Table Of ContentALBERT CAMUS
This book interprets the ideas, thoughts and concepts that characterize the
writings and philosophy of Albert Camus for our contemporary times. It
investigates Camus’ “revolted compassion” as an outsider and a philosopher-
writer who in his own words believed in “creating dangerously”. The author
examines Camus’ interventions on political, philosophical and moral
questions, such as Algerian independence, capital punishment, ideological
violence, nihilism in the context of his ideals of the absurd and revolt, and
justice and liberty. Further, it goes on to provide an exhaustive analysis of
Camus’ critique of violence and his intellectual resistance to totalitarianism.
Bringing together latest scholarship with an acute analysis of Albert
Camus’ philosophy, this sourcebook throws a powerful light on the
intellectual foundations of the twentieth century and its relevance for the
twenty-first. The book will be of interest to scholars of literature, philosophy
and African Studies.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian-Canadian philosopher. He is presently
the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence
and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global
University, Sonipat, India. He is the winner of the Peace Prize from the
United Nations Association in Spain (2009) for his extensive academic work
in promoting dialogue among cultures and his advocacy for nonviolence.
More recently he is the winner of the Josep Palau i Fabre International Essay
Prize. Some of his most recent publications are G adflies in the Public Space
(2016), The Decline of Civilization (2017), Letters to a Young Philosopher
(2017), On Forgiveness and Revenge (2017) and The Global Gandhi: Essays
in Comparative Political Philosophy (2018).
ALBERT CAMUS
The Unheroic Hero of Our Time
Ramin Jahanbegloo
First published 2020
by Routledge
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© 2020 Ramin Jahanbegloo
The right of Ramin Jahanbegloo to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and
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ISBN: 978-0-367-33492-5 (hbk)
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Typeset in Sabon
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TO ROMILA THAPAR, THE CAMUSIAN
LADY OF INDIA
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: thinking with Camus: from violence to
nonviolence 1
1 A Meridian philosopher 12
2 Thermodynamics of death and solidarity towards life 24
3 A soul in rebellion 35
4 From solitude to hope 47
5 Camus the outsider: facing the past and the present 59
Conclusion: the exercise of measuredness: is a
Camusian nonviolence possible? 70
Bibliography 75
Index 78
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This journey would not have been possible without the support of my fam-
ily, colleagues and friends. In the first place, my loving gratitude goes to my
wife Azin Moalej and my daughter Afarin for standing by me in life and in
my intellectual work. Thank you to my mother Khojasteh Kia for guiding
me as a person and for offering her love throughout this process.
I would like to give special thanks to my colleagues at Jindal Global Uni-
versity. I owe a debt of gratitude to Vice Chancellor Raj C. Kumar for his
friendship and moral support and to Professor Sudarshan Ramaswamy, Pro-
fessor Kathleen Modorovsky and Professor Vesselin Popovsky for their well
wishes and for supporting my situation of gadfly in Indian academia. My
immense gratitude goes also to Professor Ashis Nany, Professor Dipankar
Gupta and Professor Sudhir Kakar for their critical views about this subject
and others, which started the first sparkles of this research. A big thanks also
to my dearest friend Sachin Dhawan for all his friendship and support in
the past three years that I spent in India. I am also grateful to my assistant
Tharun Vuyyuru for his help in preparing the index of this book.
Finally, I feel deeply grateful to my editors Aakash Chakrabarty and
Brinda Sen who contributed enormously to the production of this book.
Last, but not least, I dedicate this book to my friend Professor Romila
Thapar, with whom I spent hours of great discussion on the role and respon-
sibility of intellectuals in today’s world.
viii
INTRODUCTION
Thinking with Camus: from violence
to nonviolence
Shortly after Albert Camus died in a car accident on January 4, 1960, at the
age of 46, Jean-Paul Sartre, who had severely criticized him since the publi-
cation of L ’Homme Révolté ( The Rebel ) in 1951, wrote a staggering tribute.
Whatever he did or decided subsequently, Camus would never have
ceased to be one of the chief forces of our cultural activity or to
represent in his way the history of France and of this century. But
we should probably have known and understood his itinerary. He
said so himself: “ My work lies ahead.” Now it is over. The particu-
lar scandal of his death is the abolition of the human order by the
inhuman.1
Today, 60 years after his sudden death, Camus is considered to be the most
widely read of all the twentieth-century French writers. There is something
of an irony of fate that this giant of world literature, born in a modest family
in Algeria, continues to seek all our attention and admiration through his
literary works and philosophical thoughts. After all, if, as Milan Kundera
says, “the novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity”,2 then Albert Camus’ lit-
erature has remained complex in the 60 years since his death, and so has he.
There was a unique state of in-betweenness experienced by Camus, who was
torn permanently between his deep attachment to his native land, Algeria,
and the French language, which he called his homeland ( Ma patrie, c’est la
langue française) . As a matter of fact, art was the only remedy to Camus’
complex existential situation, with which he had to come to terms both as
an individual and as a writer. Therefore, unlike many of his characters, who
fail at finding a way out of the absurdity of life, Camus was able to turn his
Algerian experience into an artistic expression. But, the success of Camus in
resolving the existential dilemma engendered by his complex condition of
in-betweenness was accompanied, above all, by a profound sense of compas-
sion for things and human beings.
The totality of Camus’ work has one central theme: a quest for the com-
passionate justice. Because of this constant presence of the quest for justice
1
