''The Rebel'' (french: L'Homme révolté) is a 1951 book-length

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as forma ...

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works ...

, which treats both the

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

and the historical development of rebellion and

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

societies A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societ ...

, especially

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

. Examining both rebellion and revolt, which may be seen as the same phenomenon in personal and social frames, Camus examines several '

countercultural A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...

' figures and movements from the history of Western thought and art, noting the importance of each in the overall development of revolutionary thought and philosophy. He analyses the decreasing social importance of the king, god and of virtue and the development of

nihilism Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Iv ...

. It can be seen as a sequel to '' The Myth of Sisyphus'', where he ponders the meaning of life, because it answers the same question, but offers an alternative solution.

Influence

Camus relates writers, artists, politicians and revolutionaries as diverse as

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ca ...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...

Marquis de Sade Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer famous for his literary depictions of a libertine sexuality as well as numerous accusatio ...

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (; 25 August 17679 Thermidor, Year II 8 July 1794, was a French revolutionary, political philosopher, member and president of the French National Convention, a Jacobin club leader, and a major figure of the Fre ...

Arthur Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he sta ...

Mikhail Bakunin Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary ...

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

Sergey Nechayev Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechayev (russian: Серге́й Генна́диевич Неча́ев) ( – ) was a Russian communist revolutionary and prominent figure of the Russian nihilist movement, known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution ...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revol ...

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

Max Stirner Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen as ...

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

Ivan Kalyayev Ivan Platonovich Kalyayev (russian: Иван Платонович Каляев; 6 July 1877 – 23 May 1905) was a Russian Empire poet, a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. He is best known for his role in the assassination of Gra ...

Joseph de Maistre Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre (; 1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Despite his clos ...

Comte de Lautréamont Comte de Lautréamont () was the ''nom de plume'' of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, '' Les Chants de Maldoror'' and ''Poésies'', had a major influence on modern art ...

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into E ...

Epicurus Epicurus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκουρος ; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influence ...

Max Scheler Max Ferdinand Scheler (; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers,Davis, Zach ...

Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...

and

Dmitry Pisarev Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarevrussian: Дми́трий Ива́нович Пи́сарев ( – ) was a Russian literary critic and philosopher who was a central figure of Russian nihilism. He is noted as a forerunner of Nietzschean philosophy and f ...

in an integrated, historical portrait of man in revolt. Fred Rosen has examined the influence of ideas of

Simone Weil Simone Adolphine Weil ( , ; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. Over 2,500 scholarly works have been published about her, including close analyses and readings of her work, since 1995. ...

on Camus' thinking in ''The Rebel''. According to him, Camus adopted her criticism of Marxism and her conception of the rebel as an artisan. George F Selfer has analysed parallels between Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche in philosophical aesthetics and found significant similarities and profound differences.

Themes

One of Camus' primary arguments in ''The Rebel'' concerns the motivation for rebellion and revolution. While the two acts—which can be interpreted from Camus' writing as states of being—are radically different in most respects, they both stem from a basic human rejection of normative justice. If human beings become disenchanted with contemporary applications of justice, Camus suggests that they rebel. This rebellion, then, is the product of a basic contradiction between the human mind's unceasing quest for clarification and the apparently meaningless nature of the world. Described by Camus as " absurd," this latter perception must be examined with what Camus terms "lucidity." Camus concludes that such an 'absurdist' sensibility contradicts itself because when it claims to believe in nothing, it believes in its own protest and in the value of the protester's life. Therefore, this sensibility is logically a "point of departure" that irresistibly "exceeds itself." In the inborn impulse to rebel, on the other hand, we can deduce values that enable us to determine that murder and oppression are illegitimate and conclude with "hope for a new creation." Another prominent theme in ''The Rebel'', which is tied to the notion of incipient rebellion, is the inevitable failure of attempts at human perfection. Through an examination of various titular revolutions, and in particular the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are consider ...

, Camus argues that most revolutions involved a fundamental denial of both history and transcendental values. Such revolutionaries aimed to kill God. In the French Revolution, for instance, this was achieved through the execution of

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was e ...

and subsequent eradication of the

divine right of kings In European Christianity, the divine right of kings, divine right, or God's mandation is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy. It stems from a specific metaphysical framework in which a monarch is, before ...

. The subsequent rise of materialist idealism sought " the end of history." Because this end is unattainable, according to Camus, terror ensued as the revolutionaries attempted to coerce results. This culminated in the "temporary" enslaving of people in the name of their future liberation. Notably, Camus' reliance on non-secular sentiment does not involve a defense of religion; indeed, the replacement of divinely-justified morality with pragmatism simply represents Camus' apotheosis of transcendental, moral values. Faced with the manifest injustices of human existence on one hand, and the poor substitute of revolution on the other, Camus' rebel seeks to fight for justice without abandoning transcendental values, including the principle of the intrinsic value of human life. Consequently, of all the modern revolutionaries, Camus describes how the "fastidious assassins", namely the Russian terrorists led by

, active in the early twentieth century were prepared to offer their own lives as payment for the lives they took, rather than licensing others to kill others. A third is that of

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...

, as Camus discusses how rebels who get carried away lose touch with the original basis of their rebellion and offer various defenses of crime through various historical epochs. At the end of the book, Camus espouses the possible moral superiority of the ethics and political plan of

syndicalism Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of prod ...

. He grounds this politics in a wider "midday thought" which opposes love of this life, and an unrelativisable normative commitment to fellow human beings, against ideological promises of the other world, end of history, or triumph of an alleged master race. The

Encyclopædia Britannica Online An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articl ...

summarised Camus views on rebellion: :: .."The true rebel is not the person who conforms to the orthodoxy of some revolutionary ideology but a person who could say “no” to injustice. He suggested that the true rebel would prefer the politics of reform, such as that of modern trade-union socialism, to the totalitarian politics of Marxism or similar movements. The systematic violence of ideology—the crimes de logique that were committed in its name—appeared to Camus to be wholly unjustifiable. Hating cruelty, he believed that the rise of ideology in the modern world had added enormously to human suffering. Though he was willing to admit that the ultimate aim of most ideologies was to diminish human suffering, he argued that good ends did not authorize the use of evil means." The

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia, dealing with philosophy, philosophical topics, and philosophers. The IEP combines open access publication with peer reviewed publication of original papers ...

explains that "the notion of Revolt refers to both a path of resolved action and a state of mind. It can take extreme forms such as terrorism or a reckless and unrestrained egoism (both of which are rejected by Camus), but basically, and in simple terms, it consists of an attitude of heroic defiance or resistance to whatever oppresses human beings."

Reception

This work has received ongoing interest, influencing modern philosophers and authors such as

Paul Berman Paul Lawrence Berman (born 1949) is an American writer on politics and literature. His books include '' Terror and Liberalism'' ( a ''New York Times'' best-seller in 2003), ''The Flight of the Intellectuals'', ''A Tale of Two Utopias'', ''Power an ...

. It was disliked by Marxists and existentialists, such as

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialist, existentialism (and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter ...

, who wrote a critical response to it in the review ''Les Temps modernes'' in 1952. Many European Communists considered his thoughts to be reactionary. The

considers the text to "consist of grave, but inconsistent and often unconvincing, essays loosely linked together." Aidan Curzon-Hobson considers it to be an important educational resource. He also considers it to be Camus's "most underexplored" text. According to the

, it is "a reflection on the nature of freedom and rebellion and a philosophical critique of revolutionary violence." It is powerful and controversial and explicitly condemns

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialec ...

Leninism Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishm ...

and emphatically denounces unrestrained violence as a means of human liberation. With this book, Camus became an "outspoken champion of individual freedom and ..an impassioned critic of tyranny and terrorism, whether practiced by the Left or by the Right." According to Meghan E. Von Hassel, Camus presented a new humanism in this book. He found "hope in the beauty of solidarity which is rooted in the dignity of man, namely, that there is value in human life." "Philosophically, The Rebel is Camus's most important book", according to John Foley, "although it is much maligned and frequently ignored".Foley, J. (2008). The Rebel. In Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt (pp. 55-86). Acumen Publishing. doi:10.1017/UPO9781844654130.004

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rebel, The 1951 essays 1951 non-fiction books Books about anarchism Books about communism Books about socialism Books about liberalism Books about revolutions Books by Albert Camus Essays by Albert Camus Existentialist books French non-fiction books Metaphysics literature Works about nihilism Philosophy essays Éditions Gallimard books

Influence

Themes

Reception

See also

References