it is worth revealing this idea and the Plague of Camus sharply turns into a tumor of Camus himself, a malignant formation in the face of a brown infection which, under the threat of the occupation authorities, took up arms and went against its own countries, the continent and beyond the Soviet Union, Camus lost the idea that collaboration flourished, and liberation movements were really active only in Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece, one has only to look at the figures for the losses of the resistance and it will be clear that even the vaunted Poland did not make any contribution to the real struggle against the occupation authorities; rather, on the contrary, supporting Russophobia and anti-Semitism, she was only glad that the Ivanovs left their country. But one has only to look at the foreign voluntary formations of the Wehrmacht and the SS and the situation immediately becomes clear, because collective resistance in reality was provided only to one plague - the red one, with the assistance of another.

Camus, a former Euro-communist in 1935 and an associate of the ideas of socialism, world revolution and lustration according to Marx, the death of the individual and praise for dead leaders, once a person who allegedly denies the individual meaning of human life becomes an out-and-out humanist and simply a wonderful person who criticizes Sartre for being a communist and supports freedom through revolution, although he himself was the same two days ago, but maybe he hasn’t read Marx, so he doesn’t know about revolution as a natural process, oh, those French commie fashionistas. And he completes his metamorphoses towards a progressive man with his Plague.

Camus’s idealization and romanticization of resistance is directly related to his participation in it during WW2, but it’s a pity that until 43 these organizations did nothing but fight with each other, not wanting to take a position, and sat and printed newspapers, unlike Yugoslavia, whose resistance was called the People's Liberation War of Yugoslavia during which 400 thousand partisans were killed, but 20 thousand French died from the resistance, apparently, in Camus's opinion, stronger against this background, it would be worth reminding him that 8 thousand more French died fighting for Hitler, as and the majority of Europeans, who not only did not want to resist, but even more, took up arms and willingly went into battle with the Germans for the liberation of Europe and Russia. And then Camus reveals that the novel turns out to be not only about fascism and totalitarianism, but about all of existence as a whole, well then, okay, thought the idiot, it turned out to be a philosopher. Any argument of a humanist is an inflated, childish opinion generalized from reality, which the humanist himself seems quite reasonable and kind, until he voices this thought and the interlocutor rejects or ignores this rhetoric.

Characters like Rie are caricatured and idealized Pavlik Morozovs, who even if they existed in life, they were so zealously revered by the same post-war romantics, humanists like Camus, not real people of resistance, because the main task of resistance is liberation from oppression at any cost, life they are worth nothing, but for Camus it is a whole manifesto of a partisan and a rebel, the hope of the empty soul of European man. The pathos with which he presents all this, being a man who calmly traveled around Europe during the occupation, while others were fighting, and then, under the auspices of an imaginary battle, sat and occasionally printed waste paper so that later, at the end of the war, he could issue this manifesto of a moralistic partisan of a humanistic kind. Bravo, Albert Real Soldier Camus.

(1913 - 1960) in the 50s. was one of the “masters of thought” of the world intelligentsia. The first publications that opened the first period of creativity, two small books of short lyrical essays “The Inside Out and the Face” (1937) and “Marriages” (1939) were published in Algeria. In 1938, Camus wrote the play “Caligula.”

During this time he was an active member of the resistance. In those years, he published the essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” and the story “The Stranger” (1942), ending the first period of creativity.

Appeared in 1943 - 1944. “Letters to a German Friend” opens the second period of creativity, which lasted until the end of his life. The most significant works of this period are: the novel “The Plague” (1947); theatrical mystery “State of Siege” (1948); play “The Righteous” (1949); essay “The Rebel Man” (1951); story “The Fall” (1956); a collection of stories “Exile and the Kingdom” (1957) and others. Camus also published three books of “Topical Notes” during this period (1950, 1953, 1958). In 1957, Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize. His novel “Happy Death” and “Notebooks” were published posthumously.

It is not easy to get an idea of ​​the philosophy of Albert Camus, since the views expressed in his literary and philosophical works “provide the opportunity for a wide variety of interpretations.” For all that, the nature of this philosophy, its problematics and orientation have allowed historians of philosophy to unanimously evaluate it as a type of existentialism. The worldview of A. Camus and his work reflected the peculiarities of the development of the European philosophical tradition.

Camus did not doubt the reality of the world; he was aware of the importance of movement in it. The world, in his opinion, is not organized rationally. He is hostile to man, and this hostility goes back to us through millennia. Everything we know about him is unreliable. The world constantly eludes us. In his idea of ​​being, the philosopher proceeded from the fact that “being can reveal itself only in becoming, and becoming is nothing without being.” Existence is reflected in consciousness, but “as long as the mind remains silent in the motionless world of its hopes, everything mutually resonates and is ordered in the unity it so desires. But at the very first movement this whole world cracks and collapses: an infinite number of flickering fragments offer themselves to knowledge.” Camus views knowledge as a source of transformation of the world, but he warns against the unreasonable use of knowledge.

Philosopher agreed that science deepens our knowledge about the world and man, but he pointed out that this knowledge still remains imperfect. In his opinion, science still does not answer the most pressing question - the question of the purpose of existence and the meaning of all things. People are thrown into this world, into this story. They are mortal, and life appears to them as an absurdity in an absurd world. What should a person do in such a world? Camus proposes in the essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” to concentrate and, with maximum clarity of mind, realize the fate that has fallen and courageously bear the burden of life, not resigning to difficulties and rebelling against them. At the same time, the question of the meaning of life acquires special significance; the thinker calls it the most urgent. From the very beginning, a person must “decide whether life is or is not worth living.” To answer this “ ” means to solve a serious philosophical problem. According to Camus, “everything else…. secondary.” The desire to live, the philosopher believes, is dictated by a person’s attachment to the world; in it “there is something stronger than all the troubles of the world.” This attachment gives a person the opportunity to overcome the discord between him and life. The feeling of this discord gives rise to a feeling of the absurdity of the world. Man, being reasonable, strives to order, “to transform the world in accordance with his ideas about good and evil. The absurd connects a person with the world.”

He believed that living meant exploring the absurd, rebelling against it. “I extract from the absurd,” the philosopher wrote, “three consequences: my rebellion, my freedom and my passion. Through the work of the mind alone, I turn into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I reject suicide.”

According to A. Camus, a person has a choice: either live in his time, adapting to it, or try to rise above it, but you can also enter into a deal with him: “live in your century and believe in the eternal.” The latter does not appeal to the thinker. He believes that you can shield yourself from the absurd by immersing yourself in the eternal, saving yourself by escaping into the illusion of everyday life or following some idea. In other words, you can reduce the pressure of absurdity with the help of thinking.

Camus calls people who try to rise above the absurd conquerors. Camus found classic examples of human conquerors in the works of the French writer A. Malraux. According to Camus, the conqueror is godlike, “he knows his slavery and does not hide it,” his path to freedom is illuminated by knowledge. The conqueror is the ideal person for Camus, but to be such, in his opinion, is the lot of the few.

In an absurd world creativity is also absurd. According to Camus, “creativity is the most effective school of patience and clarity. It is also a stunning testimony to the only dignity of man: stubborn rebellion against one’s destiny, perseverance in fruitless efforts. Creativity requires daily effort, self-control, an accurate assessment of the boundaries of truth, it requires measure and strength. Creativity is a kind of asceticism (that is, detachment from the world, from its joys and blessings - S.N.). And all this is “for nothing”... But what may be important is not the great work of art itself, but the test that it requires from a person.” The Creator is similar to the character of ancient Greek mythology Sisyphus, punished by the gods for disobedience by rolling a huge stone onto a high mountain, which each time rolls down from the top to the foot of the mountain. Sisyphus is doomed to eternal torment. And yet, the spectacle of a block of stone rolling down from a high mountain personifies the greatness of Sisyphus’s feat, and his endless torment serves as an eternal reproach to the unjust gods.

In the essay “ Rebellious man”, reflecting on his time as a time of the triumph of the absurd, Camus writes: “We live in an era of masterfully executed criminal plans.” The previous era, in his opinion, differs from the current one in that “previously, atrocity was lonely, like a cry, but now it is as universal as science. Prosecuted only yesterday, today the crime has become law.” The philosopher notes: “In new times, when evil intent is dressed in the garb of innocence, according to the terrible perversion characteristic of our era, it is innocence that is forced to justify itself.” At the same time, the boundary between false and true is blurred, and power dictates the rules. Under these conditions, people are divided “not into righteous and sinners, but into masters and slaves.” Camus believed that the spirit of nihilism dominates our world. Awareness of the imperfection of the world gives rise to rebellion, the goal of which is the transformation of life. The time of dominance of nihilism shapes a rebellious person.

According to Camus, rebellion is not an unnatural state, but a completely natural one. In his opinion, “in order to live, a person must rebel,” but this must be done without being distracted from the initially put forward noble goals. The thinker emphasizes that in the experience of the absurd, suffering has an individual character, but in a rebellious impulse it becomes collective. Moreover, “evil experienced by one person becomes a plague that infects everyone.”

In an imperfect world, rebellion is a means of preventing the decline of society and its ossification and withering. “I rebel, therefore we exist,” writes the philosopher. He views rebellion here as an indispensable attribute of human existence, uniting the individual with other people. The result of a rebellion is a new revolt. The oppressed, having turned into oppressors, by their behavior prepare a new revolt of those whom they turn into the oppressed.

According to Camus, “there is one law in this world - the law of force, and it is inspired by the will to power,” which can be realized through violence.

Reflecting on the possibilities of using violence in rebellion, Camus was not a supporter of nonviolence, since, in his opinion, “absolute nonviolence passively justifies slavery and its horrors.” But at the same time, he was not a supporter of excessive violence. The thinker believed that “these two concepts need self-restraint for the sake of their own fruitfulness.”

Camus differs from simple rebellion in metaphysical revolt, which is “the revolt of man against the entire universe.” Such rebellion is metaphysical because it challenges the ultimate goals of people and the universe. In an ordinary rebellion, the slave protests against oppression; “the metaphysical rebel rebels against the destiny prepared for him as a representative of the human race.” In metaphysical rebellion, the formula “I rebel, therefore we exist,” characteristic of ordinary rebellion, changes to the formula “I rebel, therefore we are alone.”

The logical consequence of metaphysical revolt is revolution. Moreover, the difference between a rebellion and a revolution is that “... a rebellion kills only people, while a revolution destroys both people and principles at the same time.” According to Camus, the history of mankind has known only riots, but there have been no revolutions yet. He believed that “if a true revolution had taken place just once, then history would no longer exist. There would be blissful unity and quiet death.”

The limit of metaphysical revolt, according to Camus, is the metaphysical revolution, during which the great inquisitors become the head of the world. The idea of ​​​​the possibility of the appearance of the Grand Inquisitor was borrowed by A. Camus from the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”. The Grand Inquisitors establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. They can do what God cannot. The kingdom of heaven on earth as the embodiment of universal happiness is possible “not thanks to complete freedom of choice between good and evil, but thanks to power over the world and its unification.”

Developing this idea based on the analysis of the representations of F. Nietzsche on the nature of freedom, A. Camus comes to the conclusion that “the absolute power of the law is not freedom, but absolute non-subjection to the law is no greater freedom. Empowerment does not bring freedom, but lack of opportunity is slavery. But anarchy is also slavery. Freedom exists only in a world where both the possible and the impossible are clearly defined.” However, “today’s world, apparently, can only be a world of masters and slaves.” Camus was sure that “domination is a dead end. Since the master cannot in any way give up dominance and become a slave, it is the eternal fate of masters to live unsatisfied or be killed. The role of the master in history comes down only to reviving the slave consciousness, the only one that creates history.” According to the philosopher, “what is called history is only a series of long-term efforts undertaken to achieve true freedom.” In other words, “...history is the history of labor and rebellion” of people striving for freedom and justice, which, according to Camus, are connected. He believed that it was impossible to choose one without the other. The philosopher emphasizes: “If someone deprives you of bread, he thereby deprives you of freedom. But if your freedom is taken away, then be sure that your bread is also under threat, because it no longer depends on you and your struggle, but on the whim of the owner.”

He considers bourgeois freedom a fiction. According to Albert Camus, “freedom is the cause of the oppressed, and its traditional defenders have always been people from the oppressed people”.

Analyzing the prospects for human existence in history, Camus comes to a disappointing conclusion. In his opinion, in history a person has no choice but to “live in it... adapting to the topic of the day, that is, either lie or remain silent.”

In his ethical views, Camus proceeded from the fact that the realization of freedom must be based on realistic morality, since moral nihilism is destructive.

Formulating his moral position, Albert Camus wrote in “Notebooks”: “We must serve justice, because our existence is unfair, we must increase and cultivate happiness and joy, because our world is unhappy.”

The philosopher believed that wealth is not necessary to achieve happiness. He was against achieving individual happiness by bringing misfortune to others. According to Camus, “the greatest merit of man is to live in solitude and obscurity.”

The aesthetic in the philosopher’s work serves to express the ethical. For him, art is a means of discovering and describing the disturbing phenomena of life. From his point of view, it can serve to improve the health of society, since it is capable of interfering throughout life.