A review by josi767
The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt by Albert Camus

challenging reflective

4.25

*Quotes*

The rebel

When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical.

Rebellion, through apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.

We can only deduce from this observation that rebellion is the act of an educated man who is aware of his own rights

In absurdist experiences, suffering is individual.



Metaphysical rebellion

Metaphysical rebellion is the movement by which man protests against his own creation and against the whole of creation.

Logic founded on passions reverses the traditional sequence of reasoning and places conclusion before the premises.

Faith leads to immortal life. But faith presumes the acceptance of mystery and evil, and resignation to injustice.

Whis is the bitter end of Metaphysical rebellion? Metaphysical revolution. The master of the world, after his legitimacy has been contested, must be overthrown. Man must occupy his place....becoming God.

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.

Thus from absolutel despair will spring infinite joy, from blind servitude, unbounded freedom.

To say yes to the world, to reproduce it, is simultaneously to re-create the world and oneself, to become the great artist, the creator.

To be nothing - that is the cry of the mind exhausted by its own rebellion.

The rebel does not ask for life, but for reasons for living. He rejects the consequences implied by death. If nothing lasts, then nothing is justified; everything that dies is deprived of meaning. To fight against death amounts to claiming that life has meaning, to fight for order and unity.


Historical Rebellion 

Morality, when it is formal, devours. 

The entire histor of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power. It is, in its essence, imperialist. 

Politics is religion, and transcendent chirstianity - that of the hereafter - establishes the master of the earth by means of the slave's heavens. That is why atheism and the revolutionary spirit are only two aspects of the same movement of liberation. 

Those who deny everything at least understand that negation is a calamity. They can then open their hearts to the misery of others and finally deny themselves. 

History is governed by only two principles: the state and social revolution, revolution and counter revolution, which can never be reconciled, and which are engaged in a death struggle. The state is the incarnation of crime....therefore revolution is the incarnation of good. 

Those who love, friends or lovers, know that love is not only a binding flash, but a long and painful struggle in the darkness for the realization of definitive recognition and reconciliation. 

One leader, one people, signifies one master and a millions slaves. 

The final realization of freedom: the power to kill and degrade saves the servile soul from utter emptiness. 

There is no such thing as a solitary man.....man only feels solitary in society for social reasons. 

In the purely historical universe that they have chosen, rebellion and revolution end in the same dilemma, either police rule or insanity.