The "Existentialists": Part 4 - Albert Camus - The Absurdist

The Dialectics of Liberation: Anarchism, Existentialism, and Decentralism.
The "Existentialists": Part 4 - Albert Camus - The Absurdist

"There is no peace in submission" - charlie777pt

1- Introduction

People are drowning, in bellicist imperialist capitalism, oriented by consumption and warfare, extreme poverty, wealth disparity, and planet destruction and pollution where humanity has been put out by monetary value.
Politics have been favoring an unscrutinized corporate power, allied with the military "war-monks" of the deep state, inhabiting in a world of fake reality, that is corroborated by the media.
Tyrannies make people feel oppression as inevitable pain and grant the tyrants in power the possibility to sustain a politic of obedience to rulers, but there is a way to overthrow it by non-cooperation and nonviolent civil disobedience, that is the most effective weapon to dissolve political dominance.

Philosophy is the human attitude towards life and actions in Existence, as a form of knowledge to find and solve problems, to experience reality, the other people, and ourselves.
Philosophy can be a form of political engagement that is used to unmask the veil of ideologies, as the organizers of social totalities, that are never centered in the Truth but in its perpetuity, functionality, and efficacy.
Using philosophy as a lens to see this absurd reality, changes it because History is governed by logical and ontological reasoning of every "existents" and it works in a rationalist way that by criticism transforms society, science, and culture, and consequently the attitudes and behaviors.
Philosophy is a tool to sense the hurdles of ideology as the realm of illusion, that steels Man the light of the truth and the critical power of reasoning, that fires the flame for the freedom and the dignity of human beings.

People in Human history should have the purpose of making it for themselves, but in practice, it implements the point of view of some, that impose their belly button's desires.
Today, authoritarianism is not about swastikas or black shirts, that is now disguised under many layers of bureaucracy, technique, voluntary passiveness about surveillance, and self-inflicted annihilation of the will, imposed by a centralized power killing any human critic and creativity.

People are now more and more alone and in a desperate search for new values, and they must understand that we can rely only on ourselves, our mind, and our actions to make sense of this absurd reality.
Philosophy is based in the experience of life, of the others, and ourselves, that can be used as a way to solve problems and create new ones that we are not aware, to get knowledge and find the truth.
The sensitive knowledge comes from experience, and intelligible knowledge comes from rational thought in the Platonic view, so philosophy can be used as the principle of human reasoning about all the forms of thinking, and for the self-questioning of choices and the will.

Philosophy is an attitude towards life, ranging from being awake or asleep, the conscious and unconsciousness of reality constraints, being free or imprisoned in the wheels of existence, so we must find out how we should live, create, struggle, love, and die.
Today's reality is more absurd then it has ever been, and Camus is a flame at the end of the tunnel of this new dark caves of technology, where the unveiled levels of human submission are making man a predictable and traceable behavioral machine, that makes him "free to choose" only the options of the wheels of state and the order of money.
We must be vigilant and lucid and have the courage to fight for liberty and autonomy, in acting and thinking.

"Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority." - Albert Camus

2 - Albert Camus - The Absurdist ( 1913 -1960)

"Reality or Artificiality, in the future will be an indistinguishable absurdism" - charlie777pt

Albert Camus philosopher, author, and journalist, was born in the colonized French Algeria and in his youth his destiny seemed that he would become a star football player, but Fate killed this dream when he contracted Tuberculosis at the age of seventeen, ending his dream, but that, on the other hand, opened the way for such a fantastic player of reality.
Like Sartre, he refused the label of "existentialist" philosopher, and he developed the theory of absurdism in his book "The Rebel", as a manifesto against the nihilism that suffocates any human attempt to rebel and fight for freedom.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) marks his theoretic approach of the "absurd man" that is ready to face and rebel against reality, with his human consciousness that there is no meaning in the absurdity of human condition.
He was strongly against the nihilist view supporting that there is no escape from an absurd reality, and any action was meaningless nonsense, and only ourselves could overcome the absurdity of Life in the battle with Existence.

"The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning." Albert Camus

As a prophet of the absurd, he is strongly influenced by some of his dear masters, Nietzsche, Dostoievski, Proust, Kierkegaard, and Kafka, and he loved the theater starting as an actor and later becoming an experienced playwright.
He was a declared antifascist and anti-collectivist that always had a rebel word to say, when all the other "sacred monsters" avoided talking about political-incorrect opinions, and this didn't help his life because, in the end, he will always get fired from his jobs.
Albert Camus was all his life an impulsive free man, that had his mouth tied to his actions, writings and thoughts, expressing a rebellion against any human being domination, and he always criticized, imperialism, fascism, communism or any other form of collective control.

"I rebel; therefore I exist." Albert Camus

Everybody, from the right-wing to the French left-wing intellectuals, and even Sartre (that Camus criticized for his leftist sympathies) where against Camus rebel positions about an overwhelming and crushing reality.

"I can feel this heart inside me and I conclude it exists. I can touch this world and I also conclude that it exists. All my knowledge ends at this point. The rest is hypothesis." - Albert Camus

We have to understand the absurdity of life and existence, and after this act of consciousness, we have to find a way to defy and overcome it.
St Augustine and Kierkegaard were his early Christian influences, but after, from Nietzsche, he got the atheism that killed his religious background, and from Schopenhauer, he embraced the pessimist influence that shaped his theory of the absurd.
In the late youth in schools, he got the background from Descartes and Spinoza, as well as, writers like Dostoyevsky and Kafka to mention some but he never used metaphysics or ontology as Sartre did, making Camus stress that he was not an existentialist.
Maybe he was not even a scholarship philosopher and he never created paradigms with systematic, coherent and consistent thinking because he was more centered in the reality built by moral and political trends.
He seemed to worship nature and the wonder of our senses and perceptions about the universe, showing that we should focus on the here and now and face the present with a philosophy of revolt against any reality's form of human control.
His quasi-philosophical reflexions, make us aware of an overpowering existence and the conditioning of communication with other people and our being, to acquire a more sharp consciousness, to avoid alienation and an unauthentic and boring life.

3- Rebel against The Absurd Universe

"Freedom is our capacity to say no" - charlie777pt

Camus is a model for nonconformity and of the refusal to escape reality, with a commitment to value and enrich the human fight for the awareness of a lucid Existence, and dream about new realities where humanity still counts.
He wanted to show the rebelled Being emerging from the union of our essence to existence, not as a scientific but a psychological experience of our interior world that is the last fundament of knowledge.

“ Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” - Albert Camus

Camus explored the meaninglessness and the absurd nature of the human condition., but he meant that we must revolt against this and fight to overcame it, within the context of your own Existence.
What we want is not what we get because the reality is cold about our wishes.
Reality is meaningless and deaf and dumb, about our expectations of a fair rational and just world creating a conflict that generates Absurdity.
We must create a metaphysical rebellion against this state of immobilism and self-annihilation, by committing to values of moral integrity and human social solidarity, that can affirm ourselves and make sense of our choices and actions in a more meaningful world.

"There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man." - Albert Camus

Camus knew, that there is no freedom without social justice, that expresses its degree in the political and social life, that can be measured by the inequalities it generates.

"Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being." - Albert Camus

We have a short meaningless life, of perpetual anxiety, guilt, dread, and anguish of choice, inhabiting in a nonsense world in the Planet of Absurdity, so its always time to lose the fear of being free.
Albert Camus, enhanced that besides the absurdism and the lack of the meaning for life, we have to revolt and fight it, to make sense for life, against the feeling of impotence.
He was a free impulsive man and was against conformism, colonialism fascism, collectivism, or any institution that suffocate human freedom.
His critical consciousness must be revived in this century, for today it makes much more sense than when he was alive.
In the future, Reality or Artificiality like fake or truth will be indistinguishable, and we must rebel against it because this means the end of humanity.

Source: Wikipedia

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Albert Camus

Image Source: Sisyphus, the symbol of the absurdity of existence, painting by Franz Stuck (1920)

Videos:
PHILOSOPHY - Albert Camus

Philosophy Feuds: Sartre vs Camus

Albert Camus on nihilism

Movie:
The Stranger 1967(HQ)

The Dialectics of Liberation: Anarchism, Existentialism, and Decentralism.
Published Posts:

• Introduction to the Dialectics of Liberation: Anarchism, Existentialism and Decentralism

I - Anarchism

• What is Anarchism?
• Part 1 - Philosophical Introduction
• Part 2 - The Concept of Anarchism
• Part 3 - Types of Anarchism
• The History of Anarchism
  • Part 1 - Pre-Anarchy - Social Revolution
  • Anarchy: Revolution Against The State
  • Part 2 - Anarcho-Federalism
  • Part 3 - Libertarian Anarchism
  • Part 4 - Anarcho-Syndicalism
• Anarchy Today
  • Part 1 - The Era of Extremisms
  • Part 2 - Crypto-Anarchism
  • Part 3 - Anarchist Tools
  • Part 4 - Anarchy in the Blockchain I
  • Part 4 - Anarchy in the Blockchain II
  • Part 5 - Today's Anarchism
• Index and Conclusions of part 1 - Anarchy

II - Existentialism

• What is Existentialism ?
  • Part 1 - Unplugged Introduction to Existentialism
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: I - Early Pre-existentialism
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: II - Pre-Existentialists
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: III - Phenomenology - Brentano to Husserl
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: III - Phenomenology - Jaspers to Sheller
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: IV - Humanistic Existentialists - Buber, Arendt, and Tillich
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: V - Humanistic Existentialists - Rollo May
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: V - Humanistic Existentialists - Abraham Maslow
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: VI - Post -Structuralism - Jacques Lacan
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: VI - Post -Structuralism - Michel Foucault
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: VI - Post -Structuralism - Emmanuel Levinas
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: VI - Post -Structuralism - Jacques Derrida
  • Part 2 - The Short History of Existentialism: VI - Post -Structuralism - Paul Ricouer
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism: I - Existentialism Today
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism: II - Fascism and Existentialism
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism: III - The Fear of Tthinking
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism: IV - Is Direct Democracy back with The Yellow Vests?
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism:V - Existentialism:What is real in the Reality?
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism:VI - Existentialism: The Ghost in the Machine
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism: VII - The Meaning of Nonsense
  • Part 3 - The Philosophy of Existentialism: VIII - The Players and the Times - Now and Then

• The "Existentialists"
  • Part 1 - Gabriel Marcel - The Neo-Socratic
  • Part 2 - Jean-Paul Sartre - The Man of The 20th Century
  • Part 3 - Simone de Beauvoir - The Castor
  • Part 4 - Albert Camus - The Absurdist - This post

Next posts on the Series:
II - Existentialism(Cont.)

• The "Existentialists"
  • Part 5 - Merleau-Ponty - The Humanist Existentialist
• Humanism and Existentialism
  • Part 1 - Humanistic Psychologists
  • Part 2 - The Fear of Freedom of Erich Fromm
• Existentialism and Anarchism
• The Future : Posthumanism, transhumanism and inhumanism

III - Decentralism

• What is Decentralism?
• The Philosophy of Decentralism
• Blockchain and Decentralization
• Anarchism, Existentialism, and Decentralism

IV - Dialectic for Self-Liberation

• Counterculture in the 60s
• The Dialectics of Liberation Congress
• Psychedelics, Libertarian and artistic movements
• The Zen Buddism of Alan Watts
• Psychoanalysis and Existentialism
• The Anti-psychiatry movement
• Anarchism, Existentialism, Decentralism and Self-Liberation

V - Conclusions and Epilogue

References:

- charlie777pt on Steemit:

Social Reality: Violence, Power, and Change
Index of Chapter 1 - Anarchism of this series - Part 1 This Series:

Books:
Oizerman, Teodor.O Existencialismo e a Sociedade. Em: Oizerman, Teodor; Sève, Lucien; Gedoe, Andreas, Problemas Filosóficos.2a edição, Lisboa, Prelo, 1974.
Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Others
Levy, Bernard-Henry , O Século de Sartre,Quetzal Editores (2000)
Jacob Golomb, In Search of Authenticity - Existentialism From Kierkegaard to Camus (1995)
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
Louis Sass, Madness and Modernism, Insanity in the light of modern art, literature, and thought (revised edition)
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall, A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (2006)
Charles Eisenstein, Ascent of Humanity
Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre(1956)
Herbert Read, Existentialism, Marxism and Anarchism (1949 )
Martin Heidegger, Letter on "Humanism"(1947)
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (1968)
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism And Human Emotions
Jean-Paul Sartre, O Existencialismo é um Humanismo
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense
Michel Foucault, Power Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977
Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom. New York: Henry Holt, (1941)
Erich Fromm, Man for Himself. 1986
Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: an existentialist diary
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and The Invisible
Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation
Brigite Cardoso e Cunha, Psicanálise e estruturalismo (1979)
Paul Watzlawick, How Real is Reality?
G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
Robert C. Solomon, Existentialism
H.J.Blackham, Six existentialist thinkers
Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, or the Against-One (1576)

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