This book seeks to establish the relevance of Albert Camus’ philosophy and literature to contemporary ethics. By examining Camus’ innovative methods of approaching moral problems, Whistler demonstrates that Camus’ work has much to offer the world of ethics— Camus does philosophy differently, and the insights his methodologies offer could prove invaluable in both ethical theory and practice. Camus sees lived experience and emotion as ineliminable in ethics, and thus he chooses literary methods of communicating moral problems in an attempt to draw positively on these aspects of human morality. Using case studies of Camus’ specific literary methods, including dialogue, myth, mime and syntax, Whistler pinpoints the efficacy of each of Camus’ attempts to flesh-out moral problems, and thus shows just how much contemporary ethics could benefit from such a diversification in method.

Best known today for his novels, plays and short stories, but also an accomplished essayist, editor and journalist, Albert Camus was one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. He has gained widespread recognition for works such as The Stranger, Caligula, The Plague and Exile and the Kingdom. In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1960 he was killed in a car accident, aged just 46. Since Camus’ untimely death, his work has been engaged by scholars in literature, politics, philosophy and many other fields. This volume is one of the first book-length studies of Camus with a specifically educational focus. Camus’ writings raise and address ethical and political questions that resonate strongly with current concerns and debates in educational theory, and the difficulties and dilemmas faced by his characters mirror those encountered by many teachers in school classrooms. This book will appeal to all who wish to consider the connections between education, ethics and the problem of human existence. This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy & Theory.

This book marks a major new reassessment of Camus's writing investigating the nature and philosophical origins of Camus's thinking on 'authenticity' and 'the absurd' as these notions are expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Outsider. It shows that these books are the product not only of a literary figure, but of a genuine philosopher as well. Moreover, McBride provides a complete English-language translation of Camus's Mtaphysique chrtienne et Noplatonisme and underlines the importance of this study for the understanding of the early Camus.

In what, since the age of its Enlightenment, the West has perceived to be an absurd universe, it has had continually to choose between two ways of life as consequences of that perception and of the movement which gave it rise: these are the way of ethics and the way of modern historicist ideology, the way of a moral imperative without God and that of the will to become God in His place. The first is illogical, but the second is irrational, «la prédication de la surhumanité, » as Camus says, «aboutissant à la fabrication méthodique des sous-hommes.» The way of ethics or of man as an end in himself is the way of Camus as well, and one the reflection of whose origins and raison d'être in his own thought is the subject of the two studies in the present essay.

Exploring themes that preoccupied Albert Camus--absurdity, silence, revolt, fidelity, and moderation--Robert Zaretsky portrays a moralist who refused to be fooled by the nobler names we assign to our actions, and who pushed himself, and those about him, to challenge the status quo. For Camus, rebellion against injustice is the human condition.