Albert Camus :: Biography

Albert CamusBorn on November 7, 1913 in Mandoui, Algeria, Albert Camus earned aworldwide reputation as a novelist and essayist and won the Nobel Prize forliterature in 1957. Though his writings, and in some measure against his will,he became the leading moral voice of his generation during the 1950s. Camusdied at the line of longitude of his fame, in an automobile accident near Sens, France onJanuary 4, 1960.Camuss deepest philosophical interests were in Western philosophy,among them Socrates, Pascal, Spinoza, and Nietsche. His interest in philosophywas almost exclusively moral in character. Camus came to the conclusion thatnone of the speculative systems of the past could provide and positive guidancefor homosexual tone or any guarantee of the validity of human value. Camus overlyconcluded that suicide is the only serious philosophical problem. He askswhether it makes any sense to go on living once the meaninglessness of humanlife is fully understood.Camus referred to this mean inglessness as the absurdity of life. Hebelieved that this absurdity is the failure of the world to satisfy the humandemand that it provide a basis for human values-for our personal ideals and forour judgments of right and wrong. He maintained that suicide cannot beregarded as an adequate response to the experience of absurdity. He says thatsuicide is an introduction of incapacity, and such an admission is inconsistentwith that human pride to which Camus openly appeals. Camus states, there isnothing equal to the spectacle of human pride.Furthermore, Camus also dealt with the topic of revolution in his essayThe Rebel. Camus rejected what he calls metaphysical revolt, which he sees as