Exiles and Strangers
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Albert Camus and Education
Albert Camus and Education Albert Camus and Education Aidan Hobson Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-94-6300-918-8 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6300-919-5 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6300-920-1 (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com/ All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2017 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface vii Introduction xiii Chapter 1: The Myth of Sisyphus 1 The Broad and Enduring Appeal of the Camusean Absurd 1 The Emerging Educational Interest 3 The Predominant Theme: The Absurd and Pedagogy 4 The Imagery of Sisyphus and Education 8 Education and Sisyphus 10 Educative Feelings 12 Exile 13 The Absurd 14 Limits 16 Absurd Reasoning 17 Absurd Learner 18 Absurd Creation 20 Chapter 2: Exile and the Kingdom 23 Looking Back at This Article 23 The Precipice between Exile and the Kingdom 23 Empowering Relations, Revolt and Martin Buber 25 Almost Authentic – Characters on the Precipice 28 -
Jean-Baptiste Clamence and the Literary Infection by Evil
ACTA UNIVERSITATIS LODZIENSIS Folia Litteraria Polonica 4(59) 2020 https://doi.org/10.18778/1505-9057.59.05 Maciej Kałuża* https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9654-7435 The woman had to fall? Jean-Baptiste Clamence and the literary infection by evil Summary The article presents the concept of evil, as developed in the literary as well as phil- osophical works of Albert Camus. After a short, preliminary notice on the rela- tionship between literature and evil, the article presents two spheres, in which the problem of evil was grasped by the author of The Rebel. In the main part of the ar- ticle, the complexity of the problem of evil, as represented by Jean-Baptiste Cla- mence from The Fall is shown. It is seen as a development of the concept of evil from The Plague, with the potency to disseminate onto others. It is also perceived, as something resulting from severe trauma of the main character. In conclusion, I claim, that the problem of evil, as experienced by Clamence may be understood as a still relevant metaphor of contemporary culture, struggling with passivity against the rise of social evil. Keywords: evil, literature and philosophy, Camus, The Fall1 * Dr, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Social Philosophy Department, Podchorążych 2, 30-084 Cracow; e-mail: [email protected] © by the author, licensee Łódź University – Łódź University Press, Łódź, Poland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 82 Maciej Kałuża Introduction: On evil, guilt and literature Why would philosophers need literature in their contemplation of the problem of evil?1 In search of the possible roots of their interest in the literary vision of evil, we could perhaps reach back to the times where there were no distinct lines drawn, for example, ancient Greek philosophy. -
Albert Camus' Biography
Albert Camus’ biography (briefly) Born November 7th, 1913, in Mondovi, a small village in French Algeria where Camus’ great grandfather, originally from Bordeaux in France, had settled in the early 19th century. Camus’ father was a shipping wine clerk and military veteran who died in WW1 when Camus was less than a year old. All he knew of his father was that he had become violently ill after witnessing a public execution. Camus’ mother was illiterate, partially deaf, and poor. After her husband’s death, Camus, his mother and his older brother lived with his maternal uncle and grandmother in a cramped three-room apartment in a working-class area of Algiers where his mother worked in an ammunition factory and cleaned houses. Camus was able to afford elementary school because of his dead father’s veteran status and, although he had recurring health issues, including tuberculosis, he distinguished himself as a student and won a scholarship to the Grand Lycee. There he was an avid reader (Gide, Proust, Verlaine, etc.). In 1932, Camus received his Baccalauréat Degree; in 1933, he enrolled at the University of Algeria for an advanced degree. 1933-1937: Married Simone Hié, divorced her, briefly joined the Communist Party, became disillusioned with it, and was expelled. During this period, he began his theatrical and writing career. 1940s—Married Francine Faure, worked as a journalist in France for the French Resistance newspaper Combat, wrote The Stranger which brought him immediate literary renown, followed by the philosophic The Myth of Sisyphus and became an editor at Gallimard Publishing. -
The Fall, by Albert Camus
The Fall, by Albert Camus In A Nutshell The Fall is the fictional, first person confession of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a Parisian expatriate. Jean-Baptiste used to be a hotshot defense lawyer, but suddenly realized his life was hypocritical and now lives out his days in a seedy bar in Amsterdam. The novel puts you in the center of the action (not unlike those "Choose Your Own Adventure " books) because Jean-Baptiste talks to you while you’re sitting by him in said seedy bar. But The Fall is famous for more than its interesting narrative technique. For one, it was written by Albert Camus, a French thinker known for his philosophy of the absurd, a close cousin to existentialism, and his frenemy status with Jean-Paul Sartre, another French philosopher of the mid-1900s. (Note that throughout his life Camus maintained that he was not an existentialist.) Now, Camus is most famous for three big novels. The first is The Stranger, published in 1942, which tells the story of a detached, emotionless man convicted of murder, who finds existential freedom while in prison awaiting his death. The second is The Plague, in 1947, which revolves around an outbreak of the bubonic plague in an Algerian town, and the struggle of its citizens to deal with human suffering. And of course, the third is The Fall, in 1956, published shortly before Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature. Camus died only three years afterwards, making The Fall his final piece of fiction. Through these three novels, as well as his other works, Camus establishes and explores several ideas of his philosophy. -
A Critique of Humoristic Absurdism
A Critique of Humoristic Absurdism A Critique of Humoristic Absurdism Problematizing the legitimacy of a humoristic disposition toward the Absurd A Critique of Humoristic Absurdism Copyright © 2020 Thom Hamer Thom Hamer All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any way or by any means without the prior permission of the author or, when applicable, of the publishers of the scientific papers. Image on previous page: Yue Minjun (2003), Garbage Hill Student number: 3982815 Graphic design: Mirelle van Tulder Date: February 5th 2020 Printed by Ipskamp Printing Word count: 32,397 Institution: Utrecht University Contents Study: Research Master Philosophy Summary 9 Document: Final Thesis Foreword 10 Supervisor: prof. dr. Paul Ziche Introduction 12 Second Reader: dr. Hans van Stralen 1. The Philosophy of Humor 21 Third Reader: prof. dr. Mauro Bonazzi 1.1. A history of negligence and rejection 24 1.2. Important distinctions 33 1.3. Theories of humor 34 1.4. Defense of the Incongruity Theory 41 1.5. Relevance of relief and devaluation 52 1.6. Operational definition 54 2. The Notion of the Absurd 59 2.1. Camusian notion: meaninglessness 61 2.2. Tolstoyan notion: mortality 63 2.3. Nagelian notion: trivial commitments 67 2.4. Modified notion: dissolution of resolution 71 2.5. Justificatory guideline for a disposition toward the Absurd 78 3. Humoristic Absurdism 83 3.1. What is Humoristic Absurdism? 85 3.2. Cultural expressions of Humoristic Absurdism 87 3.3. Defense of Humoristic Absurdism 92 4. Objections against the humoristic disposition toward the Absurd 101 4.1. -
Intimate Strangers
4 The Shift The sexual and gender struggles in Coonardoo and Haxby's Circus suggest the direction Prichards writing was about to take. In her next novel, Intimate Strangers, many of the elements which have been discussed so far in this thesis are evident: organicism, tragedy, moralist socialism, rationalist Marxism, problematic sexual relations, marriage and an ambiguous rape. All of these elements operate in an overdetermined dialectical process, as they do in her earlier novels. In Intimate Strangers, however, new elements are introduced, comprising a new subset of overdeterminants that contradicts (dialectically) these established elements and, in so doing, alters them. These conjunctures have compounded over the course of Prichards novel canon, to the point where Litimate Strangers comes closest of all to a state of revolutionary rupture. In other words, this is potentially Prichards most politically potent and aesthetically powerful novel. But this close proximity to a state of revolutionary rupture cannot be maintained. As we have seen, the concluding chapters of Prichards novels are significant. The conclusion of Intimate Strangers provides a revelation. But instead of taking the narrative even closer to a state of revolutionary rupture, the conclusion enacts a shift back along the continuum towards historical inhibition. 4 -4- The critical heritage of Intimate Strangers is burdened with biographical and historical speculation. Almost the entire body of critical 143 discussion of the novel is dedicated to arguments about its autobiographical content and anatomy of the events surrounding its composition. Prichards son, Ric Throssell, has consistently defended the novel against attacks from what he calls the "literary detectives." He asserts that Prichard had completed a draft of the novel, and that the manuscript was stored in her workroom at the Greenmount house, before she left on her voyage to London and the USSR in 1933. -
Albert Camus' Dialogue with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky Sean Derek Illing Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Between nihilism and transcendence : Albert Camus' dialogue with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky Sean Derek Illing Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Illing, Sean Derek, "Between nihilism and transcendence : Albert Camus' dialogue with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky" (2014). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1393. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1393 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. BETWEEN NIHILISM AND TRANSCENDENCE: ALBERT CAMUS’ DIALOGUE WITH NIETZSCHE AND DOSTOEVSKY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Sean D. Illing B.A., Louisiana State University, 2007 M.A., University of West Florida, 2009 May 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is the product of many supportive individuals. I am especially grateful for Dr. Cecil Eubank’s guidance. As a teacher, one can do no better than Professor Eubanks. Although his Socratic glare can be terrifying, there is always love and wisdom in his instruction. It is no exaggeration to say that this work would not exist without his support. At every step, he helped me along as I struggled to articulate my thoughts. -
Albert Camus's Mediterraneanism in <I>La Peste</I>
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2017 Albert Camus's Mediterraneanism in La Peste Jacquelyn Libby The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2411 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Albert Camus’s Mediterraneanism in La Peste by Jacquelyn Libby A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in French in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 Jacquelyn Libby ii Doctoral Thesis © 2017 Jacquelyn Libby All Rights Reserved Jacquelyn Libby iii Doctoral Thesis Albert Camus’s Mediterraneanism in La Peste by Jacquelyn Emma Libby This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in French in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. September 7th, 2017 Peter Consenstein Chair of Examining Committee September 7th, 2017 Francesca Canadé Sautman Executive Officer Supervisory Committee Peter Consenstein Ali Nematollahy Jason Herbeck THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Jacquelyn Libby iv Doctoral Thesis ABSTRACT Albert Camus’s Mediterraneanism in La Peste by Jacquelyn Libby Advisor: Professor Peter Consenstein The following dissertation uses the speech Camus gave at the inauguration of a new community arts center in Algiers in 1937, entitled “La Culture Indigène. La Nouvelle Culture Méditerranéenne,” to show that this expression of Mediterraneanism, as well as its evolution, can be detected in his novel La Peste, which was published ten years later in 1947. -
Excerpts from Albert Camus' “Exile and the Kingdom”
Exile and Inclusion: Excerpts from Albert Camus’ “Exile and the Kingdom” Alison M. Brady *This is an Accepted Manuscript to be published in a collection of short essays, entitled “Educational Frontiers: The Anxiety of Inclusion” by Kyoto University in March 2017. Do not quote without permission. Abstract The collection of short stories entitled “Exile and the Kingdom” by pied-noir Albert Camus embrace the themes of exile and return as illuminating an underlying anxiety of inclusion and exclusion. Written during the time of the French-Algerian war, these stories may be said to exemplify those who, in Cassin’s terms, “’are’ never there, never at home.” Through considering such stories, this paper discusses the connection between belonging and identity, and what it means, then, to be simultaneously included and excluded. Such ideas are important for education, not only in recognising identities of those who ‘belong-in-exile’, but in creating educational spaces where such identities can be more fully accounted for. Firstly, I will give a brief overview of Camus’ pied-noir status as an influential factor in his writings, before looking more closely at two of these stories, and discussing the ways in which they explore these themes in relation to Camus’ absurdism. I will then briefly point to how such themes might be understood in relation to the wider themes of anxiety, recognition, and rootedness. Finally, I will briefly offer some insights into the role education might play in relation to these themes. Introduction In 1957, the French-Algerian writer Albert Camus wrote a collection of short stories entitled “Exile and the Kingdom”. -
The Adulterous Woman”
Spates 1 Pamela D. Spates LeTourneau University CPO# 964 Longview, Texas 75607 [email protected] Phone 903 663-6182 The Romantic Self in Albert Camus’ “The Guest” and “The Adulterous Woman” Pamela D. Spates In the year 1957, only three short years before his untimely death in 1960, Albert Camus published his only set of short stories, Exile and the Kingdom. Anne Minor, in “The Short Stories of Albert Camus,” writes: “Exile and the Kingdom, a collection of short stories toward which critical opinion has been somewhat unjust, seems to me to be one of the key works for an appreciation of Camus’ thought and art” (75). Inherent in this thought is Camus’ perception of the Self, and one readily observes in the short stories an emerging Self that is varied and complex. The characters defy homogenous description. The stories themselves are vastly different from one another, and while the characters are presented in typical existential terms in some sense and in some scenes, a hint of a romantic Self can be clearly seen. The characters search for fulfillment, as well as a sense of who they are at the core of their being. Against the backdrop of an essentially existential worldview, ultimately described as “the absurd,” Camus reveals an affinity for the romantic side of the Self, even though that Self is not always fully realized in his characters. This assertion that Camus reveals a hint of the romantic Self in his short stories is by no means a radical idea. In his book, What is Romanticism, Henri Peyre quotes novelist and Spates 2 essayist Michel Butor, who asserts that “Camus is certainly a romantic” (ix). -
The Company of Strangers: a Natural History of Economic Life
The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life Paul Seabright Contents Page Preface: 2 Part I: Tunnel Vision Chapter 1: Who’s in Charge? 9 Prologue to Part II: 20 Part II: How is Human Cooperation Possible? Chapter 2: Man and the Risks of Nature 22 Chapter 3: Murder, Reciprocity and Trust 34 Chapter 4: Money and human relationships 48 Chapter 5: Honour among Thieves – hoarding and stealing 56 Chapter 6: Professionalism and Fulfilment in Work and War 62 Epilogue to Parts I and II: 71 Prologue to Part III: 74 Part III: Unintended Consequences Chapter 7: The City from Ancient Athens to Modern Manhattan 77 Chapter 8: Water – commodity or social institution? 88 Chapter 9: Prices for Everything? 98 Chapter 10: Families and Firms 110 Chapter 11: Knowledge and Symbolism 126 Chapter 12: Depression and Exclusion 139 Epilogue to Part III: 154 Prologue to Part IV: 155 Part IV: Collective Action Chapter 13: States and Empires 158 Chapter 14: Globalization and Political Action 169 Conclusion: How Fragile is the Great Experiment? 179 The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life Preface The Great Experiment Our everyday life is much stranger than we imagine, and rests on fragile foundations. This is the startling message of the evolutionary history of humankind. Our teeming, industrialised, networked existence is not some gradual and inevitable outcome of human development over millions of years. Instead we owe it to an extraordinary experiment launched a mere ten thousand years ago*. No-one could have predicted this experiment from observing the course of our previous evolution, but it would forever change the character of life on our planet. -
'Saints Without God'
‘Saints without God’ Camus’s poetics of secular faith NJ Grace Whistler Abstract • This article addresses Camus’s response to Christianity and the problem of suffering in the context of the early twentieth century. Owing to his association with the existentialist movement, it is often assumed that Camus, like many other French intellectuals of the period, rejected Christianity altogether. For this reason, his sympathy with Christian thought is overlooked, and it seems altogether bizarre that some theologians even claimed Camus to be a convert. Among these wildly conflicting claims, Camus’s philosophical response to Christianity has become somewhat muddied; in this article I attempt to rectify this. I argue that Camus’s entire philosophy is underpinned by his response to Christianity, and that he wanted to re-establish the position of morality in the face of the problem of suffering. I thus demonstrate how his writings manifest this struggle to achieve this goal, in what I refer to as Camus’s ‘poetics of secular faith’. Camus once claimed, ‘I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist’. This article aims to elucidate just what is meant by a statement like this, as well as to catalogue and analyse Camus’s innovative attempts at reconciling spirituality and suffering through philosophical literature. 1. Introduction ‘Black Flakes’, and everything in between. What is of interest to this article, however, is not to be ‘In short,’ Tarrou said simply, ‘what interests found at either extreme, but somewhere in the me is to know how one becomes a saint.’ middle. Albert Camus, who was born in 1913 ‘But you don’t believe in God.’ in predominately Catholic French-Algeria, lost ‘Precisely.