And Camus. The concept of "absurdity"
Albert Camus.
Rebellious man
Content
Introduction
I. Rebellious Man
II Metaphysical Revolt
Sons of Cain
Absolute negation
Writer
Rebel dandies
Refusal to save
Absolute approval
The only one
Nietzsche and Nihelism
Rebellious poetry
Lautreamont and mediocrity
Surrealism and revolution
Nihilism and history
III Historical rebellion
Regicide
New Gospel
King's execution
The Religion of Virtue
Terror
deicide
Individual terrorism
Rejection of virtue
Three Possessed
Picky Killers
Shigalevshchina
State terrorism and irrational terror
State terrorism and rational terror
Bourgeois prophecies
Revolutionary prophecies
The collapse of the prophecies
Last kingdom
Totality and Judgment
Revolt and revolution
IV. Riot and art
Romance and rebellion
Riot and style
Creativity and revolution
V. Noon Thought
Riot and murder
Nihilistic murder
Historic assassination
Measure and immensity
Midday Thought
On the other side of nihilism
Comments and editorial notes
I
MAN REBEL
What is a rebellious person? This is a person who says “no.” But, denying, he does not renounce: this is a person who already says “yes” with his first action. A slave who has been fulfilling his master’s orders all his life suddenly considers the last of them unacceptable What is the content of his "no"?
“No” can, for example, mean: “I have endured too long”, “so far - so be it, but then enough will be enough”, “you are going too far” and also: “there is a limit that I cannot cross for you let" Generally speaking, this "no" asserts the existence of a boundary. The same idea of the limit is found in the feeling of the rebel that the other "takes too much upon himself", extends his rights beyond the border, beyond which lies the area of sovereign rights, which puts up an obstacle to any encroachment on them. Thus, the impulse to revolt is rooted both in a strong protest against any interference that is perceived as unacceptable, and in the vague conviction of the rebel that he is right, or rather, in his conviction that he "has the right to do such and such" . Rebellion does not occur if there is no such feeling of being right. That is why the rebellious slave says both "yes" and "no" at the same time. Together with the mentioned boundary, he affirms everything that he does not clearly feel in himself and wants to preserve. He stubbornly proves that there is something "worthwhile" in him and that it needs to be protected. To the order that enslaves him, he opposes a kind of right to endure oppression only to the extent that he himself sets.
Together with the repulsion of the alien in any rebellion, a complete identification of a person with a certain side of his being immediately occurs. Here, in a hidden way, a value judgment comes into play, and, moreover, so thorough that it helps the rebel to withstand the dangers. Until now, he had at least remained silent, sinking into despair, forced to endure any conditions, even if he considered them deeply unfair. Since the oppressed is silent, people assume that he does not reason and does not want anything, and in some cases he really does not want anything anymore. Despair, like absurdity, judges and desires everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence conveys it well. But as soon as the oppressed speaks, even if he says "no", it means that he desires and judges. The rebel makes a roundabout. He walked, driven by the whip of the owner. And now she stands face to face with him. The rebel opposes everything that is valuable to him, everything that is not. Not every value causes rebellion, but every rebellious movement tacitly presupposes some value. Is there value in this case?
In a rebellious impulse, a consciousness, albeit unclear, is born: a sudden vivid feeling that there is something in a person with which he can identify himself at least for a while. Until now, the slave has not really felt this identity. Before his rebellion, he suffered from all kinds of oppression. It often happened that he meekly carried out orders much more outrageous than the last one that caused the riot. The slave patiently accepted these orders; in the depths of his soul, he may have rejected them, but since he was silent, it means that he lived his daily worries, not yet realizing his rights. Having lost patience, he now begins to impatiently reject everything that he put up with before. This impulse almost always has the opposite effect. Rejecting the humiliating command of his master, the slave at the same time rejects slavery as such. Step by step, rebellion takes him much further than simple defiance. He even crosses the line he set for the enemy, now demanding that he be treated as an equal. What formerly was man's stubborn resistance becomes the whole man who identifies himself with resistance and is reduced to it. That part of his being, to which he demanded respect, is now dearer to him than anything, dearer even to life itself, it becomes the highest good for the rebel. Until then, a slave who lived by everyday compromises, in an instant ("because how else...") falls into irreconcilability - "all or nothing." Consciousness arises with rebellion.
This consciousness combines the still rather vague "everything" and "nothing", suggesting that a person can be sacrificed for the sake of "everything". The rebel wants to be either "everything", completely identifying himself with the good that he suddenly realized, and demanding that in his face people recognize and welcome this good, or "nothing", that is, to be defeated by a superior force. Going to the end, the rebel is ready for the last lawlessness, which is death, if he is deprived of that only sacred gift, which, for example, freedom can become for him. It is better to die standing than to live on your knees*.
According to many recognized authors, value "most often represents a transition from fact to law, from the desired to the desired (usually through the desired by all)"1. As I have already shown, in rebellion there is an obvious transition to the right. And similarly, the transition from the formula "it would be necessary for this to exist" to the formula "I want it to be so." But, perhaps even more important, we are talking about the transition from the individual to the good that has now become universal. Contrary to popular belief about rebellion, the appearance of the slogan "All or nothing" proves that rebellion, even born in the depths of a purely individual, casts doubt on the very concept of an individual. If an individual is ready to die and, under certain circumstances, accepts death in his rebellious impulse, he thereby shows that he is sacrificing himself in the name of a good that, in his opinion, means more than his own destiny. If a rebel is ready to perish in order not to lose the right he defends, then this means that he values this right more than himself. Therefore, he acts in the name of a value, albeit still obscure, which, he feels, unites him with all other people. Evidently the affirmation implicit in every rebellious action extends to something that transcends the individual insofar as this something relieves him of his supposed loneliness and gives him reason to act. But now it is important to note that this pre-existing value, given before any action, comes into conflict with purely historical philosophical teachings, according to which value is won (if it can be won at all) only as a result of action. The analysis of rebellion leads at least to the conjecture that human nature really exists, according to the ideas of the ancient Greeks and contrary to the postulates modern philosophy*. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in yourself worthy of being preserved? If a slave rises, it is for the good of all living. After all, he believes that, in the existing order of things, he denies something that is inherent not only to him, but which is that common in which all people, and even the one who insulted and oppressed a slave, have a pre-prepared community.
This conclusion is supported by two observations. First of all, it should be noted that, in its essence, the rebellious impulse is not an egoistic spiritual movement. No doubt, it can be caused by selfish reasons. But people rise up not only against oppression, but also against lies. Moreover, at first, the selfish rebel in the very depths of his soul values \u200b\u200bnothing, because he puts everything at stake. Of course, the rebel demands respect for himself, but only to the extent that he identifies himself with the natural human community.
Let us also note that it is by no means only the oppressed himself who becomes a rebel. Rebellion can also be raised by those who are shocked by the spectacle of oppression of which another has become a victim. In this case, he identifies himself with this oppressed. And here it is necessary to clarify that we are not talking about psychological identification, not about self-deception, when a person imagines that they insult him. It happens, on the contrary, that we are not able to calmly watch how others are subjected to those insults that we ourselves would endure without protesting. An example of this most noble movement of the human soul is suicide out of protest, which Russian terrorists decided to do in hard labor when their comrades were flogged. It is not about a sense of community of interests. After all, we may consider outrageous injustice even in relation to our opponents. Here there is only an identification of destinies and joining one of the parties. Thus, the individual in itself is not at all the value that he intends to protect. This value is made up of all people in general. In rebellion, a person, overcoming his limitations, draws closer to others, and from this point of view, human solidarity has a metaphysical character. It is simply about solidarity born in shackles.
The positive aspect of the value implied by all rebellion can be clarified by comparing it with the purely negative concept of malice, as Scheler defines it. Indeed, a rebellious impulse is something more than an act of protest in the strongest sense of the word. Anger is beautifully defined by Scheler as self-poisoning, as a destructive secretion of prolonged impotence, occurring in a closed vessel. Rebellion, on the contrary, breaks life and helps to go beyond it. He turns stagnant waters into raging waves. Scheler himself emphasizes the passive nature of anger, noting what a great place it occupies in the spiritual world of a woman, whose fate is to be an object of desire and possession. The source of rebellion, on the contrary, is an overabundance of energy and a thirst for activity. Scheler is right when he says that bitterness is brightly colored by envy. But they envy what they don't have. The rebel defends himself as he is. He demands not only the good that he does not possess or that he can be deprived of. He seeks recognition of what is already in him and which he himself in almost all cases has recognized as more significant than the object of probable envy. Riot is not realistic. According to Scheler, the bitterness of a strong soul turns into careerism, and that of a weak one into bitterness. But in any case, it is about becoming not what you are. Anger is always directed against its bearer. The rebellious person, on the contrary, in his first impulse protests against encroachments on himself, as he is. He fights for the integrity of his personality. At first, he seeks not so much to gain the upper hand as to make him respect himself.
Finally, bitterness seems to revel in advance on the torment it would like to inflict on its object. Nietzsche and Scheler are right in seeing a fine example of this feeling in that passage of Tertullian in which he informs the readers that it will be the greatest delight of the blessed inhabitants of paradise to see the Roman emperors writhing in the flames of hell. Such is the delight of respectable inhabitants who love the spectacle of the death penalty. The rebel, on the contrary, is fundamentally limited to protesting against humiliation, not wanting them for anyone else, and is ready to endure torment, but only not to allow anything offensive to the individual.
In this case, it is not clear why Scheler completely identifies the rebellious spirit and bitterness. His critique of animosity in humanitarianism (which he treats as a form of unchristian love for people) could be applied to some vague form of humanitarian idealism or the technique of terror. But this criticism misses the mark as far as the rebellion of man against his destiny, the impulse that raises him to the defense of the dignity inherent in everyone, is concerned. Scheler wants to show that humanitarianism goes hand in hand with hatred of the world. They love humanity as a whole so as not to love anyone in particular. In some cases this is true, and Scheler becomes clearer when you take into account that humanitarianism for him is represented by Bentham and Rousseau. But the attachment of a person to a person can arise due to something other than an arithmetic calculation of interests or trust in human nature (however, purely theoretical). The utilitarians and educator Emil* are opposed, for example, by the logic embodied by Dostoevsky in the image of Ivan Karamazov, who begins with a rebellious impulse and ends with a metaphysical uprising. Scheler, being familiar with Dostoyevsky's novel, summarizes the concept thus: "There is not enough love in the world to waste it on anything other than a person." Even if such a summary were true, the bottomless desperation that is felt behind it deserves something better than scorn. But, in fact, it does not convey the tragic nature of the Karamazov rebellion. The drama of Ivan Karamazov, on the contrary, consists in an overabundance of love, not knowing whom to pour out on. Since this love is not used, and God is denied, the decision arises to bestow it on a person in the name of noble compassion.
However, as follows from our analysis, in the rebellious movement some abstract ideal is chosen not out of mental poverty and not for the sake of fruitless protest. In a person, one must see that which cannot be reduced to an idea, that warmth of the soul, which is destined for existence and for nothing else. Does this mean that no rebellion carries bitterness and envy? No, it does not, and we know this very well in our unkind age. But we must consider the concept of anger in its broadest sense, because otherwise we risk distorting it, and then we can say that rebellion completely overcomes anger. If in Wuthering Heights Heathcliff prefers his love to God and asks to send him to hell, only to unite with his beloved there, then here it is not only his humiliated youth that speaks, but also the painful experience of his whole life. Meister Eckhart felt the same impulse when, in a startling fit of heresy, he declared that he preferred hell with Jesus to heaven without him. And here is the same impulse of love. So, contrary to Scheler, I strongly insist on the passionate creative impulse of rebellion, which distinguishes it from bitterness. Seemingly negative because it creates nothing, rebellion is actually deeply positive because it reveals in a person that which is always worth fighting for.
But aren't both rebellion and the value it carries relative? The reasons for the rebellion seem to have changed with the epochs and civilizations. It is obvious that a Hindu pariah, a warrior of the Inca Empire, a native from Central Africa or a member of the early Christian communities had different ideas about rebellion. It can even be argued with high probability that in these specific cases the concept of rebellion does not make sense. However, the ancient Greek slave, the serf, the Renaissance condottiere, the Regency Parisian bourgeois, the Russian intellectual of the 1900s, and the modern worker, diverging in their understanding of the causes of the rebellion, would unanimously recognize its legitimacy. In other words, we can assume that the problem of rebellion has a certain meaning only within the framework of Western thought. One can speak even more precisely, noting, together with Max Scheler, that the rebellious spirit found expression with difficulty in societies where inequality was too great (as in the Hindu castes), or, conversely, in those societies where there was absolute equality (certain primitive tribes) . In society, a rebellious spirit can arise only in those social groups where theoretical equality hides huge actual inequality. And this means that the problem of rebellion only makes sense in our Western society. In such a case, it would be difficult to resist the temptation to assert that this problem is connected with the development of individualism, if previous reflections had not alerted us to such a conclusion.
From Scheler's observation, it can be clearly deduced only that in our Western societies, thanks to the theory of political freedom, a high concept of man takes root in the human soul, and that, as a result of the practical use of this freedom, dissatisfaction with one's position grows correspondingly. Actual freedom develops more slowly than man's ideas about freedom. From this observation, only the following can be deduced: rebellion is the work of a person who is aware, firmly knowing his rights. But nothing gives us reason to speak only of the rights of the individual. On the contrary, it is highly probable that, thanks to the solidarity already mentioned, the human race becomes more and more fully aware of itself in the course of its history. Indeed, the problem of rebellion does not arise among the Incas or pariahs, since it was solved for them by tradition: even before they could raise the question of rebellion, the answer to it was already given in the concept of the sacred. In the sacred world there is no problem of rebellion, just as there are no real problems at all, since all answers are given once and for all. Here the place of metaphysics is occupied by myth. There are no questions, there are only answers and endless comments to them, which can be metaphysical. But when a person has not yet entered the sphere of the sacred, or has already left it, he is questioning and rebelling, and he questions and rebels in order to enter this sphere or leave it. A rebellious person is a person who lives before or after the sacred, demanding a human order, in which the answers will be human, that is, reasonably formulated. From this moment on, every question, every word is a rebellion, while in the sacralized world every word is an act of grace. It could thus be shown that only two universes are accessible to the human spirit - the universe of the sacred (or, to use the language of Christianity, the universe of grace)4 and the universe of rebellion. The disappearance of one means the emergence of the other, although this may come in puzzling forms. And here we again meet with the formula "All or nothing". The urgency of the problem of rebellion is determined solely by the fact that today entire societies seek to isolate themselves from the sacred. We live in a desacralized history. Of course, man is not reduced to rebellion. But today's history with its strife forces us to recognize that rebellion is one of the essential dimensions of man. It is our historical reality. And we need not to run away from it, but to find our values in it. But is it possible, staying outside the sphere of the sacred and its absolute values, to acquire a rule of life behavior? - such is the question posed by the rebellion.
We have already had the opportunity to note a certain indefinite value that is born at the limit beyond which the uprising takes place. Now it is time to ask ourselves if this value is found in modern forms of rebellious thought and rebellious action, and if so, to clarify its content. But before continuing the discussion, we note that the basis of this value is rebellion as such. The solidarity of people is determined by a rebellious impulse, and this, in turn, finds its justification only in their complicity. Therefore, we have the right to declare that any rebellion that allows itself to deny or destroy human solidarity ceases to be rebellions because of this and in fact coincides with a deadening conciliation. In the same way, devoid of holiness, human solidarity finds life only at the level of rebellion. Thus, the real drama of rebellious thought manifests itself. In order to live, a person must rebel, but his rebellion should not violate the boundaries opened by the rebel in himself, the boundaries beyond which people, united, begin their true being. Rebellious thought cannot do without memory; it is characterized by constant tension. Following her in her creations and actions, we must always ask whether she remains true to her original nobility or, out of fatigue and madness, she forgot about him - in the drunkenness of tyranny or servility.
In the meantime, here is the first result that the rebellious spirit has achieved thanks to reflection, imbued with absurdity and a sense of the obvious barrenness of the world. In the experience of the absurd, suffering is individual. In a rebellious impulse, it realizes itself as a collective. It turns out to be a common lot. The first achievement of a mind bound by estrangement is the understanding that it shares this estrangement with all people and that human reality suffers in its entirety from isolation, estrangement in relation to itself and to the world. Evil experienced by one person becomes a plague that infects everyone. In our daily trials, rebellion plays the same role that the "cogito" plays in the order of thought; rebellion is the first evidence. But this evidence brings the individual out of his loneliness, it is the common thing that underlies the first value for all people. I rebel, therefore we exist.
1 Lalande. Vocabuiaire philosophique.
2 The community of victims is a phenomenon of the same order as the community of the victim and the executioner. But the executioner does not know this.
3 L "homme du ressentiment *.
4 Of course, the rise of Christianity is marked by metaphysical rebellion, but the resurrection of Christ, the heralding of his second coming and the Kingdom of God, understood as the promise of eternal life, are the answers that make rebellion unnecessary.
ABSOLUTE STATEMENT
As soon as a person subjects God to a moral assessment, he kills God in himself. But then what is morality based on? God is denied in the name of justice, but is it possible to understand the idea of justice outside the idea of God. Are we then in an absurd situation? This is the absurdity that Nietzsche encountered. In order to more truly overcome it, he brings it to the limit: morality is the last hypostasis of God; it must be destroyed in order to be rebuilt. God then no longer exists, and he is no longer the guarantor of our existence; man must decide to act in order to be.
THE ONLY ONE
Already Stirner wanted to crush, following God himself, every idea of God in human consciousness. But, in contrast to Nietzsche, his nihilism is self-satisfied. Stirner chuckles at the dead end, while Nietzsche throws himself at the walls. Since 1845, when The One and His Property was published, Stirner has been clearing the way. The man who attended the circle "Free" together with the left Young Hegelians (among whom was Marx), settled scores not only with the Almighty, but also with Feuerbach's Man, with the Hegelian Spirit and its historical incarnation - the State. According to Stirner, all these idols are generated by the same "Mongolism", faith in eternal ideas. It is not surprising that he wrote: "Nothing - that's what I built my business on." Of course, sin is "Mongolian torment", but such is the set of laws to which we are slaves. God is an enemy, in his blasphemy Stirner crosses all boundaries ("digest the Holy Gifts - and you will be delivered from them!"). But God is only one of the alienated forms of my "I", or rather, of what I am. Socrates, Jesus, Descartes, Hegel, all the prophets and philosophers did nothing but invent new ways to alienate what I am, that very “I”, which Stirner invariably distinguished from the absolute “I” of Fichte, reducing the former to the most particular transient content. . "There are no names for him", he is the One.
For Stirner, universal history before the birth of Christ is only a centuries-old attempt to idealize reality. This effort is expressed in the ideas and rituals of purification inherent in the ancients. With the advent of Jesus, the goal is achieved and another effort arises, aimed, on the contrary, at the realization of the ideal. Purification is followed by a passion for incarnation that ravages the world more and more as socialism, the successor of Christ, expands its power. Universal is nothing but a centuries-old encroachment of history on a unique beginning, which is me, a living, concrete, all-conquering beginning, which sought to subdue the yoke of such successive abstractions as God, the state, society, humanity. For Stirner, philanthropy is a hoax. Atheistic philosophies, culminating in the cult of the state and man, are nothing more than "theological revolts." "Our atheists," says Stirner, "are really pious people." In fact, throughout history there has been only one cult - the cult of eternity. This cult is a lie. Only the only one is true, the enemy of the eternal and of everything that does not serve the will of the only one to rule.
Beginning with Stirner, the denial that inspires revolt buries all affirmations beneath it. It rejects the surrogates of the divine, with which the moral consciousness is littered. "The beyond outside us has been destroyed," says Stirner, "but the other side within us has become a new heaven." Even the revolution, and above all the revolution, is hateful to this rebel. To be a revolutionary, one must still believe in something where there is nothing to believe in. "When the reaction came after the (French) revolution, it became clear what the Revolution really was." To serve humanity slavishly is no better than to serve God. In the end, the brotherhood "only happens to the communists on Sundays." On the rest of the week the brothers become slaves. For Stirner, there is only one freedom - "my power" and only one truth - "the radiant selfishness of the stars."
REBELLION MAN
'REBELLION MAN'
(1943-1951, published in 1951) - book by Camus. The author formulates the goal of ‘B.Ch.’ as follows: ‘To comprehend the reality of the logical crime characteristic of our time, and carefully study the ways of justifying it. This is an attempt to understand our modernity. According to Camus, choice modern man is: ‘either correspond to the era of the murder, or turn away from it’. Problematizing the essence of the modern era through the concept of 'absurdity', Camus notes: '... when you try to extract the rules of action from the feeling of absurdity, it turns out that thanks to this feeling, murder is perceived at best indifferently and, therefore, becomes permissible ... Virtue and evil intention becomes a matter of chance or caprice. At the same time, distinguishing between logical and ethical considerations, Camus comes to the conclusion that ‘the last result of absurd reasoning is the rejection of suicide and participation in the desperate confrontation between the questioning person and the silent universe’. Revealing the essence of the concept of 'B.Ch.', Camus writes: 'This is a person who says no', who 'denying does not renounce'; ‘this is a person who says yes with his first action’. This no asserts the existence of a frontier beyond which lies ‘the area of sovereign rights, putting up a barrier to any encroachment on them’. Or: it is in this way that it turns out that ‘there is something in a person with which he can identify himself at least for a while’. Thus, consciousness is often born in a person ‘together with rebellion’. Arguing with Sartre's thesis that man has no nature, no pre-established essence ("existence precedes essence"; the project of man, the act of his choice determine him), Camus postulates: "Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the conjecture that human nature really exists, confirming the ideas of the ancient Greeks...'. Rebellion breaks being and helps to go beyond it (development of this theme in the philosophy of postmodernism - see below). TRANSGRESSION). According to Camus (who also uses Scheler's calculations), the rebellious spirit "hardly finds expression" in societies where inequality is too great (castes of India), or in societies where equality is close to absolute (primitive tribes). Its soil is a society where ‘theoretical equality hides huge actual inequalities’, i.e. Western type society. A society where a person is firmly aware of his rights and - at the same time - where "actual freedom develops more slowly than a person's ideas about freedom." Rebellion is the lot of a person who lives ‘before or after the sacred’, demanding reasonably formulated, and not mythological, answers to his questions. Camus states: only two universes are available to the human spirit - the universe of the sacred (or ‘grace’ in Christian vocabulary) and the universe of rebellion. (According to Camus, 'the rise of Christianity is marked by a metaphysical rebellion, but the Resurrection of Christ, the proclamation of his second coming and the kingdom of God, understood as the promise of eternal life, are the answers that make the rebellion useless'.) The internal contradiction of the rebellion is that 'for this in order to live, a person must rebel, but his rebellion must respect the boundaries opened by the rebel in himself, the boundaries beyond which people, united, begin their true being '. Camus continues: “In the experience of the absurd, suffering is individual. In a rebellious impulse, it takes on the character of a collective existence (...) I rebel, therefore we exist. Comprehending the ‘metaphysical rebellion’, the author of ‘B.Ch.’ fixes that the ego ‘man’s rebellion against his destiny and against the whole universe’, such a rebellion ‘disputes ultimate goals man and the universe'. The rebellious slave, denying his destiny, involves otherworldly forces in this conflict: this is not atheism, this is a polemic with the gods, this is a desire to prove their own rightness to them, and then overthrow them. The result of such a social procedure is a ‘metaphysical revolution’: the deposition of God must be justified, compensated in this world. As a rule, a new kingdom of people without God is rebuilt at the price of 'terrible consequences'. IN ancient world, according to Camus, always personally directed rebellion was impossible. The worldview of the ancient Greeks was not simplified: they did not see the abyss between people and gods. ‘The Greeks never turned thought into a fenced military camp’. In the Western world, the history of rebellion is ‘inseparable from the history of Christianity’. And such a rebellion leads the story from God Old Testament: in Camus's view, 'the story of rebellion we live today is the story of the children of Cain...'. Camus has ‘Christ came to solve two major problems - the problems of evil and death, and these are the problems of the rebels’. Jesus took upon himself both evil and death. The God of the New Testament, the God-man, sought to create a mediator between Him and man. Gnosticism tried to strengthen this intellectual line, but the Church ‘condemned this effort, and in condemning it, it multiplied riots’. Camus emphasizes: “Up to Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, rebellious thought refers only to a cruel wayward deity who, without any convincing argument, prefers the sacrifice of Abel to the gifts of Cain, and thereby provokes the first murder in history. Dostoevsky in imagination, and Nietzsche in reality, will expand the field of rebellion without limit and present an account to the very god of love ... '. According to Camus, the first rebel in the interval from Gnosticism to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky was de Sade, who brought out of the rebellion only the ‘absolute no’ (see Sade), as well as Ch. Baudelaire. One of the problems of ‘B.Ch.’ is this: by exposing God to moral evaluation, a person kills God in himself; denying God in the name of justice, this very idea becomes absurd. A person is forced to act on his own. M. Stirner emphasized that universal history is a centuries-old encroachment on the principle of the ‘single’, which is the Self. They tried to bend the latter under the yoke of such abstractions as God, the state, society, humanity. Further, according to the scheme of Camus, Nietzsche arose, as well as the traditions of nihilism and Marxism (cf. NIHILISM, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF GOOD AND EVIL(NIETZSCHE), DEATH OF GOD, MARXISM). Further, Camus, using extensive historical material (the Great French Revolution, the Russian terror of the late 19th - early 20th century, fascist coups in Western Europe of the 20th century, the social consequences of Marx's messianic prophecies, V. Lenin's revolutionary radicalism) analyzes the problem of the relationship between metaphysical rebellion and revolutions - man-, king- and god-killing. These, the latter, were due, in his opinion, to the work of the ‘philosophers of continuous dialectics’, who replaced the ‘harmonious and fruitless designers of the mind’. According to Camus, ‘a revolution that knows no other boundaries than historical efficiency means boundless slavery. (...) If the limit, opened by rebellion, is able to transform everything, and any thought, any action that crosses a certain line becomes self-denial, it is clear that there is a certain measure of things and a person. (...) Revealing the nature common to all people, the rebellion also reveals the measure and limit underlying it. As the author of ‘B.Ch.’ writes, ‘the Jacobin and bourgeois civilizations believe that values are higher than history: it turns out that its formal virtue serves as the basis for vile mystification. The revolution of the 20th century decides that values are mixed with the historical movement; thus its historical reason justifies a new kind of mystification. As Camus notes, ‘man cannot be considered completely guilty - after all, history did not begin with him; but you can’t call him completely innocent either - after all, he continues it. (...) Rebellion, on the other hand, insists on the relative guilt of man. Revolution of the 20th century ‘cannot escape the terror and violence that is being done to reality... she models reality from the absolute. Rebellion, on the other hand, relies on reality in order to rush into the eternal struggle for truth. According to Camus, ‘the rebellion is constantly confronted with evil, after which it must each time gain strength for a new impulse. A man can curb in himself everything that he should be. And he must improve everything in the universe that can be improved. (...) But injustice and suffering will remain... art and rebellion will only die with the last man.'
History of Philosophy: Encyclopedia. - Minsk: Book House. A. A. Gritsanov, T. G. Rumyantseva, M. A. Mozheiko. 2002 .
See what "REBELLING MAN" is in other dictionaries:
L Homme revolté Genre: Essay
- (1943 1951, published in 1951) book by Camus. Purpose B.Ch. the author formulates as follows: To comprehend the reality of the logical crime characteristic of our time, and carefully study the ways of justifying it. This is an attempt to understand our modernity. By… … History of Philosophy: Encyclopedia
First Man Le Premier homme Genre: Romance
- (Camus) Albert (1913 1960) - French. philosopher, essayist, writer, journalist. Studied philosophy in Algiers, un te. He led the Theater of Labor in Algiers, participated in the Resistance, collaborated in the underground newspaper Komba, after the release of its main ... ... Encyclopedia of cultural studies
- (Camus) (1913-1960), French writer and existentialist philosopher. Member of the Resistance Movement. In the story "The Stranger" (1942; another name is "Alien"), the theme of the absurdity of life is revealed through the stream of consciousness of an internally devastated hero. ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Wikipedia has articles about other people with this surname, see Camus. Albert Camus Albert Camus ... Wikipedia
- (Camus) Albert (1913 1960) fr. philosopher, writer, publicist, Nobel Prize in Literature (1957). It was formed under the influence of the ideas of S. Kierkegaard, E. Husserl, F.M. Dostoevsky, L. Shestov. K. focuses on ethical issues (“I ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia
CAMUS Albert- (1913 1960) French. philosopher and writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1957). Genus. in Mondovi (Algeria) in the family of an agricultural worker. In Algeria, K. studied at the Lyceum (where he met with J. Grenier, who had a serious influence on him ... ... Modern Western Philosophy. encyclopedic Dictionary
This article is about the mythological theory of the origin of Christianity. For the mythological school in ethnography and folklore, see Mythological school (ethnography). N. N. Ge. What is truth? ... Wikipedia
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- Introduction
- Conclusion
Introduction
The subject of this study is the philosophy of rebellion by A. Camus based on the work “The Rebellious Man”.
The relevance of the study lies in the fact that "The Rebellious Man" is one of the last works of Albert Camus and the pinnacle of his philosophical work. The book was begun during the war and completed in early 1951. "The birth is long, difficult, and it seems to me that the child will be ugly," Camus wrote about working on this book. "The Rebellious Man" instantly caused a whole storm of criticism, the controversy around Camus's book did not stop for a long time. The writer set against himself both the left and the right. The communists accused him of promoting terrorist acts against the Soviet leadership, that he was a "warmonger" and sold out to the Americans. The “rebellious man” quarreled Camus with pro-Soviet left-wing intellectuals, but he was supported by anti-authoritarian socialists: anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists.
The purpose of the study is to analyze the philosophy of rebellion by A. Camus.
Research objectives:
To study the philosophical prerequisites for writing "The Rebellious Man";
To analyze the content and philosophical significance of "Rebellious Man" for the philosophy of the 20th century;
Reveal the place of the "Rebellious Man" in the philosophical concept of A. Camus.
The object of the study is the work of A. Camus "The Rebellious Man".
The subject of the study is the philosophy of rebellion by A. Camus based on the work “The Rebellious Man”.
1. Philosophical prerequisites for writing "The Rebellious Man"
Art is not valuable in itself, it is “creativity without tomorrow”, which brings joy to the self-realizing artist, busy with the persistent creation of perishable works. The actor lives one after another many lives on the stage, the dignity of the "absurd asceticism" of the writer (and the artist in general) is self-discipline, "an effective school of patience and clarity." The Creator plays with images, creates a myth, and thus himself, since there is no clear boundary between appearance and being.
All reasoning and sketches of this essay are summarized by the “myth of Sisyphus”. If Nietzsche proposed the myth of the “eternal return” to humanity that had lost the Christian faith, then Camus offers the myth of the affirmation of oneself - with maximum clarity of mind, with an understanding of the fallen lot, a person must bear the burden of life, not resigning himself to it - self-giving and the fullness of existence are more important than all peaks, the absurd man chooses to rebel against all gods.
By the time the work on The Myth of Sisyphus was completed, Camus had already accumulated doubts about such an aesthetic self-affirmation. Even in a review of Nausea, Camus reproached Sartre precisely for the fact that the rebellion of the hero, Antoine Roquentin, was reduced to "absurd creativity." In the play "Caligula" he captures the contradiction between absurdity and simple human values. Emperor Caligula from the observation “people die and they are unhappy” made conclusions quite acceptable from the point of view of absurdity and became “the scourge of God”, “plague”. His antagonist in the play, Hereya, kills the emperor in the name of the human pursuit of happiness, but is forced to admit that his choice is no more justified than the atrocities of the tyrant. The “conquerors” have no other scale of values than the fullness of experiencing their titanic efforts, but “everything is permitted” then suits not only for those ennobled by the adventurer Malraux, but also for real conquerors who, as Camus wrote back in 1940, “pretty succeeded , and for many years a gloomy silence hung over tormented Europe, in lands where there was no spirit. Camus' conclusion in the same essay "Almond Groves" is directly opposite to aesthetic titanism: "never again submit to the sword, never again recognize a force that does not serve the spirit." Nietzsche could furiously denounce the “channel of Socrates” at a time when the highest values were torn off from life and were vulgarized by petty-bourgeois hypocrisy. But today, it is precisely these values that need to be defended when the era threatens to reject all culture, and “Nietzsche is in danger of gaining a victory that he himself did not want.” Nietzsche was the prophet of this “brave new world”, Dostoevsky predicted the emergence of a civilization “requiring skinning”, Camus was not a prophet, but an eyewitness of such a civilization that made Nietzsche’s “everything is permitted” common coin.
Participation in the Resistance was a turning point in the work of Camus. In Letters to a German Friend, he settles scores with imaginary like-minded people of the 1930s, who declared that in a world devoid of meaning, it is permissible to make an idol out of a nation, a “master race”, called to rule over millions of slaves. Such myth-making is quite acceptable, from the absurdity one can also deduce the need to devote one's life to the treatment of lepers and the filling of camp stoves with people. The conscience can be declared a chimera, the spirit a lie, violence extolled as heroism.
Many intellectuals have had to overestimate the significance of Nietzsche's brilliant aphorisms. When Camus was writing Letters to a German Friend in the underground, emigrant Thomas Mann urged intellectuals to put an end to the refined immoralism that played a role in preparing the nihilism of “iron and blood”: “Time has sharpened our conscience, showing that thought has obligations to life and reality, obligations that are very badly fulfilled when the spirit commits hara-kiri for the sake of life. There are performances in thinking and literature that impress us less than before, seeming rather stupid and blasphemous. The spirit is clearly entering today into a moral epoch, an epoch of a new moral and religious distinction between good and evil.” Now the rebellion must be directed primarily against the mythology that brings with it "dirty horror and bloody foam." The intellectual amusements of the “philosophy of life”, the Heideggerian exaltation about “being-toward-death” and authentic choice were transformed into political slogans. It is impossible to defend the values of the spirit with the help of nihilistic philosophy. But Camus cannot accept any dogmatically established value system - secular humanism, from his point of view, is groundless. In the essay “The Riddle”, Camus speaks of “loyalty to the world”, of belonging to the “unworthy, but faithful sons of Greece”, who find the strength to endure our age, stunned by nihilism. The world is ruled not by nonsense, but by meaning, but it is difficult to decipher - the key to this elusive meaning is rebellion.
2. The content and philosophical significance of "Rebellious Man" for the philosophy of the XX century
philosophical camus man rebellious
The early philosophy of Camus is the history of the idea of rebellion - metaphysical and political - against the injustice of the human lot. If the first question of The Myth of Sisyphus was the question of the permissibility of suicide, then this work begins with the question of the justification of murder. People at all times killed each other - this is the truth of the fact. The one who kills in a fit of passion is put on trial, sometimes sent to the guillotine. But today, the real threat is not these criminal loners, but government officials who send millions of people to death in cold blood, justifying massacres in the interests of the nation, state security, human progress, and the logic of history.
The man of the twentieth century found himself in the face of totalitarian ideologies that serve as a justification for murder. Even Pascal in his “Provincial Letters” was indignant at the casuistry of the Jesuits, who allowed murder contrary to the Christian commandment. Of course, all churches blessed wars, executed heretics, but every Christian still knew that “Thou shalt not kill” is inscribed on the tablets, that murder is the gravest sin. On the tablets of our age it is written: "Kill." Camus in Man Rebel traces the genealogy of this maxim of modern ideologies. The problem is that these ideologies themselves were born from the idea of rebellion, transformed into a nihilistic "everything is permitted."
Camus believed that the starting point of his philosophy remained the same - this is an absurdity that calls into question all values. Absurdity, in his opinion, forbids not only suicide, but also murder, since the destruction of one's own kind means an attack on the unique source of meaning, which is the life of each person. However, the absurd setting of the Myth of Sisyphus does not result in a rebellion that affirms the self-worth of the other. The rebellion there gave the price of individual life - it is "the struggle of the intellect with a superior reality", "the spectacle of human pride", "refusal of reconciliation". The fight against the “plague” then is no more justified than the Don Juanism or the bloody willfulness of Caligula.
“Of course, man is not reduced to rebellion. But today's history, with its strife, forces us to recognize that rebellion is one of the essential dimensions of a person. It is our historical reality. And we should not run away from it, but find our values in it.” That rebellion, which is identical to life itself, does not coincide with the desire for general destruction: after all, it grows out of the desire for order and harmony, which do not exist in the world. Therefore, “rebellion is the force of life, not of death. Its deepest logic is not the logic of destruction, but of creation.” According to Camus, rebellion is a way of being a person, a way of fighting against the absurd.
After the publication of The Rebellious Man, the paths of Camus and the French left-wing intellectuals diverged completely. This book, the main work of Albert Camus, examines the history of European nihilism, from the Marquis de Sade and the Jacobins to Nazism and Stalinism. The book begins with the "revolt theorem". A riot begins when a slave says "no" to his master. But this “no” also means “yes”. The slave proves "that there is something worth protecting in him." Consciousness is born in rebellion: "a sudden vivid feeling that there is something in a person with which he can identify himself at least for a while." This “something” transcends the individual himself and unites him with other people. Already in the first chapter, Camus is an opponent of Sartrean existentialism: “... This pre-existing value, given before any action, conflicts with purely historical philosophical teachings, according to which value is won (if it can be won at all) only as a result of action. The analysis of rebellion leads at least to the conjecture that human nature really exists, according to the ideas of the ancient Greeks and contrary to the postulates of modern philosophy. Human nature is what unites the rebel with all the oppressed and with all mankind, including the oppressor who betrayed solidarity. “I rebel, therefore we exist,” says Camus.
But there is always a temptation to betray the balance of rebellion and choose either total agreement or total denial. Camus considers the temptations of metaphysical, historical and literary rebellion.
Metaphysical rebellion is a crime against measure. This is not a slave's rebellion against his master, but a man's rebellion against his destiny. “Everyone says: “There is no truth on earth.” But there is no higher truth." The archetype of metaphysical rebellion is Prometheus. But a hero Greek mythology rises not against the all-powerful God of Christianity, but against Zeus. Zeus is just one of the gods, and his days are numbered. For the Greeks, any rebellion is a rebellion against injustice in the name of nature. Metaphysical rebels are the children of Cain, not Prometheus. Their enemy is the ruthless God of the Old Testament. The origins of metaphysical rebellion are the same as those of rebellion in general. "... The garden and the romantics, Karamazov and Nietzsche entered the realm of death only because they wanted true life." They fought abstractions and in the name of abstractions. Anarcho-individualist Stirner rejects any abstractions, any ideals in the name of a free individual, the One. But Stirner's Unique is itself, in this case, a bare abstraction. Nietzsche denies the Christian "morality of slaves" and says "yes" to everything earthly. But to say yes to everything is to say yes to both murder and injustice. Absolute rebellion ends in absolute conformity. In the name of the realm of the superman, Nietzsche's disciples will create a bloody regime of subhumans. Prometheus will turn into Caesar. Metaphysical rebellion in literature, from the Marquis de Sade to the Surrealists, degenerates into empty posturing and, again, reconciliation with dictatorship and injustice.
The historical revolt generated by the Great French Revolution is a logical continuation of the metaphysical revolt. The Jacobins killed people in the name of abstraction, which they called virtue. The Bolsheviks do not recognize virtue, but recognize only historical efficiency. The present is sacrificed for the future.
It turns into a denial of all values and results in brutal self-will, when the rebel himself becomes a “man-god”, who inherits from the deity he rejected everything that he so hated - absolutism, claims to the last and final truth (“truth is one, there are many delusions”), providentialism, omniscience, the words "make them in." This degenerate Prometheus is ready to drive into the earthly paradise by force, and at the slightest resistance arranges such terror, in comparison with which the fires of the Inquisition seem like child's play.
The metaphysical revolt of de Sade, dandies, romantics, accursed poets, surrealists, Stirner, Nietzsche, etc. - these are the stages of European nihilism, the evolution of "human deity". Together with the cosmic almighty, the God-slayers also deny any moral world order. The metaphysical rebellion gradually merges with the historical rebellion. Louis XVI is still executed in the name of the triumph of the “general will” and virtue, but along with the princeps, all the former principles are also killed. “From the humanitarian idylls of the 18th century and the bloody scaffolds, there is a direct path,” Camus wrote in “Reflections on the Guillotine,” and, as everyone knows, today’s executioners are humanists.” One more step - and the rebellious masses are led by human gods completely freed from human morality, the time of "Shigalevism" comes, and she, in turn, elevates new Caesars to the throne.
3. The place of the "Rebellious Man" in the philosophical concept of A. Camus
This connection of the metaphysical rebellion with the historical one was mediated by the “German ideology”. At the height of his work on The Rebellious Man, Camus said that “the evil geniuses of Europe bear the names of philosophers: their names are Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche ... We live in their Europe, in a Europe created by them.” Despite the obvious differences in the views of these thinkers (as well as Feuerbach, Stirner), Camus combines them into a “German ideology” that gave rise to modern nihilism.
To understand the reasons why these thinkers were included in a number of "evil geniuses", it is necessary, firstly, to recall the socio-political situation, and secondly, to understand from what angle their theories are considered.
Camus wrote The Rebellious Man in 1950, when the Stalinist system seemed to have reached the apogee of its power, and the Marxist doctrine had turned into a state ideology. There were political trials in Eastern Europe, information about millions of prisoners came from the USSR; as soon as this system spread to China, the war in Korea began - at any moment it could break out in Europe. The political views of Camus changed by the end of the 40s, he no longer thinks about the revolution, since tens of millions of victims would have to pay for it in Europe (if not the death of all mankind in the world war). Gradual reforms are needed - Camus remained a supporter of socialism, he equally highly placed the activities of trade unions, Scandinavian social democracy and "libertarian socialism". In both cases, socialists seek to free a living person, and do not call for sacrificing the lives of several generations for the sake of some kind of earthly paradise. Such a sacrifice does not bring closer, but moves away the “kingdom of man” - by eliminating freedom, planting totalitarian regimes, there is no access to it.
Camus admits many inaccuracies in interpreting the views of Hegel, Marx, Lenin, but such a vision of the works of the "classics" is quite understandable. He considers precisely those of their ideas that were included in the Stalinist "canon", propagated as the only true teaching, used to justify bureaucratic centralism and "leaderism". In addition, he is arguing with Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, who undertook to justify totalitarianism with the help of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit, the doctrine of the "totality of history." History ceases to be a teacher of life, it becomes an inexorable idol to which more and more sacrifices are made. Transcendental values are dissolved in historical development, the laws of economics themselves draw humanity to heaven on earth, but at the same time they require the destruction of all who oppose them.
The subject of consideration by Camus is the tragedy of philosophy, which turns into a “prophecy”, into an ideology that justifies state terror. History became the deity of the “German ideology”, propagandists and investigators became the priests of the new religion. "Prophecy" has its own logic of development, which may have nothing to do with the good intentions of a rebel philosopher. However, the question of the responsibility of thinkers is posed by Camus quite justifiably: neither Marx nor Nietzsche would have approved of the deeds of their “disciples”, but from their theories it was possible to draw conclusions suitable for new Caesars, while from the ethics of Kant or Tolstoy, political theories Locke or Montesquieu cannot deduce the need for mass murder.
But the recognition of a certain responsibility of thinkers for their ideas, words should not be confused with responsibility for deeds, while Camus sometimes lacks a clear separation of them. Any developed ideological system presupposes such a rethinking of history that not only modern, but even ancient thinkers turn into forerunners and even “fighters”, become indisputable authorities. Interpreters are responsible for interpretation, and they need only those thoughts that correspond to the political situation. It is created not by philosophical theories, and not even by the ideologies themselves. Totalitarian regimes appeared in Europe as a result of the First World War, which neither Marx nor Nietzsche, nor all the metaphysical rebels, poets, anarchists listed by Camus, prepared in the least. The moral and political principles of European civilization collapsed into the trenches of the war, which was justified from ambos and university pulpits, referring not to some nihilists at all, but to Christian commandments, moral and political values. Were it not for this war, Hitler would have remained an unsuccessful copyist artist, Mussolini would have edited a newspaper, one could only read about Trotsky and Stalin in the notes to some extremely meticulous work on the history of the labor movement. The history of ideas is important for understanding European history as a whole, but the second is not exhausted by the first.
In parallel with the changes in the philosophical and political views of Camus, his understanding of art also changed. In his youth, comprehending his first artistic experiments, Camus considered art to be a beautiful illusion, which, at least for a short time, gives an oblivion of pain and suffering. He even talked about music in the manner of Schopenhauer, although she never occupied a large place in the spiritual life of Camus (in addition to literature and theater, which he was engaged in professionally, sculpture and painting were close to him). But very soon Camus comes to the conclusion that an aesthetic escape from reality is impossible, “fruitless twilight dreaminess” should be replaced by art as “evidence” - the bright light of a work of art highlights life, which must be accepted, said “yes” to it, without knowing any malice at peace, no contentment. Camus' proximity to Nietzscheism is limited to this life-affirmation, he does not recognize anything "superhuman" except for the beautiful nature. Acceptance of life as it is is not Rimbaud's "unbridled feelings" taken up by the surrealists. In addition to the beautiful face of life, there is also its wrong side - social reality belongs to it. Reflections on how to combine the service of art and political activity begin as early as the 30s, when Camus played in the “Labor Theater” and organized a “Culture House” for workers.
This theme comes to the fore in the 40s and 50s, when Camus abandons the absurd "self-overcoming" through artistic creation. Any "art for art's sake" is unequivocally condemned by him: aestheticism, dandyism in art inevitably go hand in hand with hypocrisy. In the ivory tower, the artist loses touch with reality. "The mistake of modern art" he considered the focus on technology, form - the means are put ahead of the goal. But sterility threatens the artist even when he becomes an "engineer of souls", an ideological "fighter". Art dies in apologetics.
Both in art and in politics, Camus urges not to leave a person at the mercy of the abstractions of progress, utopia, history. There is something in human nature that is permanent, if not eternal. Nature in general is stronger than history: by turning to one's own nature, to the unchanging in the stream of changes, a person is saved from nihilism. It is clear that this is not about the Christian understanding of man. Jesus Christ for Camus is not the Son of God, but one of the innocent martyrs of history, he is no different from millions of other victims. People are united not by Christ, not by the mystical body of the church, but by real suffering and revolt and solidarity born from suffering. There is one truly catholic church, uniting all people who have ever existed; its apostles are all the rebels who affirmed freedom, dignity, beauty. Human nature has nothing in common with divine nature, one must limit oneself to what is given by nature, and not invent God-manhood or man-deity.
We are dealing with a variant of secular humanism, the main source of which is antiquity. The immensity of the “Faustian soul” Camus contrasts with the “Apollo soul” - with the ideals of harmony, measure, limit. Europe is the heir not only of Christian monotheism and "German ideology", but also of solar paganism, Mediterranean "clarity of vision". The Mediterranean civilization for Camus is Athens, not the "non-commissioned civilization of Rome." It is no coincidence that he refers to the "invincible sun" (Sol. Invictus) of Mithraism, which coincides with the light of reason, is compared with the image of the sun in Plato's "cave myth".
Thus, it is not a matter of historical Ancient Greece, which knew not only the Apollonian light - Camus creates his own solar myth, in which Sisyphus, Prometheus, and Socrates take their places. Nietzschean Dionysianism now fades into the background, Camus' ethics is directly connected with Socratic: “The evil that exists in the world is almost always the result of ignorance, and any good will can bring as much damage as evil, if only this good will is not sufficiently enlightened. People - they are more good than bad, and, in essence, that's not the point. But they are in varying degrees in ignorance, and this is called virtue or vice, and the most terrible vice is ignorance, which considers that everything is known to it, and therefore allows itself to kill. The soul of a killer is blind, and there is neither true kindness nor the most beautiful love without absolute clarity of vision” (“The Plague”). The Socratic ethics of “seeing” and “knowledge”, the stoic “courage to be”, defined by Tillich as “the courage to affirm one’s own rational nature in spite of everything that is accidental in us”, dominate Camus’s late work.
Accordingly, the titanic revolt of Prometheus, which has become in Western European thought a symbol of both technological utopia and revolutionary practice, is also reinterpreted. The rebellion of Prometheus does not promise either final liberation or salvation. This protest against the human condition is always doomed to defeat, but it is always renewed, like the work of Sisyphus. You can improve some specific circumstances and reduce suffering, but you cannot get rid of mortality and forgetfulness. The rebellion is not aimed at destruction, but at a partial improvement of the cosmic order. Man is corporeal, the flesh connects us with the world, it is the source of both earthly joys and suffering. There is no original sin on the flesh, but aggressiveness and cruelty are also rooted in our nature. We are not in a position to cancel it by some kind of “authentic choice” of the existentialists. Our freedom is always limited and comes down to choosing between different passions and impulses. Such a choice requires clarity of vision, which helps to overcome all that is base in ourselves. It is clear that this kind of "austerity" has little in common with Nietzscheism, from which only the ideal of "self-overcoming" remains; however, for all the merits of such an ethics, in comparison with nihilism, it has a limited and formal character. It imposes a ban on the murder and enslavement of another, but the most complex forms of relationships between people remain outside of it. Orna requires "absolute clarity of vision", but such is not available to a person, and rebellion can always develop into self-will. The heroic ancient morality did not know a ban on either murder or suicide; at best, it requires “leading”, but not all-human solidarity. However, Camus did not set himself the task of creating a new ethical system. It is hardly possible to derive all ethical values from rebellion, but it is clear what it is directed against. “I hate only executioners” - this is perhaps the shortest and most accurate definition of Camus's social and moral position.
Conclusion
Thus, the philosophy of rebellion A. Camus can be formulated as follows: Camus is trying to find an answer to the great question, in all its sharpness put before man modern era: what should I do and is it possible to live if there is no God, the world has no meaning, and I am mortal? For Camus, absurdity, the original pre-human and extra-human senselessness of the universe, is the element of human existence, and therefore a worthy response of a person to this absurdity is precisely a continuous, hopeless and heroic rebellion. To know about one's death without running away from this bitter knowledge, and yet to live, to bring one's own into the meaningless world. human sense- it already means "to rebel". In such a rebellion, all human values are born: meaning, freedom, creativity, solidarity. According to Camus, the absurd begins to make sense when it is disagreed with. Rebellion is doomed to defeat from the very beginning, because both the individual and humanity as a whole are mortal.
It is in rebellion that man - the only animal capable of rebellion, of realizing his mortality, freedom and responsibility - asserts both his personal individuality, and universal human solidarity, and the human meaning expressed by Camus in a laconic formula: “I rebel, therefore I exist ". Thus, the category of "rebellion" from a metaphor or a narrow political concept turns into an important characteristic of human existence.
In the work “The Rebellious Man”, Camus changes the very content of the concepts “absurdity” and “rebellion”, since from them it is no longer an individualistic rebellion that is born, but a demand for human solidarity, a common meaning for all people of existence. The rebel gets up from his knees, says “no” to the oppressor, draws a line that from now on must be reckoned with by those who considered themselves masters. The renunciation of the slave lot simultaneously affirms the freedom, equality and human dignity of everyone. However, the rebellious slave can cross this limit himself, he wants to become a master, and the rebellion turns into a bloody dictatorship. In the past, according to Camus, the revolutionary movement "never really broke away from its moral, evangelical and idealistic roots." Today, the political rebellion has joined with the metaphysical one, which has freed modern man from all values, and therefore it turns into tyranny. In itself, the metaphysical rebellion also has a justification, while the rebellion against the heavenly omnipotent Demiurge means a refusal to reconcile with one's destiny, the affirmation of the dignity of earthly existence.
List of used literature
1. Velikovsky S.I. In search of lost meaning. - M., 1979.
2. Velikovsky S.I. Edges of unhappy consciousness. - M., 1973.
3. Zotov A.F., Melville Yu.K. Western philosophy of the twentieth century. - M. "Prospect", 1998.
4. Camus A. A rebellious person. - M.: Politizdat. - 1990.
5. Kushkin E.P. Albert Camus. Early years. - L., 1982.
6. Ryabov P. V. A rebellious man - the philosophy of rebellion by Mikhail Bakunin and Albert Camus // Revival of Russia: the problem of values in the dialogue of cultures. Materials of the 2nd All-Russian scientific conference. Part 1. Nizhny Novgorod, 1994. S.74-76
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Albert Camus
Rebellious man
Camus Albert
Rebellious man
Albert Camus.
Rebellious man
Content
Introduction
I. Rebellious Man
II Metaphysical Revolt
Sons of Cain
Absolute negation
Writer
Rebel dandies
Refusal to save
Absolute approval
The only one
Nietzsche and Nihelism
Rebellious poetry
Lautreamont and mediocrity
Surrealism and revolution
Nihilism and history
III Historical rebellion
Regicide
New Gospel
King's execution
The Religion of Virtue
Terror
deicide
Individual terrorism
Rejection of virtue
Three Possessed
Picky Killers
Shigalevshchina
State terrorism and irrational terror
State terrorism and rational terror
Bourgeois prophecies
Revolutionary prophecies
The collapse of the prophecies
Last kingdom
Totality and Judgment
Revolt and revolution
IV. Riot and art
Romance and rebellion
Riot and style
Creativity and revolution
V. Noon Thought
Riot and murder
Nihilistic murder
Historic assassination
Measure and immensity
Midday Thought
On the other side of nihilism
Comments and editorial notes
MAN REBEL
What is a rebellious person? This is a person who says “no.” But, denying, he does not renounce: this is a person who already says “yes” with his first action. A slave who has been fulfilling his master’s orders all his life suddenly considers the last of them unacceptable What is the content of his "no"?
“No” can, for example, mean: “I have endured too long”, “so far - so be it, but then enough will be enough”, “you are going too far” and also: “there is a limit that I cannot cross for you let" Generally speaking, this "no" asserts the existence of a boundary. The same idea of the limit is found in the feeling of the rebel that the other "takes too much upon himself", extends his rights beyond the border, beyond which lies the area of sovereign rights, which puts up an obstacle to any encroachment on them. Thus, the impulse to revolt is rooted both in a strong protest against any interference that is perceived as unacceptable, and in the vague conviction of the rebel that he is right, or rather, in his conviction that he "has the right to do such and such" . Rebellion does not occur if there is no such feeling of being right. That is why the rebellious slave says both "yes" and "no" at the same time. Together with the mentioned boundary, he affirms everything that he does not clearly feel in himself and wants to preserve. He stubbornly proves that there is something "worthwhile" in him and that it needs to be protected. To the order that enslaves him, he opposes a kind of right to endure oppression only to the extent that he himself sets.
Together with the repulsion of the alien in any rebellion, a complete identification of a person with a certain side of his being immediately occurs. Here, in a hidden way, a value judgment comes into play, and, moreover, so thorough that it helps the rebel to withstand the dangers. Until now, he had at least remained silent, sinking into despair, forced to endure any conditions, even if he considered them deeply unfair. Since the oppressed is silent, people assume that he does not reason and does not want anything, and in some cases he really does not want anything anymore. Despair, like absurdity, judges and desires everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence conveys it well. But as soon as the oppressed speaks, even if he says "no", it means that he desires and judges. The rebel makes a roundabout. He walked, driven by the whip of the owner. And now she stands face to face with him. The rebel opposes everything that is valuable to him, everything that is not. Not every value causes rebellion, but every rebellious movement tacitly presupposes some value. Is there value in this case?
In a rebellious impulse, a consciousness, albeit unclear, is born: a sudden vivid feeling that there is something in a person with which he can identify himself at least for a while. Until now, the slave has not really felt this identity. Before his rebellion, he suffered from all kinds of oppression. It often happened that he meekly carried out orders much more outrageous than the last one that caused the riot. The slave patiently accepted these orders; in the depths of his soul, he may have rejected them, but since he was silent, it means that he lived his daily worries, not yet realizing his rights. Having lost patience, he now begins to impatiently reject everything that he put up with before. This impulse almost always has the opposite effect. Rejecting the humiliating command of his master, the slave at the same time rejects slavery as such. Step by step, rebellion takes him much further than simple defiance. He even crosses the line he set for the enemy, now demanding that he be treated as an equal. What formerly was man's stubborn resistance becomes the whole man who identifies himself with resistance and is reduced to it. That part of his being, to which he demanded respect, is now dearer to him than anything, dearer even to life itself, it becomes the highest good for the rebel. Until then, a slave who lived by everyday compromises, in an instant ("because how else...") falls into irreconcilability - "all or nothing." Consciousness arises with rebellion.
This consciousness combines the still rather vague "everything" and "nothing", suggesting that a person can be sacrificed for the sake of "everything". The rebel wants to be either "everything", completely identifying himself with the good that he suddenly realized, and demanding that in his person people recognize and welcome this good, or "nothing", that is, to be defeated by a superior force. Going to the end, the rebel is ready for the last lawlessness, which is death, if he is deprived of that only sacred gift, which, for example, freedom can become for him. It is better to die standing than to live on your knees*.
According to many recognized authors, value "most often represents a transition from fact to law, from the desired to the desired (usually through the desired by all)"1. As I have already shown, in rebellion there is an obvious transition to the right. And similarly, the transition from the formula "it would be necessary for this to exist" to the formula "I want it to be so." But, perhaps even more important, we are talking about the transition from the individual to the good that has now become universal. Contrary to popular belief about rebellion, the appearance of the slogan "All or nothing" proves that rebellion, even born in the depths of a purely individual, casts doubt on the very concept of an individual. If an individual is ready to die and, under certain circumstances, accepts death in his rebellious impulse, he thereby shows that he is sacrificing himself in the name of a good that, in his opinion, means more than his own destiny. If a rebel is ready to perish in order not to lose the right he defends, then this means that he values this right more than himself. Therefore, he acts in the name of a value, albeit still obscure, which, he feels, unites him with all other people. Evidently the affirmation implicit in every rebellious action extends to something that transcends the individual insofar as this something relieves him of his supposed loneliness and gives him reason to act. But now it is important to note that this pre-existing value, given before any action, comes into conflict with purely historical philosophical teachings, according to which value is won (if it can be won at all) only as a result of action. The analysis of rebellion leads at least to the conjecture that human nature really exists, according to the ideas of the ancient Greeks and contrary to the postulates of modern philosophy *. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in yourself worthy of being preserved? If a slave rises, it is for the good of all living. After all, he believes that, in the existing order of things, he denies something that is inherent not only to him, but which is that common in which all people, and even the one who insulted and oppressed a slave, have a pre-prepared community.
This conclusion is supported by two observations. First of all, it should be noted that, in its essence, the rebellious impulse is not an egoistic spiritual movement. No doubt, it can be caused by selfish reasons. But people rise up not only against oppression, but also against lies. Moreover, at first, the selfish rebel in the very depths of his soul values \u200b\u200bnothing, because he puts everything at stake. Of course, the rebel demands respect for himself, but only to the extent that he identifies himself with the natural human community.
Let us also note that it is by no means only the oppressed himself who becomes a rebel. Rebellion can also be raised by those who are shocked by the spectacle of oppression of which another has become a victim. In this case, he identifies himself with this oppressed. And here it is necessary to clarify that we are not talking about psychological identification, not about self-deception, when a person imagines that they insult him. It happens, on the contrary, that we are not able to calmly watch how others are subjected to those insults that we ourselves would endure without protesting. An example of this most noble movement of the human soul is suicide from protest, which Russian terrorists decided to do in hard labor when their comrades were flogged. It is not about a sense of community of interests. After all, we may consider outrageous injustice even in relation to our opponents. Here there is only an identification of destinies and joining one of the parties. Thus, the individual in itself is not at all the value that he intends to protect. This value is made up of all people in general. In rebellion, a person, overcoming his limitations, draws closer to others, and from this point of view, human solidarity has a metaphysical character. It is simply about solidarity born in shackles.
The positive aspect of the value implied by all rebellion can be clarified by comparing it with the purely negative concept of malice, as Scheler defines it. Indeed, a rebellious impulse is something more than an act of protest in the strongest sense of the word. Anger is beautifully defined by Scheler as self-poisoning, as a destructive secretion of prolonged impotence, occurring in a closed vessel. Rebellion, on the contrary, breaks life and helps to go beyond it. He turns stagnant waters into raging waves. Scheler himself emphasizes the passive nature of anger, noting what a great place it occupies in the spiritual world of a woman, whose fate is to be an object of desire and possession. The source of rebellion, on the contrary, is an overabundance of energy and a thirst for activity. Scheler is right when he says that bitterness is brightly colored by envy. But they envy what they don't have. The rebel defends himself as he is. He demands not only the good that he does not possess or that he can be deprived of. He seeks recognition of what is already in him and which he himself in almost all cases has recognized as more significant than the object of probable envy. Riot is not realistic. According to Scheler, the bitterness of a strong soul turns into careerism, and that of a weak one into bitterness. But in any case, it is about becoming not what you are. Anger is always directed against its bearer. The rebellious person, on the contrary, in his first impulse protests against encroachments on himself, as he is. He fights for the integrity of his personality. At first, he seeks not so much to gain the upper hand as to make him respect himself.
Finally, bitterness seems to revel in advance in the torment it would like to inflict on its object. Nietzsche and Scheler are right in seeing a fine example of this feeling in that passage of Tertullian in which he informs the readers that it will be the greatest delight of the blessed inhabitants of paradise to see the Roman emperors writhing in the flames of hell. Such is the delight of respectable inhabitants who love the spectacle of the death penalty. The rebel, on the contrary, is fundamentally limited to protesting against humiliation, not wanting them for anyone else, and is ready to endure torment, but only not to allow anything offensive to the individual.
In this case, it is not clear why Scheler completely identifies the rebellious spirit and bitterness. His critique of animosity in humanitarianism (which he treats as a form of unchristian love for people) could be applied to some vague form of humanitarian idealism or the technique of terror. But this criticism misses the mark as far as the rebellion of man against his destiny, the impulse that raises him to the defense of the dignity inherent in everyone, is concerned. Scheler wants to show that humanitarianism goes hand in hand with hatred of the world. They love humanity as a whole so as not to love anyone in particular. In some cases this is true, and Scheler becomes clearer when you take into account that humanitarianism for him is represented by Bentham and Rousseau. But the attachment of a person to a person can arise due to something other than an arithmetic calculation of interests or trust in human nature (however, purely theoretical). The utilitarians and educator Emil* are opposed, for example, by the logic embodied by Dostoevsky in the image of Ivan Karamazov, who begins with a rebellious impulse and ends with a metaphysical uprising. Scheler, being familiar with Dostoevsky's novel, summarizes this concept in this way: "There is not much love in the world to spend it on anything other than a person." Even if such a summary were true, the bottomless desperation that is felt behind it deserves something better than scorn. But, in fact, it does not convey the tragic nature of the Karamazov rebellion. The drama of Ivan Karamazov, on the contrary, consists in an overabundance of love, not knowing whom to pour out on. Since this love is not used, and God is denied, the decision arises to bestow it on a person in the name of noble compassion.
However, as follows from our analysis, in the rebellious movement some abstract ideal is chosen not out of mental poverty and not for the sake of fruitless protest. In a person, one must see that which cannot be reduced to an idea, that warmth of the soul, which is destined for existence and for nothing else. Does this mean that no rebellion carries bitterness and envy? No, it does not, and we know this very well in our unkind age. But we must consider the concept of anger in its broadest sense, because otherwise we risk distorting it, and then we can say that rebellion completely overcomes anger. If in Wuthering Heights Heathcliff prefers his love to God and asks to send him to hell, only to unite with his beloved there, then here it is not only his humiliated youth that speaks, but also the painful experience of his whole life. Meister Eckhart felt the same impulse when, in a startling fit of heresy, he declared that he preferred hell with Jesus to heaven without him. And here is the same impulse of love. So, contrary to Scheler, I strongly insist on the passionate creative impulse of rebellion, which distinguishes it from bitterness. Seemingly negative because it creates nothing, rebellion is actually deeply positive because it reveals in a person that which is always worth fighting for.
But aren't both rebellion and the value it carries relative? The reasons for the rebellion seem to have changed with the epochs and civilizations. It is obvious that a Hindu pariah, an Inca warrior, a native from Central Africa, or a member of the first Christian communities had different ideas about rebellion. It can even be argued with high probability that in these specific cases the concept of rebellion does not make sense. However, the ancient Greek slave, the serf, the Renaissance condottiere, the Parisian Regency bourgeois, the Russian intellectual of the 1900s, and the modern worker, diverging in their understanding of the causes of the rebellion, would unanimously recognize its legitimacy. In other words, we can assume that the problem of rebellion has a certain meaning only within the framework of Western thought. One can speak even more precisely, noting, together with Max Scheler, that the rebellious spirit found expression with difficulty in societies where inequality was too great (as in the Hindu castes), or, conversely, in those societies where there was absolute equality (certain primitive tribes) . In society, a rebellious spirit can arise only in those social groups where theoretical equality hides huge actual inequality. And this means that the problem of rebellion only makes sense in our Western society. In such a case, it would be difficult to resist the temptation to assert that this problem is connected with the development of individualism, if previous reflections had not alerted us to such a conclusion.
JEAN GRENIER
And heart
Openly surrendered to the harsh
A suffering land, and often at night
In sacred darkness I swore to you
Love her unconditionally to death
Without retreating from her mysteries
So I made an alliance with the earth
For life and death.
Gelderlt "Death of Empedocles"
INTRODUCTION
There are crimes caused by passion and crimes dictated by dispassionate logic. To distinguish between them, the criminal code uses the convenience of such a concept as "premeditation". We live in an era of masterfully executed criminal designs. Modern offenders are no longer the naive children who expect to be forgiven lovingly. These are men of mature mind, and they have an irrefutable justification - a philosophy that can serve anything and can even turn a murderer into a judge. Heathcliff, the hero of Wuthering Heights, is ready to destroy the entire globe of the earth, if only to possess Catty, but it would never have occurred to him to declare that such a hecatomb is reasonable and can be justified by a philosophical system. Heathcliff is capable of murder, but his thought does not go further than this. In his criminal determination, the strength of passion and character is felt. Since such love obsession is rare, murder remains the exception to the rule. It's kind of like breaking into an apartment. But from the moment when, out of weakness of character, the criminal resorts to the help of philosophical doctrine, from the moment when the crime substantiates itself, it, using all kinds of syllogisms, grows just like thought itself. Atrocity used to be as lonely as a scream, but now it's as universal as science. Just yesterday prosecuted, today the crime has become law.
Let no one be offended by what has been said. The purpose of my essay is to comprehend the reality of the logical crime that is characteristic of our time, and carefully examine the ways of justifying it. This is an attempt to understand our modernity. Some people probably think that an epoch that for half a century has destitute, enslaved or destroyed seventy million people should first of all be condemned, and only condemned. But we must also understand the essence of her guilt. In the old naive times, when a tyrant, for the sake of greater glory, swept entire cities off the face of the earth, when a slave chained to a victorious chariot wandered along strange festive streets, when a captive was thrown to be eaten by predators in order to amuse the crowd, then the conscience could remain calm before the fact of such ingenuous villainies and the thought is clear. But pens for slaves, overshadowed by the banner of freedom, mass destruction of people, justified by love for a person or a craving for the superhuman - such phenomena in a certain sense simply disarm the moral court. In modern times, when evil intent disguises itself in the robes of innocence, according to a strange perversion characteristic of our era, it is innocence that is forced to justify itself. In my essay, I want to take on this unusual challenge in order to understand it as deeply as possible.
It is necessary to understand whether innocence is capable of refusing to kill. We can act only in our era among the people around us. We will not be able to do anything if we do not know whether we have the right to kill our neighbor or give our consent to kill him. Since every act today paves the way for direct or indirect murder, we cannot act without first deciding whether we should condemn people to death, and if we should, in the name of what.
For now, it is important for us not so much to get to the bottom of things as to figure out how to behave in the world - such as it is. In times of denial, it is useful to define one's attitude to the problem of suicide. In the age of ideologies, it is necessary to understand what our attitude towards murder is. If there are justifications for it, then our era and we ourselves are quite consistent with each other. If there are no such excuses, this means that we are in madness, and we have only one way out, either to conform to the era of the murder, or to turn away from it. In any case, we must clearly answer the question posed to us by our bloody, many-voiced century. After all, we ourselves are in question. Thirty years ago, before deciding to kill, people denied many things, even denied themselves through suicide. God is cheating in the game, and with him all mortals, including myself, so wouldn't it be better for me to die? The problem was suicide. Today, ideology denies only aliens, declaring them dishonest players. Now they kill not themselves, but others. And every morning, the murderers, hung with medals, enter the solitary cells: murder has become a problem.
These two considerations are related to each other. Rather, they bind us so tightly that we can no longer choose our own problems. It is they, the problems, who choose us in turn. Let us accept our choice. In the face of rebellion and murder, in this essay I want to continue the reflections, the initial themes of which were suicide and the absurd.
But so far this reflection has brought us to only one concept - the concept of absurdity. It, in turn, gives us nothing but contradictions in everything that concerns the problem of murder. When one tries to extract the rules of Action from the feeling of absurdity, one finds that, as a result of this feeling, murder is perceived at best indifferently and, therefore, becomes permissible. If you don’t believe in anything, if you don’t see the meaning in anything and you can’t assert any value, everything is permitted and nothing matters. There are no arguments "for", there are no arguments "against", the murderer can neither be condemned nor justified. What to burn people in gas ovens, what to devote your life to caring for lepers - there is no difference. Virtue and malice become a matter of chance or caprice.
And so you come to the decision not to act at all, which means that you, in any case, put up with a murder that is committed by another. The only thing left for you to do is lament the imperfection of human nature. And why not replace the action with tragic dilettantism? In this case human life turns out to be a bet in the game. You can finally conceive of an action that is not entirely aimless. And then, in the absence of highest value directing the action, it will be focused on the immediate result. If there is neither true nor false, neither good nor bad, then the rule becomes the maximum efficiency of the action itself, that is, power. And then it is necessary to divide people not into righteous and sinners, but into masters and slaves. So, no matter how you look at it, the spirit of denial and nihilism gives murder a place of honor.
Therefore, if we are to accept the concept of the absurd, we must be prepared to kill according to logic and not according to conscience, which will appear to us as something illusory. Of course, killing requires some inclination. However, as experience shows, not so pronounced. In addition, as is usually the case, there is always the possibility of committing murder by proxy. Everything could be settled in the name of logic, if logic were really considered here.
But logic has no place in a concept that alternately makes murder acceptable and unacceptable. For, having recognized murder as ethically neutral, the analysis of the absurd leads in the end to its condemnation, and this is the most important conclusion. The last result of the reasoning about the absurd is the rejection of suicide and participation in the desperate confrontation between the questioning person and the silent universe. Suicide would mean the end of this confrontation, and therefore the argument about the absurd sees in suicide the negation of its own premises. After all, suicide is an escape from the world or getting rid of it. And according to this reasoning, life is the only truly necessary good, which alone makes such a confrontation possible. Outside of human existence, the absurd bet is unthinkable: in this case, one of the two parties necessary for the dispute is missing. To declare that life is absurd can only be a living, conscious person. How, then, without making significant concessions to the desire for intellectual comfort, can one retain for oneself the unique advantage of such reasoning? Recognizing that life, while being good for you, is good for others. You can't justify murder if you refuse to justify suicide. The mind, which has assimilated the idea of the absurd, unconditionally admits fatal murder, but does not accept rational murder. From the point of view of the confrontation between man and the world, murder and suicide are equivalent. Accepting or rejecting one, you inevitably accept or reject the other.