The Rebel (book)

Man in Revolt (French: L' homme révolté ), published in 1951, is a collection of philosophical and political essays of the French philosopher and writer Albert Camus, who is associated with the existentialism. In contrast to the previous essay The Myth of Sisyphus Camus wants here describe not only " the evil which suffered an individual ", but monitor the development of nihilism to the "collective plague " in philosophy, politics and political theory.

Content

This collection of essays is like a coursing through the history of ideas of modernity, by the political theories and practices that emerged from philosophies of history of all varieties. Albert Camus discovered here subterranean affinities between seemingly opposing ideologies; he pointed the individual theories and policies to up to self-contradiction, refuted retracted interpretations:

• In ostensibly antibourgeoisen Marxism he discovered among other things, a rather bourgeois science piety.
• The intent on scientistic positivism accuracy Camus debunked as unscientific.

Similarly, he leads the absurdities of political movements across the board in mind:

• The classic, supposedly liberal anarchism bakuninscher embossing was actually more authoritarian and dictatorial.
• The Jacobin " friends of the people" were at the time of the French Revolution lonely, isolated and not understood by the masses sectarian.
• Even the Nazis, self-declared and fanatical anti-Semites, worked with her featured as a "redemption" " national revolution " with biblical set pieces. Camus, brilliant polemicist, Hitler describes as " Puss in Jehovah."
• Nietzsche, the Alps hikers, Superman proclaimers and relentless critics of the Judeo-Christian "herd morality", the author joined appropriately to the Decalogue receiver Moses on the mountain.

Camus ' conclusion from " two centuries of metaphysical or historical revolt ": With fanatical followers of an ideology or a belief can not discuss. Some strive for inner-worldly, the other by otherworldly salvation. Two escapes which are each currently bidding, relative change possibility, whose perception requires a continued " tension" and attention. A " promised land " of absolute justice and honesty, there are not to be discovered here.

Specifically directed against the Eastern Bloc writes Camus: The authoritarian socialism has the lively freedom confiscated in favor of an ideal, yet coming freedom. The statement is understood as directed in the literature as well as against Jean -Paul Sartre, who had declared at the time of the PCF.

Expenditure

• L' homme révolté. Gallimard, Paris (1951) 2002, ISBN 2-07-032302-1
• Man in Revolt. Rowohlt, Reinbek (1953) 2006, ISBN 3-499-22193-4