1w ago

Albert Camus

Who here has read Camus?

I’m starting on The Rebel so that I can discuss it with an acquaintance. So far it seems very much idealist, but I’m trying to give it a fair chance before dismissing it.

There is a whole debate in the literature comparing existentialism, absurdism, Marxism, and other isms, by the likes of Camus and Sartre. I haven’t engaged in it yet. Frankly it seems exhausting and maybe a waste of time, but perhaps there is something useful to glean? Idk, I just hate pointless philosophizing and dawdling.

5 comments

I'm reading "The Rebel's Clinic" which is a biography of Franz Fannon and Camus seems like a weasley little imperialist that could never bring himself to actually support algerian independence because it turned violent, he's like modern day liberal zionists, heck he probably was one at the time too.
Anyway I read the stranger and didn't get anything out of it
- What is the relationship between Fanon and Camus? Personal or theoretical?
  Edit: ok looks like they just covered similar topics
The rebel was a bit of a burn book when he stopped being friends with Sartre, so he started shitting on everything Sartre believed in. The rebel isn't so much a coherent exposition of a philosophical position, rather than a reaction to take distance from the intellectual landscape.
He uses his novels to hint at philosophical ideas he doesn't really want to develop or argue for, which fits because he came up around the same crowd as the hermeneutic tradition, where critical engagement with the text is what makes the ideas come out, rather than just saying them. His non-fiction is a bit more structured, and it comes later in his life.
I my opinion, reading and understanding Camus is a good window into understanding the shape that alienation and imperial violence manifests on those who are supposed to be benefiting from it. He doesn't really present a theory of change or a collective vision, though, he remains solipsistic throughout. I find Barthes to be more interesting.
He might’ve been a good writer but he is a loser fake Marxist who is an imperialist enabler/colonizer
Frantz Fannon better
The Stranger is a fantastic book