Camus Aesthetic Ideology

Camus is identified as the existentialist philosopher because of his focus on humansurvival circumstances. However, he takes a negative attitude towards this, which can also beclearly seen in his works. Thus how to define Camus has become an urgent problem. At thesame time, his thoughts comes down to two main themes—absurdity and resistance, whichmakes the subsequent researchers basically follow this way of classification while discussinghis thoughts but ignore the study of Camus’ thoughts from the prospective of intrinsic unity.Scholars have, of course, put forward that the absurdity of Camus thought has the aestheticattributes, which is a breakthrough of the original research. However, the author thinks thatthe idea still has not touched the core of his thought. In my opinion, Camus’ philosophy is akind of aesthetic thought that has sublime nature. The essence of Camus’ thought of aestheticsis not absurdity but sublime and the absurdity is the starting point to build their own sublimeideological system, and its aesthetic ideas is strongly independent. It has always beensaturated with the infinite pursuit to life strength and the ultimate value, showing the sublimedimension of western culture, which also inevitably makes it reflect the strong classical traitsof it. Camus always emphasizes the great spiritual power inspired by the main body in theabsurd resistance. The core of his philosophy resistance, which can also be called as thebalanced thought, is the inevitable requirement of the lofty mental strength. Using the methodof intensive reading, this article aims to reframe Camus’ aesthetic thoughts from theperspective of the established reflections on his research results in order to get a goodcommand of the noble nature of his thought and complete the re-evaluation of Camus basedon the analysis above.Apart from the introduction part, the main body of this thesis is composed of fourchapters.The first chapter is devoted to comb the concept of sublime in the history of westernaesthetics and refine the essence of the sublime category so as to prepare for the argument ofthe topic. At the same time, this chapter also analyzes the forming background of Camus’thought from the perspective of religious orientation, thought origin, the life experience andso on. On the basis of that, this chapter also discusses the possibility of the noble nature of Camus’ aesthetics.The second chapter systematically analyzes the absurd philosophy text "The Myth ofSisyphus", pointing out the absurdity of Camus’ thought, in another words, the rebel spirit isessentially a positive confirmation of the passion for life without reason and this kind of lifepassion is inherently the same with the high strength. Thus we can get the conclusion that theessence of Camus’ absurd thought is the sublime. Through the analysis of the other tworepresentative works of the absurd theme-"The stranger" and "Caligula", this chapter aims tosupport this conclusion.The third chapter systematically analyzes the resistance philosophy text "The Rebel",pointing out that this kind of resistance thought is essentially the unremitting pursuit ofabsolute justice, but this transcendent and absolute justice can only be finished in the humanspirit and this kind of spirit power in essence is a kind of lofty spirit. Thus we can get theconclusion that the essence of Camus’ absurd thought is the sublime. Through the analysis ofthe other two representative works of the resistant theme-"the Plague" and " The JustAssassins", this chapter aims to support this conclusion.The fourth chapter is devoted to the reflection and re-evaluation on Camus’ sublimeaesthetic thoughts. This chapter firstly demonstrates the intrinsic coherence of the two mainthemes---absurd and resistance, and reaffirms that the lofty nature of the aesthetic thoughts.Through the comparison of the views with other existentialists, this paper has completed thepositioning of lofty aesthetic ideas and discussed the values and limitations of Camus’ loftyaesthetic thoughts.The author mainly adopts the method of intensive reading to demonstrate the topic thatthe essence of Camus’ aesthetic thought is the sublime". The past approach of classification isalso used for the analysis of his representative works. In my opinion, the core concept of"absurdity" in his aesthetics thought is still needed to be discussed and the real theme shouldbe "the resistance of the absurdity". This resistance with a strong classical color is essentiallythe lofty spirit of revolt.