He argued that religion was the main culprit. If a man chose to believe in religion — that the meaning of life was to ascend to heaven, or some similar afterlife, that he committed philosophical suicide by trying to escape the absurd. Many writers have addressed the Absurd, each with his or her own interpretation of what the Absurd is and what comprises its importance.
For example, Sartre recognizes the absurdity of individual experience, while Kierkegaard explains that the absurdity of certain religious truths prevents us from reaching God rationally. Camus regretted the continued reference to himself as a "philosopher of the absurd". To distinguish his ideas, scholars sometimes refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring to "Camus' Absurd". His early thoughts appeared in his first collection of essays, L'Envers et l'endroit Betwixt and Between in Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication in his second collection of essays, Noces Nuptials , in In these essays Camus reflects on the experience of the Absurd.
- Document sans titre?
- The Essential Spirit Teachings and Methods.
- How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers Market.
- .
He also wrote a play about Caligula , a Roman Emperor, pursuing an absurd logic. The play was not performed until The turning point in Camus's attitude to the Absurd occurs in a collection of four letters to an anonymous German friend, written between July and July Camus presents the reader with dualisms such as happiness and sadness, dark and light, life and death, etc. He emphasizes the fact that happiness is fleeting and that the human condition is one of mortality; for Camus, this is cause for a greater appreciation for life and happiness.
In Le Mythe , dualism becomes a paradox: While we can live with a dualism I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come , we cannot live with the paradox I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless. In Le Mythe , Camus investigates our experience of the Absurd and asks how we live with it. Our life must have meaning for us to value it. If we accept that life has no meaning and therefore no value, should we kill ourselves?
In Le Mythe , Camus suggests that 'creation of meaning' would entail a logical leap or a kind of philosophical suicide in order to find psychological comfort. Creation of meaning is not a viable alternative but a logical leap and an evasion of the problem. He gives examples of how others would seem to make this kind of leap.
The alternative option, namely suicide, would entail another kind of leap, where one attempts to kill absurdity by destroying one of its terms the human being. Camus points out, however, that there is no more meaning in death than there is in life, and that it simply evades the problem yet again.
Camus concludes that we must instead "entertain" both death and the absurd, while never agreeing to their terms. Caligula ends up admitting his absurd logic was wrong and is killed by an assassination he has deliberately brought about. However, while Camus possibly suggests that Caligula's absurd reasoning is wrong, the play's anti-hero does get the last word, as the author similarly exalts Meursault's final moments.
Camus made a significant contribution to a viewpoint of the Absurd, and always rejected nihilism as a valid response. If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning. Camus's understanding of the Absurd promotes public debate; his various offerings entice us to think about the Absurd and offer our own contribution. Concepts such as cooperation, joint effort and solidarity are of key importance to Camus, though they are most likely sources of "relative" versus "absolute" meaning.
In The Rebel , Camus identifies rebellion or rather, the values indicated by rebellion as a basis for human solidarity. When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical. But for the moment we are only talking of the kind of solidarity that is born in chains. Despite his opposition to the label, Camus addressed one of the fundamental questions of existentialism: Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.
All other questions follow from that. Throughout his life, Camus spoke out against and actively opposed totalitarianism in its many forms. On the French collaboration with Nazi occupiers he wrote: Camus publicly reversed himself and became a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. Camus's well-known falling out with Sartre is linked to his opposition to authoritarian communism. Camus detected a reflexive totalitarianism in the mass politics espoused by Sartre in the name of Marxism.
Camus continued to speak out against the atrocities of the Soviet Union , a sentiment captured in his speech The Blood of the Hungarians , commemorating the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution , an uprising crushed in a bloody assault by the Red Army. One further important, often neglected component of Camus' philosophical and literary persona was his love of classical Greek thought and literature, or philhellenism. This love looks back to his youthful encounters with Friedrich Nietzsche , his teacher Jean Grenier , and his own sense of a "Mediterranean" identity, based in a common experience of sunshine, beaches, and living in proximity to the near-Eastern world.
The culmination of the latter work defends a "midday thought" based in classical moderation or mesure , in opposition to the tendency of modern political ideologies to exclusively valorise race or class, and to dream of a total redemptive revolution. Camus' conception of classical moderation also has deep roots in his lifelong love of Greek tragic theatre, about which he gave an intriguing address in Athens in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. November Learn how and when to remove this template message. This section relies too much on references to primary sources. Please improve this section by adding secondary or tertiary sources.
Georges Simenon
La vie philosophique de Albert Camus. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Archived from the original on 8 October Retrieved 7 October From Rationalism to Existentialism: Archived from the original on 5 October Retrieved 17 October Schrift , Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Retrieved 14 June Famous People with the Courage to Doubt. Retrieved January 17, Biography, Books and Facts". Retrieved 23 February Retrieved 20 November Albert Camus and Maria Casares". Retrieved 13 April Los Angeles Review of Books. From the Absurd to Revolt.
- Lara Fabian.
- A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons and International Order (Routledge Global Security Studies);
- Choosing to Lead: Understanding Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurs (e-Duke books scholarly collection.).
- .
- Albert Camus - Wikipedia!
- Albert Camus;
Tarrou's account of the death penalty in TP. Archived from the original on 8 July Retrieved 15 November Archived from the original on 13 May Archived from the original on 2 December Retrieved 5 October This one's had a good start born in the middle of a move. Retrieved 21 December Camus and His Women. Archived from the original on 7 December Retrieved 1 December The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 3 August Retrieved 21 August Albert Camus the Algerian: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.
Caligula and Three Other Plays. An Essay on Man in Revolt. The Myth of Sisyphus. Retrieved 31 March A Life', By Olivier Todd". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 10 May Portrait of a Moralist. University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 3 September The New Mediterranean Culture". Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism 1st ed. Archived from the original on 15 August French authors and the island of Aphrodite p.
Albert Camus at Wikipedia's sister projects. Works by Albert Camus. Articles related to Albert Camus. Despite their father's lack of religious convictions, all of Simenon's children would be baptized as Catholics. Marriage to Tigy, however, did not prevent Simenon from having liaisons with numerous other women, perhaps most famously, Josephine Baker. A reporting assignment had Simenon on a lengthy sea voyage in , giving him a taste for boating. In , he decided to have a boat built, the Ostrogoth. Simenon, Tigy, their cook and housekeeper Henriette Liberge, and their dog Olaf lived on board the Ostrogoth , travelling the French canal system.
Henriette Liberge, known as "Boule" literally "Ball," a reference to her slight pudginess was romantically involved with Simenon for the next several decades and would remain a close friend of the family, really part of it. In , the most famous character invented by Simenon, Commissaire Maigret , made his first appearance in a piece in Detective written at Joseph Kessel 's request.
This first ever Maigret detective story was written while boating in The Netherlands, particularly in and around the Dutch town of Delfzijl. A statue of Maigret in Delfzijl is a perpetual reminder of this. A trip around the world followed in and The house is evoked in Simenon's novel Le Testament Donadieu. Further confusion stems from the fact that he was denounced as a collaborator by local farmers while at the same time the Gestapo suspected him of being Jewish, apparently conflating the names "Simenon" and "Simon".
In any case, Simenon was under investigation at the end of the war because he had negotiated film rights of his books with German studios during the occupation and in was sentenced to a five-year period during which he was forbidden to publish any new work. This sentence, however, was kept from the public and had little practical effect. Also in the early s, Simenon had a health scare when a local doctor misdiagnosed him with a serious heart condition a reminder of his father , giving him only months to live.
It was also at this time that Tigy finally realized the nature of the relationship between her husband and Boule. He and Tigy remained married until , but it was now a marriage in name only.
Lara Fabian - Wikipedia
Despite Tigy's initial protests, Boule remained with the family. The ambiguities of the war years notwithstanding, the city of La Rochelle eventually honored Simenon, naming a quay after him in Simenon was too ill to attend the dedication ceremony. However, in , his son Johnny participated in another event honoring his father. Simenon escaped questioning in France and in arrived, along with Tigy and Marc, in North America. He spent several months in Quebec , Canada, north of Montreal , at Domaine L'Esterel Ste-Marguerite du Lac Masson where he lived in a modern-style house and wrote three novels one of which was Three Bedrooms in Manhattan in one of the log cabins LC5, still there today.
Boule, due to visa difficulties, was initially unable to join them.
He and his family also went on lengthy car trips, traveling from Maine to Florida and then west as far as California. Simenon lived for a short time on Anna Maria Island near Bradenton , Florida, before renting a house in Nogales, Arizona , where Boule was finally reunited with him. His novel The Bottom of the Bottle was heavily influenced by his stay in Nogales.
Although enchanted by the desert, Simenon decided to leave Arizona, and following a stay in California, settled into a large house, Shadow Rock Farm, in Lakeville , Connecticut. Tigy, however, had a great deal of trouble with the language and pined for a return to Europe. In the meantime, Simenon had met Denyse Ouimet, a woman seventeen years his junior.
After resolving numerous legal difficulties, Simenon and Tigy were divorced in Simenon and Denyse Ouimet were then married in Reno , Nevada in and eventually had three children, Johnny born in , Marie-Jo born in and Pierre born in In accordance with the divorce agreement, Tigy continued to live in close proximity to Simenon and their son Marc, an arrangement that continued until they all returned to Europe in Although he never resided in Belgium after , he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life.
After living in a rented house in Echandens , in he purchased a property in Epalinges , north of Lausanne , where he had an enormous house constructed to his own design. Simenon and Denyse Ouimet separated definitively in Teresa, who had been hired by Simenon as a housekeeper in , had by this time become romantically involved with him and remained his companion for the rest of his life. His long-troubled daughter Marie-Jo committed suicide in Paris in at the age of 25, [3] an event that darkened Simenon's later years.
Simenon underwent surgery for a brain tumor in and made a good recovery. In subsequent years however, his health worsened. He gave his last televised interview in December Georges Simenon died in his sleep of natural causes on the night of the 4 September in Lausanne.
Simenon left such a legacy that he was honored with a silver commemorative coin: The obverse side shows his portrait.
Navigation menu
In he said he had had sex with 10, women in the 61 years since his 13th birthday. Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre includes nearly novels, over novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about million copies of his works have been printed.
He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton , was serialized in and appeared in book form in ; [7] the last one, Maigret and Monsieur Charles , was published in The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into films and radio plays.