Twentieth-century existentialist Albert Camus was a French Algerian man of letters and Nobel Prize winner. Raised in poverty in the North African country that was then a French colony, he had literary and theatrical ambitions in his youth, flirted briefly with the Communist Party, and eventually became a journalist.

He was sympathetic to the Arab natives of Algeria who suffered at the hands of their colonial masters, and his newspaper rports on the subject caused him to lose his job as a reporter. He went to France during World War II and courageously worked with the French Resistance against the Nazi occupying forces.

Camus is considered a existentialist by everyone except himself and the other famoust existentialists. His criticism of Stalinism earned the ire of fellow French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre and other French existentialists.

The two famous twentieth century existentialists, Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, were both offered the Nobel Prize for literature. Sartre did not believe in dispensing such acccolades to authors. He felt it would compromise his integrity as a man of letters.

Camus gratefully accepted the honor (and the cash prize).


more to come.....

more to come to sometime this decade.....

Oui j'ai lu quelques choses sur Albert Camus....... .

Il est un homme très intéressant. J'ai plan d'étudier son idéologie comme d'autres philosophes.

Alienation is the norm according to Camus. Camus's portagonists strive to find some happiness in their seemingly dismal situations by ultimately resorting to the age old technique of acceptance. Even though a saint said it, an atheist can practice it. They accept the things they cannot change. The spiritual person asks their god for help to gain acceptance, while the existentialist summons acceptance from his singularly human spark, the life force that he or she would consider calling a soul.

Camus came of age between two world wars in the first half of the last century. He sought to find meaning in life despite the despair and malaise that descended upon Europe in those days. With no faith in god, Camus sought the answer in the indomitable human spirit and its ability to survive and thrive while bearing unbearable burdens.


more to come....

more to come in this decade....

J'aime lire la philosophie et les politiques . Aussi les sciences m'intéressent sans fin .
Bonne journée mon ami Smiless .
.

Please permit me to toot my own horn.

On another site, brainiacs or something, I worte two letters to a nice and smart and good-looking young lady, who read them and then went on to greater and better things. Nothing came from the letters or of the man, but here they are, verbatim:

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Correspondence with Existentyohrtflhjgij (name changed to protect identity)


Subject: hey, a fellow existentialist!
Message::

Hey, I'm an existence enthusiast, too! Or is that an existence buff? or existence afficionado? I think we should settle on being people who believe that existence exists.

I found "I can cook up a mean Nasi Goreng" the most remarkable part of your profile. A cannibalistic existentialist. I assume you used the Latin spelling of "Nazi Goering". He was mean, all right.

Please write!!! I'm not what I seem!

Aug 30

Please write!!! I'm not what I seem! -- this is how I finished my last missive to you.

It occurred to me that I don't seem at all -- I have no pic posted. So if you think about it, and are an absolute geek like me who can't get past the intricacies of the builiding blocks of language, then it's funny how an existentialist does not look like.

It sort of beats the purpose. Beats the credo, the manifesto, the essence of being an existentialist. How can you exist if you don't seem, which in effect is lack of evidence that you exist?

But ha! here comes Camus, chiming in (or Sartre): "My essence precedes my existence."

I attirbute that to the fact htat Camus (or Sartre) took a bath once a month, if. Just like me.

Great existentialists smell alike.

I liked the stranger. To me, the main problem that may relate to today is that the events weren't tampered with just because the main guy was lame. And of course the whole rub is that it is his own fault, that he didn't object to what came his way, and acted as events just had to go down, and if his death was anything, it was an insignificant by product of some chain of events, ones he could accept but not change. I think a modern parellel is the general attitude that I've observed around me of seeing a point in the future, one of those future oasis or some other consequence, and then living it out self prophecy style. I guess that drives home his point of responsibilty.