A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning - Rilegato

Zaretsky, Robert

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0674724763 ISBN 13: 9780674724761

Casa editrice: Belknap Pr, 2013

Riassunto

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Albert Camus declared that a writer's duty is twofold: "the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance against oppression." These twin obsessions help explain something of Camus' remarkable character, which is the overarching subject of this sympathetic and lively book. Through an exploration of themes that preoccupied 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.

Though we do not face the same dangers that threatened Europe when Camus wroteThe Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, we confront other alarms. Herein lies Camus' abiding significance. Reading his work, we become more thoughtful observers of our own lives. For Camus, rebellion is an eternal human condition, a timeless struggle against injustice that makes life worth living. But rebellion is also bounded by self-imposed constraints--it is a noble if impossible ideal. Such a contradiction suggests that if there is no reason for hope, there is also no occasion for despair--a sentiment perhaps better suited for the ancient tragedians than modern political theorists but one whose wisdom abides. Yet we must not venerate suffering, Camus cautions: the world's beauty demands our attention no less than life's train of injustices. That recognition permits him to declare: "It was the middle of winter, I finally realized that, within me, summer was inextinguishable."

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Recensione:

"Topics that often crop up in Camus's letters - not only absurdity, but also fidelity, revolt, the need for silence, and the search for "measure" in the Greco-Roman sense of the term - are analysed in Robert Zaretsky's enlightening A Life Worth Living." --John Taylor, Times Literary Supplement, 8 November 2013

"As A Life Worth Living emphasises, he should be remembered as a leading 20th-century intellectual, not simply humanisms favourite quote generator.... Scarcely a linear biography, Zaretsky s thematic study nonetheless convinces that a stubborn defence of the meek was central to the indefatigability that won Camus admirers and enemies in equal measure." --Matthew Feldman, Times Higher Education, 21/11/13

Product Description:

Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Belknap Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0674724763
• ISBN 13: 9780674724761
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 227