Camus, Albert

(1913-1960)

   writer, philosopher

   one of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century, Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, into modest circumstances and raised by his widowed mother and his grandmother. He began his studies in philosophy but did not obtain a degree because he suffered from a tubercular condition. Becoming interested in politics, he was briefly a member of the Communist Party (1934-37) and, in the 1930s, began a career in journalism. During this time, Camus also formed the Théâtre du Travail and published his first collection of essays, L'Envers et Endroit (1937). Unable to serve during World War ii, he went to Paris to work for Paris-Soir as an editor. He joined the resistance and, after the Liberation, resumed his editorial work. The publication in 1942 of his novel L'Étranger (The Stranger), and an essay, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1944), brought him a renown that continued with the publication of his other works, Le Malentendu (1944) and Caligula (1945). At the time of the Setif uprising in Algeria (1945), Camus tried in vain to mobilize the public conscience there regarding the plight of the Muslims. In 1951, the publication of Camus's L'Homme révolté initiated a strong polemic and then a definite break with the leading existentialist thinker and writer, jean-paul sartre. The latter criticized Camus for attacking Stalinism along with Nazism. Camus, for his part, was seeking a collective morality that would elevate human solidarity in the face of evil. This is best expressed in his novel La Peste (The Plague, 1947), and in his chronicles, collected together under the title Actuelles (1950, 1953, 1958). During the Algerian war for independence (1954-57) (see Algeria), Camus was deeply troubled by the moral implications of the conflict and the role of the French, the French military, and French public opinion. In 1956, his novel La Chute (The Fall), appeared in which he backed further away from Sartre's existentialism. In 1957, he published L'Exil et la Royaume and Réflections sur la guillotine, and received the Nobel Prize in literature "for having brought to light the problems of our day that trouble the human conscience." Camus died in an automobile accident. He left a novel, Le Premier Homme, that was published posthumously (1994). While classified, in a sense, as an existentialist, Camus actually went through an evolution that made him more of a skeptical humanist. Many readers have come to consider him just that—a most profound, effective, and honest spokesman of our age for liberal humanism.