Albert Camus's - Heart

Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literaturein 1957.

Camus did not consider himself to be a follower of the existentialist ideology despite usually being classified as a follower of it, even in his lifetime. In a 1945 interview, Camus rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."

Camus was born in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir family, and studied at the University of Algiers from which he graduated in 1936. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons to "denounce two ideologies found in both the USSR and the USA".

Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in Dréan (then known as Mondovi) in French Algeria. His mother was of Spanish descent and could only hear out of her left ear.His father, Lucien, a poor agricultural worker of Alsatian descent, was wounded in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I, while serving as a member of the Zouave infantry regiment. Lucien died in a makeshift army hospital from his wounds on October 11. Camus and his mother, an illiterate house cleaner, lived without a wealth of material possessions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of Algiers.

In 1923, Camus was accepted into the Lycée Bugeaud and eventually was admitted to the University of Algiers. After he contracted tuberculosis in 1930, he had to end his football activities; he had been a goalkeeper for a prominent Algerian university team. In addition, he was only able to study part-time. To earn money, he took odd jobs: as a private tutor, car parts clerk, and assistant at the Meteorological Institute. He completed his licence de philosophie (BA) in 1936; in May 1936, he successfully presented his thesis on Plotinus, "Rapports de l'hellénisme et du christianisme à travers les oeuvres de Plotin et de saint Augustin" ("Relationship of Greek and Christian thought in Plotinus and St. Augustine"), for his diplôme d'études supérieures (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis).

Camus joined the French Communist Party in the spring of 1935, seeing it as a way to "fight inequalities between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria." He did not suggest he was a Marxist or that he had read Das Kapital, but did write, "We might see communism as a springboard and asceticism that prepares the ground for more spiritual activities." In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party (PCA) was founded. Camus joined the activities of the Algerian People's Party (Le Parti du Peuple Algérien), which got him into trouble with his Communist party comrades, who in 1937 denounced him as a Trotskyite and expelled from the party. Camus then became associated with the French anarchist movement.

The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes (Anarchist Student Circle) as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought. Camus wrote for anarchist publications such as Le Libertaire, La révolution Proletarienne, and Solidaridad Obrera (Workers' Solidarity), the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (National Confederation of Labor). Camus stood with the anarchists when they expressed support for the uprising of 1953 in East Germany. He again allied with the anarchists in 1956, first in support of the workers' uprising in Poznań, Poland, and then later in the year with the Hungarian Revolution.