Camus' Absurd Philosophy And Its Expression In Literature

As a contemporary French writer, Albert Camus (1913-1960) is one of the important representatives of existential philosophy and literature, whose philosophical thinking and literary practice focus on the Absurd.As for the Absurdity, though having never founded a systematic theory, Camus adopted and facilitated the discourses by the past philosophers, and formed his unique Absurd Philosophy. His Absurd Philosophy was constantly deepened and improved during his persistent thinking on absurdity, which enriched and developed absurd theory (history), therefore occupying an important position in the whole system of absurd philosophy. His literary works probed into the relationship among absurdity, human being and the world, described the world's impenetrableness, individuals' experience and cognition on absurd world, humans' attitudes towards or actions on absurdity. His works, thanks to representing universal-sense themes, occupy an important position in existential literature.Camus is a litterateur who has self-conscious philosophic view. In literary works, he fully melted his abstract and reflecting philosophic thoughts into literary images, which makes his philosophic views expressed in literary works. The basic ideas about the world and about humans' response to the world in Camus' philosophy, such as Absurd, Resistance, Balance etc., become themes in his literary works. With those significant and universal-sense themes, Camus' literary works are promoted from visualized and intuitionistic to reflecting and abstract, and endowed with profound philosophic thinking and high abstract in the sense of literature, which make visualized literature get close to philosophy. Camus' philosophic thinking and his literary practice, through the way of expression in literature, achieve the connection or integration between philosophy and literature, thus, Camus showed a good example for how philosophy could be expressed in literature.Therefore, this Dissertation is to master and analyze Camus' Absurd Philosophy, analyze how his philosophic views are expressed in literature. Since his philosophy exist in his literary works basically or more, to analyze his literary works becomes a necessary or early-phase work; on the base of clarifying, sorting out and overall mastering, it is to summarize his Absurd Philosophy and make analysis and comment, and on this base, to discuss the possible way or means of expression in literature of his philosophy.As a litterateur, Camus devoted himself to literary creation all of his adult time. In the short life of his 47 years, Camus wrote many works which brought him high reputation or disputes, including 5 fictions, 5 dramas, 6 adapted dramas, 1 short-fiction anthology, 3 prose anthologies and 3 affairs comment anthologies. Camus' literary writing, according to the founding and development of his Absurd Philosophy and according to the Themes, may be divided into three parts. Firstly, the Absurd Series describes the worlds' absurdness and unreasonableness, matters' fickleness, fortune's impenetrableness, daily life's callousness and mechanism, concerns individuals' fortune and behaviors and their psychosis, stresses individuals' subjective experience on their existence in the world, advocates the arousal of individual awareness, and probes into the possibility of psychological resistance which individuals carry out when facing to the absurd. Secondly, the Resistance Series shows the common issues, similar predicament and collective history encountered by people, describes dramatis personaes' tranfer from individual resistance to collective fighting, from psychological resistance to real actions, their debouchment out of loneliness and towards collective fighting with their different ways of resistance, and probes into the possibility of collective resistance against the absurd. Thirdly, the Balance Series discusses resistance's limit or boundary, exposes the danger of violence's legalization, probes into the possibility of limited resistance, believes that the resistance actions in the means of killing which was further legalized subject to the direction of an abstract conception, historical purpose and political view, will degenerate into unrestrained violence, leading to enforcement and systemization of bureaucratic organization and ending of freedom and finally autocratic power. In the whole progress of his writing, his profound exposures on world's absurdity, humans' situation of existence, humans' loneliness in dissident world, humans' attitudes and choices in the world, humanity, the good, the evil etc., endowed his works the characters and height of philosophy, which brings significant influence to his contemporary and future writers.Absurdity is the core in the whole philosophic thinking of Camus. About Absurdity, existential philosophers have enough discussed but in different views. Camus raised clear conceptions and made clear and systematical arguments in his philosophical essays.In Camus's view, people are aware of Absurd from five factors: bored (because of daily life's mechanism, people are suspicious of the value and purpose of their existence); time (people's sensibility on time lapse); death (people are aware of death); sense of dissidence (people feel that they are abandoned to a dissidence world); limitation (people's acknowledgment of their own limitation).Camus defined the Absurd as a Relationship, it is not only a broken relationship between positivity (aspiration for harmoniousness and identicalness) and negativity (broken, departed), which are two heterogeneous and paradoxical factors, but also interlink relation which takes the two paradoxical factors into one, and makes them coexist and geminate. He formulated the relationship between the humans and the world with absurdity, that is to say, Absurdity refers to not only broken relation between the human being and the world, but also a link for them. As for the former, the broken between the human being and the world includes three layers: break between the humans and the world; break between individual and individual; break between individual and himself. As for the latter, absurdity conveys people's pursuance of the rationality and intelligibility of matters, which connects human being and the world, and with which people conform the existence of themselves and the world and establish the connection with the world. Camus discussed systematically the reason that the absurd occurs and dissertated the conception of absurd, which formed the first part of his Absurd Philosophy, i.e., Theory on Absurdity.After this, Camus raised that how the people restrain themselves when they are faced to the world. He denied two ways of suicide: physiological suicide erases self existence, and philosophical suicide devotes to nihility and gives up fighting, both of the two are for escape. From resistance, it's possible for people to experience the existence and get the essence and significance. Resisters should find their footholds instantly, fighting against the absurd by free choice and real actions. With absurdity as a starting point, Camus deduced the consequences of resistance (clear cognition, challenge bearing), freedom (independently bear the fortune and action consequences), and fruits of ardor feel the life of quantity, and depicted them concretely with four images: Don Juan, actor, conqueror and artist. The attitude of resistance and three Results from Absurdity answer the question how people restrain themselves when they are faced to the absurd, and form the second part of Camus' Absurd Philosophy, i.e., Resistance Theory.Camus' Resistance Theory was changed during the phased development of his thought and creation: transfer from lonely individual resistance based on clear consciousness to collective real-acting resistance, and then seek for outlet for resistance within the limits. Camus affirmed the attitude of resistance, criticized the Metaphysical Resistance and Historical Resistance, thought that the two resistances make violence exist reasonably and replace Resistance (keep balance) with Violence (tend to absolute). Resistance is a limited action within a certain limit and boundary, or otherwise it would tend to another extremity. Camus proposed Mediterranean Thought with principle of balance, appropriateness and harmoniousness, which is regarded as a core of Resistance theory to develop his Resistance Theory. His Absurd Theory and Resistance Theory are logically consistent, and organically build up Camus' unique Absurd Philosophy.As for how could philosophy be expressed in literature, Camus' method or principle is to connect or integrate philosophy and literature by writing philosophic category as theme. Since Camus applied clear and self-conscious philosophic view to direct his literary writing, his works have profound philosophy nature and high abstractness in sense of literature, thereby have everlasting value and universal significance which surpass the times, history, society, nation, nationality and culture.The method of writing philosophic category as theme transfers philosophy makes philosophic views become theme of literature (literary works). Through visualized literary works, concrete literary images and lively literary language, Camus expressed, displayed expounded his reflecting, abstract and rational philosophic thoughts. Camus made his philosophic thought into themes in literary writing. Camus made his philosophic thoughts into themes, and the themes of philosophy are also one of his literary themes. By employing the philosophic category as theme as his basic means of conveying his philosophy, Camus made philosophy and literature complement with each other, conception and images bring out the best in each other, from which Camus gained the mutual pentration between philosophy's literary practice and literature's philosophic practice, as well as important practice and outstanding achievements in both fields of philosophy and literature. It may be concluded that, the method of writing philosophic category as theme, in a sense, connects, improves and integrates philosophy and literature, and provide one or more possibility for philosophy's Expression in Lliterature.