Existentialism. Albert Camus and the problem with the alienation

Existentialism is a formula of the European nightmare of military time. It expresses the existential shock of millions of Europeans - people experiencing the horrors of the First and Second World Wars, fascism, contracted camps, economic and political crisis. Silent after the war, this generation had to live without soil under their feet, with uncertainty in tomorrow, with trampled rights and freedoms, without hope. Existentialism expresses the liveliness of the "military generation", the disgust from its non-authentic existence, life on the brink of nothingness, the crisis of human relations. But now, after World War II, this nightmare is still a reality looking for its end. Skepticism about the possibilities of culture, which is just a cover for man's predatory nature, lie and hypocrisy, which are a painful reality, the chaos and anarchy that occur in this situation of amorality and cynicism have not changed since then. Still the individual is powerless, and his dream of world democracy is a chimera. Every next generation is increasingly desperate for life, and more and more people are asking, "Is life worthwhile or not?"

Every person is given the opportunity to show himself to the world, to do something on his own. This is his life. Running your life in a decent way requires a lot of effort and pain, for that a person needs an incentive, a belief in something and someone, the feeling that it is worth laboring. This state of affairs, "Who am I?", "Is it worth life or not?", "Does the absurd lead the death?", "Is there a logic on the path to death?" is a hellish condition. Hell in itself is a state of uncertainty, a doubt in its own nature. And as Pascal says, "Man is great in his lowness and vanity in his majesty. Is it not better to remain ignorant of ourselves if we want to be happy?" Sartre will tell us that "man is condemned to be free." He fully carries the burden of the world on his shoulders: he is responsible for the world and for himself. Existential person is responsible but at the same time disgusted with life. He is "nauseous" in the crowd, he feels a pea-grain among the many in the chest. At the meeting of two self-identified as free subjects, the other may perceive the Self as not an entity but as an object, to attribute to it guilt and sin, to define it externally by its own assessment. And this contradicts the IA's freedom. it is not possible for one freedom to conquer another freedom without becoming a non-liberty. Kamu gives his definition - man is a foreigner. "In a universe suddenly lacking in illusions and light, one feels alien, and this exile is hopeless because it is deprived of the memory of the lost homeland or the hope of the promised land, namely, this separation of man from his life, the actor from his decor is the feeling of absurdity ". His character is neither good nor bad, nor moral nor immoral. It is absurd. The absurd is neither in man nor in the world, but in the "world of man" revealing through a desperate insight: "Getting up, tram, four hours at the office, lunch, tram, four hours of work, dinner, sleep, and Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, in the same rhythm ... "We all go the same way - birth, life, death. And our lives are filmed - getting up, dressing, working, taking home, sleeping and so day after day. Only Sunday is a different day, but it passes quickly into small pleasures. And if we do not experience any shock, our whole life can go like this. An alien - a stranger among the faces, stranger among his relatives, alien even to himself. Looking at the mirror, he sees a hostile alien and yet a familiar face to pain. After many years of living together, he sees the beloved woman unfamiliar, which annoys him with his presence or is indifferent to him. Even the mother is just an old woman who died in a nursing home. The stranger is the man facing the world. The stranger is the man who faces people. And most of all, I am the one to myself, the natural person to the spiritual one: "the alien who came a few moments ago against you in the mirror, in this familiar and still disturbing close, whom we find in our own pictures." The absurd consists in this anxiety before the inhuman man.

Faced with the absurd that arises from the sudden gulf between man and world, the absurd man only sees once - death. But the absurd man will not commit suicide - he wants to live, not denying any conviction: no future, no hope, no illusions, and no reconciliation. The absurd person is affirmed by the rebellion: "What is a rebellious man, a person who says no, but although he rejects something, he does not deny: it is also a person who says" yes "at the moment he performs the first your rebellious gesture. " In the "Rebellious Man," we will see a strong protest against the suppression machine of totalitarian regimes. "I rebel, therefore we exist.", Is the motto of the new man. The act of protest is not selfish, though he may have selfish motives. In rebellion one realizes the power of society, sacrificing itself for a purpose far beyond its own - the good of mankind. This is the outcome that brings the alien to others - an outcome honest and fair. Rebellion is the opposite of suicide, which is reconciliation. Camus sees the solution in quantity and not in quality of life. For him, the long life is important because one has greater opportunities to realize, "because it is wrong to think that the amount of experience depends on the circumstances in our life, as long as it depends only on us." The world represents the same share of experience of two people who lived an equal number of years. We feel more of our lives, our rebellion, our freedom means we live, and more. " Nothing can replace 20 years of experience.

The Myth of Sisyphus

The rebellion against the absurdity of human existence in the world is the only strong philosophical position that proves "the constant self-presence of man" - so he remains identical to himself, in his quest to accomplish the improbable. As an illustration of this vision, Camus brings an example to the ancient Greek mythical hero, Sisyphus, condemned forever to push a rock to the top of a mountain where she always falls back to her foot. And despite the absurdity of his eternal hard work, the struggle of Sisyphus toward the tops, according to Camus, must make him happy. But the struggle of the absurd person with the senselessness of existence for Camus is not irrational along with the irrational, it does not entirely reject reason and thus encompass "all the facts of experience." Hence the absurd man comes to the conclusion of his individual freedom, which conceives his release from the illusions of everyday life and the passivity of reconciliation with his senselessness. This freedom arises from the perceived need to act in a continuous struggle with absurdity, regardless of anything that disproves the possibility of freedom. And even if all man's actions seem meaningless from the point of view of the futility of existence, it must push him to new attempts to act. It is only when one derives from the absurd the consciousness of his rebellion, of his freedom, and of his passion for action, only then that he can become master of himself and be "completed in himself".