This book is the first English-language collection of essays by leading Camus scholars from around the world to focus on Albert Camus’ place and status as a philosopher amongst philosophers. After a thematic introduction, the dedicated chapters of Part 1 address Camus’ relations with leading philosophers, from the ancient Greeks to Jean-Paul Sartre (Augustine, Hume, Kant, Diderot, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Hegel, Marx, Sartre). Part 2 contains pieces considering philosophical themes in Camus’ works, from the absurd in
The Myth of Sisyphus to love in
The First Man (the absurd, psychoanalysis, justice, Algeria, solidarity and solitude, revolution and revolt, art, asceticism, love).
Matthew Sharpe is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of
Camus, Philosophe: To Return to Our Beginnings (Brill, 2015; paperback, 2016). Sharpe works at present on philosophy as a way of life, the philosophical bases of the re-emergent Far Right, and recovering the French Enlightenment
philosophes.
Maciej Kałuża is a lecturer at Pedagogical University in Cracow and founder of the Polish Albert Camus Society. He authored two books focused on the philosophical complexities of the Camusian notions of the absurd and revolt (2016, 2017). He also edited the international collection
From Absurd to Revolt. Dynamics in Albert Camus’ thought (2017).
Peter Francev is a lecturer at Victor Valley College in Victorville, California, where he teaches courses in literature and Albert Camus’ thought. He is president of the Albert Camus Society of the USA and editor of the
Journal of Camus Studies. His other research interests include Phenomenology, Existentialism, and the poetry of Lord Byron.
List of Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Maciej Kałuża, Peter Francev and Matthew Sharpe
Part 1 Dialogues
1 Camus the Athenian: Philhellenism and Utopia in l’Homme révolté’s Relationship to Ancient Philosophy
Luke Richardson 2 “That Other North African”: Camus on Augustine and His Legacy
Ronald Srigley 3 Camus and the History of Modern Western Philosophy
Kimberley Baltzer-Jaray 4 Modern Rebellion, before the Terror: Reading Diderot after Camus
Matthew Sharpe 5 Albert Camus and Soren Kierkegaard
Eric Berg 6 Camus and Nietzsche: on the Slave Revolt in Morality
Michael Ure 7 Strangers in the Philosophical Night: Camus and Dostoevsky
Thomas Epstein 8 Camus and Husserl and the Phenomenologists
George Heffernan 9 Camus and His Hegel(s)
Maciej Kałuża 10 Camus, Marxism and Communism
Ronald Aronson 11 Sartre and Camus: a Much-Misunderstood Relationship
David Sprintzen
Part 2 Themes
12 The Absurd
Grace Whistler 13 Mensch to Übermensch: Asceticism and the Ascetic Ideal in A Happy Death and The Stranger
Simon Lea 14 Camus and Psychoanalysis
Matthew H. Bowker 15 The Tension between Solitude and Solidarity
Sophie Bastien Translated by Jackson Doughart 16 Albert Camus on Revolt and Revolution
Patrick Hayden 17 Camus, Justice and the Challenges of History
Mark Orme 18 “Ma vraie patrie”: Camus and Algeria
Peter Dunwoodie 19 Love, Ressentiment and Resistance: Albert Camus’ Phenomenology of Action
Samantha Novello 20 Hopeless Love: Camus and Le Premier Homme
Marguerite La Caze
Bibliography
Index
All interested in Camus, political philosophy, continental philosophy, as well as academic libraries, and any institutes working on modern French thought.