Begins slowly, ends as Voltaire cultivating his garden. The rebel's 'no' must provide the same answer to the will to power, or be lost. Invest in the people around you.

'At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent furies. The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.'

Now more than ever. ( )

Extraordinary book, as one might imagine from this Nobel Prize winner. It also seems quite appropriate for the present time in Amurrica. ( )

Rebelo-me, logo existo. Eis a essência do Homem Revoltado. Mas, o que vem a ser um rebelde? Simplesmente alguém que diz não. Um crítico, para quem qualquer tipo de socialismo já se mostrou utópico, especialmente o do tipo [pseudo]científico. Todos carregamos dentro de nós nossos lugares de exílio, nossos crimes e nossas devastações. Mas nossa tarefa não é soltá-las no mundo, é combatê-las em nós mesmos e no outro." Sou um rebelde sem causa, um poeta com sonhos intempestivos que não pretende deixar o mundo sem antes lutar, ou fazer algo parecido. A consciência, por mais confusa que seja, desenvolve-se a partir de cada ato de rebelião: a percepção repentina e deslumbrante de que há algo no homem com o qual ele pode se identificar, mesmo que apenas por um momento. ( )

Not an easy read for one used to novels and histories. But very informative and compelling. ( )

This “essay” (307 pages in English translation) is an extended analysis of the contradictory positive and negative elements of rebellion and how the negative elements can lead to the excesses of revolution. Rising up against slavery, oppression, injustice and other forms of domination is a positive. However, rebellion also has a potential negative side — the rejection of all restraints on liberty, the nihilist conclusion that everything is permitted and the political principle that the ends justify the means, including killing people to achieve a future ideal society. The book is relatively long because Albert Camus looks at these questions in a broad range of contexts: “metaphysical rebellion” against the human condition including the revolt against God who permits suffering (Prometheus, Cain and Abel, Epicurus and Lucretius, DeSade, Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Nietzsche, the Surrealists), “historical rebellion” consisting of political and social revolution against oppression (the French Revolution in particular Robespierre and Saint Just, the Russian terrorists of the 19th century, Hegel and Marx, and Russian communism), and art (Dostoyevsky). It is fascinating the way Camus tracks his theme among these various thinkers and movements and draws out the differences and similarities among them.

The fundamental question Camus poses in the essay is whether premeditated murder to achieve a political goal can be justified. The analysis starts with the concept of the absurd which Camus developed in the Myth of Sisyphus. Just as he concluded in the earlier work that suicide was not justified, in this work he rejects a logic of murder. However, he is not willing to deny the positive aspects of revolt because that would amount to acceptance of the status quo with all its injustices. At the same time, he cannot accept the historical logic that leads to revolution ending in a police state. His solution is to assert that there are values outside of history that counter nihilism or a historical logic that worships only the efficacy of results. These values are reflected and arise in the individual’s act of rebellion and include solidarity, equality, freedom of speech, and civil and natural rights. They provide a basis for rules of political action that limit excesses in the exercise of liberty and the establishment of justice. The rebel calls for moderation, not extremism. Violence may be required to respond to violence but should not be employed in an ultimately vain effort to establish a future ideal society. Camus argues that both the end must justify the means and the means must justify the end. The present must not be sacrificed to the future.

Camus contrasts a Mediterranean mentality, going back to the Greeks, based on a love of life and nature against the German ideology exemplified by Hegel and Marx who subject nature and life to history. The German ideology inherits the traditional Christian opposition to nature but has deified history to replace the absent God.

Camus’s views were controversial in his day when many in France still supported communism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere and revolts against colonialism (such as in Algeria) called into question the adequacy of a rebellion of moderation. Today little is left of the tradition to use violence to bring about a future ideal society. However, in the face of authoritarianism, inequality, racism and other ills, Camus’s rebel still has many reasons to rise up against injustice. ( )