French writer and thinker; b. Algiers. His belief in the absurdity of the human condition identified him with EXISTENTIALISM, but his courageous humanism distinguished him from that group. The characters in his novels and plays, although keenly aware of the meaninglessness of the human condition, assert their humanity by rebelling against their circumstances. Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in literature.

Camus was a French philosophical novelist and essayist who was also a prose poet and the conscience of his times. He was born and raised in Algeria, and his experiences as a fatherless, tubercular youth, as a young playwright and journalist in Algiers, and later in the anti-German resistance in Paris during World War II informed everything he wrote. His best-known writings are not overtly political; his most famous works, the novel The Stranger (written in 1940, published in 1942) and his book-length essay The Myth of Sisyphus (written in 1941, published in 1943) explore the notion of "the absurd," which Camus alternatively describes as the human condition and as "a widespread sensitivity of our times." The absurd, briefly defined, is the confrontation with ourselves--with our demands for rationality and justice--and an "indifferent universe." Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to the endless, futile task of rolling a rock up a mountain (whence it would roll back down of its own weight), this becomes an exemplar of the human condition, struggling hopelessly and pointlessly to achieve something. The odd antihero of The Stranger, on the other hand, unconsciously accepts the absurdity of life. He makes no judgments, accepts the most repulsive characters as his freinds and neighbors, and remains unmoved by the death of his mother and his own killing of a man. Facing execution for his crime, he "opens his heart to the benign indifference of the universe."

But such stoic acceptance is not the message of Camus' philosophy. Sisyphus thrives (he is even "happy") by virtue of his scorn and defiance of the gods, and by virtue of a "rebellion" that refuses to give in to despair. This same theme motivates Camus' later novel, The Plague (1947), and his long essay The Rebel (1951). In his last work, however, a novel called The Fall published in 1956, the year before he won the Nobel prize for literature, Camus presents an unforgettably perverse character named Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who exemplifies all the bitterness and despair rejected by his previous characters and in his earlier essays. Clamence, like the character in The Stranger, refuses to judge people, but whereas Meursault (the "stranger") is incapable of judgment, Clamence (who was once a lawyer) makes it a matter of philosophical principle, "for who among us is innocent?" It is unclear where Camus' thinking was heading when he was killed in an automobile accidence (with his publisher, who walked away unharmed).

(Excerpt from Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 1995). Other Pages and Sources
Some time ago there were few, if any pages on Albert Camus. Now, however, there are some good ones.

• The website by Katharena Eiermann is probably the best we've seen at http://members.aol.com/KatharenaE/private/Philo/Camus/camus.html.
• Looking for links to pages about Albert Camus? Well, this is the place!
• Tim Whitcombe has a page about The Stranger
• An interview with Catherine Camus on the release of The First Man
• The Camus Listserv!
  
  The only listserv I've found discussing the philosophy of Albert Camus.

  To subscribe, send an email request to the following address: LISTSERV@BUCKNELL.EDU

  Include the following in the body of your message:

  SUBSCRIBE PHILCAMUS

  The aim of this List is to provide a continuing forum for the discussion of the works of Albert Camus, and to encourage both the reading of Camus' works and the development of informed critical and even scholarly responses to Camus' writings a nd ideas. Although Camus' literary and dramatic works will be legitimate topics of discussion on this List, the primary emphasis of the List will be on the examination of Camus' philosophical views, as embodied in all of his writings, and their rel ations to the views of other contemporary and classical philosophers.

  The owner of the mail list is fwilson@bucknell.edu
  

Born: November 7, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria
Died: January 4, 1960 in an automobile accident

After winning a degree in philosophy, he worked at various jobs, ending up in journalism. In the 1930s, he ran a theatrical company, and during WWII was active in the French Resistance, editing an important underground paper, Combat.

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times". A copy of his acceptance speech is available on line from the Nobel web site, as is a more detailed biography.

Photos of Albert Camus are available at this website maintained by Ari Frankel.

(Note: All the following titles were written and originally published in French.)

Each of the books linked below can be purchased from Amazon.Com.

The Plague (1948)
A parable of the highest order, The Plague tells the story of a terrible disease that descends upon Oran, Algiers, in a year unknown. After rats crawl from the sewer to die in the streets, people soon begin perishing from terrible afflictions. How the main characters in the book--a journalist, a doctor and a priest--face humanity in the wake of the plague presents one of the book's many lessons. The book deserves to be read on several levels, because the pandemic in The Plague represents any of a number of worldwide catastrophes--both past and future--and the difficult choices everyone must make to survive them.

The Rebel (1954)

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1955)

The Fall (1957)
In a shady bar in Amsterdam, the man who does the talking in The Fall is indulging in a calculated confession. He recalls his past life as a Parisian lawyer, a pleader of noble causes, secure in his self esteem, privately a libertine, yet apparently immune to judgement. The irony of the recital predicts the downfall. Inescapable, it comes in the narrator's intense discovery, in the space of one terrible and unforgettable instant, that no man is innocent and no man therefore judge others from a standpoint of righteousness.

Caligula and Three Other Plays (1958)

• Caligula (1938)
• The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu) (1943)
• State of Siege (L'Etat de siege)
• The Just Assassins (Les Justes)

Exile and the Kingdom (1958)

The Possessed (1960)

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1961)

Notebooks 1935-1942 (1963)

Notebooks 1942-1951 (1965)

Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968)

A Happy Death (1972)
Through young Patrice, the protagonist, the reader feels in touch with the young Camus--his joy in the sea, sun, his native Algeria, his relationships with women, his need of them and detachment from them, the intense alienation he experienced as a traveler in Central Europe. And it is from his early intimations of death, movingly evoked, that the novel draws its theme--how one is to live in order to have the right death.

The First Man (1995)
"All honor to Catherine Camus for offering us this invaluable glimpse into the life and art of a writer who may have been greater than we knew then or can know even now." Camus' unfinished novel, found in the wreckage of the car crash in which its Nobel Prize-winning author perished in 1960, has finally made its way to readers. An autobiographical novel, it is generally thought that had he lived, Camus, an intensely private man, would have revised the novel to reveal less of himself, about which Newsweek says, "The ironic bright spot in the otherwise tragic circumstances of his death is that he never got the chance. The First Man, incomplete and raw, is fine just the way it is."

Jean & Catherine Camus
c/o Editions Gallimard
5 Rue Sebastien Bottin
75007 Paris
France

Albert Camus, Winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature, at the Nobel Prize Internet Archive
Albert Camus Critical Interpretation Home Page by Paul M. Willenberg
Katharena's Camus page
Camus page by Corduroy
Christopher Scott Wyatt's Camus page
Short bio of Camus
A Page about Albert Camus
Camus page
Camus at "Philosophers and Philosophy" site
Solitaire Et Solidaire---An Interview With Catherine Camus
"Camus' 'First Man," a Masterpiece in the Making" by Richard Dyer, Boston Globe
"Camus' 'Stranger' Brings $175,000" by AP, Boston Globe
"Youthful Writings: The First Camus" by Paul Vaillaneix
"The Absurde Man" by Albert Camus
"The Myth of Sysiphus" by Albert Camus
"Ephemeral Creation" by Albert Camus
"The Minotaur" by Albert Camus
"Between Yes & No" by Albert Camus
"Contradictions" by Albert Camus
"Back Again to Myself" by Albert Camus
Caligula - a play by Albert Camus
Camus quotations
More Camus quotations
Summary of Albert Camus' The Plague by Jim Newcombe
"Reader Response Criticism: The Stranger" by Paul Willenberg
"Sysiphus' Fate" by Paul Willenberg
"Memory & Imagination: Borges' Funes vs Meursault" by Paul Willenberg
"The Individuality of Mersault" by Kevin Meboe
"The Egoism of Max Stirner" by Sidney Parker
"Incompetent Texts in Camus, Sartre, & Celine" by David Anderson
"Order in Sartre & Camus" by David Anderson
"The Absurd Hero" by Bob Lane
"Aids & The Moral Education of Social Workers" by Joseph W. Lella
"Farewells To Justice, God, Politics And The European Way" by David Cook
"The Last Camus" by David Cook
"Curing the Canon" by Steven Rubio
"Individual Anarchy in Albert Camus' Short Story, The Guest" by Uncle Buster
Photos of Camus

Books

Between Hell and Reason : Essays from the Resistance Newspaper 'Combat', 1944-1947 by Albert Camus, Alexandre De Gramont (Translator), Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

Caligula and Three Other Plays by Albert Camus, Stuart Gilbert (Translator)

Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus, Erroll McDonald (Editor)

The Fall by Albert Camus, Justin O'Brien (Translator), Erroll McDonald (Editor)

The First Man by Albert Camus, Sarah Burnes (Editor), David Hapgood (Translator), Catherine Camus

A Happy Death by Albert Camus, Richard Howard (Translator)

Lyrical and Critical Essays by Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (Vintage International) by Albert Camus, Justin O'Brien (Translator), Erroll McDonald (Editor)

Notebooks 1935-1951 by Albert Camus, Philip Malcolm Waller Thody, Justin O'Brien

The Plague by Albert Camus, Stuart Gilbert (Translator)

The Rebel : An Essay on Man in Revolt
by Albert Camus, Erroll McDonald (Editor)
Our Price: $9.60

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death by Albert Camus, Justin O'Brien (Translator)

The Stranger by Albert Camus, Matthew Ward (Translator)

AlbertCamus : A Life by Olivier Todd, Benjamin Ivry (Translator), Clivier Todd

Albert Camus's the Stranger (Barron's Book Notes) by Lewis Warsh, Tessa Krailing, Albert Camus

Arendt, Camus, and Modern Rebellion by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Camus: Portrait of a Moralist by Bronner Stephen, Stephen Eric Bronner

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