Essays on Camus

Teenage boys may feel that girls are aliens, because they seem different, but in Neil Gaiman’s short Sci-Fi story, “How to talk to girls at parties”, the girls really are from another planet. The author humorously recounts the experience of two teenage boys, Vic and Enn, whose lack of experience around girls and nascent sexuality, cause them to ignore the visible signs that the girls they meet at a party are not from this world. Throughout the story, Enn, from whose perspective the story is told, is so focused on trying to talk to the girls he meets ...

Everyone desires to understand the significance of life, to unveil the importance of human beings and reconcile that importance to the surroundings. Many philosophers, alive and dead, from Descartes to Eve Cole, have indulged in the question of the significance of a human life, and the relationships that people form. In real life situations, many leaders; religious, political and academic, push forwards thoughts about life. Professional counselors and psychologists make a lot of money by telling people how they can achieve their full potential. In the literal works; Doll House by Ibsen, The Plague by Albert Camus, Ikiru by ...

Alienation involves isolating a certain group of people by being indifferent and discriminative. This paper focuses on an article that provides a detailed account of suffering that North Koreans underwent through the rule of Kim- Jong- il and his current predecessor Kim- Jong- un through the eyes of the Myth of Sisyphus, a compilation of essays by Albert Camus. I chose the article by Tom Phillips about a refugee who escaped the inhumanity in North Korea because refugees are some of the people who face great alienation. Also, through Yeonmi Park’s experiences, a refugee, described in this article, ...

Introduction

The significance of life is an existential question that many people find troubling through the course of their lives. People engage in different activities in the pursuit of what is significant in their lives; the meaning of life; the one thing that surpasses all. The subject has been explored extensively in many scholarly and works of film. The subject of the significant in one’s life has been explored extensively in the Woman in the Dunes, a film directed by Teshigahara, The Plague, a novel authored by Camus, Ikiru, a film by Kurosawa, and A Doll House, a play ...

Countless debates have ensued concerning the supposed importance of how life began, why it was created, and of course if it has any fundamental purpose. Some would argue that life has no meaning, that it is a randomized hodgepodge of experiences that when placed together create the sum of a life. Others would claim that there is meaning behind every experience, a driving goal that allows an individual to keep going when it would be easier to stop. Whether it is because of personal belief or fundamental truths that can be measured and verified the meaning of life remains ...

Perhaps the predominant turn in philosophy since the end of the First World War has been a move toward an adoption of the absurd. Before that war, there was more of a universalist approach to the world, but the events between 1914 and 1918, accelerated by the events between 1929 and 1945, took those universalist elements and dropped them squarely on their heads. Before 1914, even war was kind of a civilized affair, with warring armies frequently taking off Christmas, or even the entire winter; the Christmas truce during the First World War would be the last of its ...

Introduction

Ethics refers to those things that are firmly accepted ideas about what we should do in given situations (Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, and Meyer). For example, ethics might refer to a standard that says that stealing or murder or assault is not the right thing to do, and so it imposes restrictions on those activities. Ethics also includes virtues, such as honesty, compassion, and loyalty. The right to life, the right to privacy, and the right to be safe are also embedded in ethics, whether stated directly or not. What these things have in common is that the standards of ...

Two of the most important existential philosophers have been Albert Camus, well known for both his novels and his philosophy, and Jean Paul Sartre, who, is aligned with the ideas of existentialism more than any other philosopher. In addition to sharing some ideas about existentialism (although both men also developed very different systems of this philosophy), both thinkers were atheists, and developed their systems of philosophy, from their belief in a world, or a universe without god. For Camus, the absence of god was one of the reasons why man could find the nature of existence meaningless, and his ...

A Fossil fuel power station is a plant location where fossil fuels are burned producing electricity. Such fossil fuels include petroleum, natural gas, and coal. There are power plants which are designed for continuous operations for large scale purposes called central station fossil fuel power plants. Fossil fuel plants in many countries are used in the provision of electricity. They have machines for conversion of heat energy from combustion of fossil fuels into mechanical energy that operates an electrical generator producing electric currents (Camus et al. 154). The Samso Island is planning to exhaust the application of fossil fuels ...

Both Satre and Camus, important and famous French philosophers of the middle of the 20th century explored various facets of what may be called existentialist philosophy. Sartre grounded his work by focusing on the concept, and practice, of human freedom, While Camus approached existentialism from a tension between absurdity and the meaning of making choices and commitment. While both philosophers worked in very different areas of the wide branch of philosophy known as existentialism, both Camus and Sartre build their systems on the foundation of a life, or universe, without any divine force, and certainly without the idea of ...

The Guest is a short story written by Albert Camus and first published as a part of the collection Exile and the Kingdom in 1957. The main character of the story is a teacher in a remote school Daru. The man was alone because of the snowfall, until gendarme Balducci with the apprehended Arabic person appeared. Daru was asked to take prisoner to a nearby town Tinguit where he would be tried for relative’s murder. The teacher did not want to take part in these events, but Balducci still left Arab in the school. Daru did not treat ...

Introduction

Practicing business ethics involves three major steps; first, there must be a set of values that are used as a guideline in decision-making in a business environment, second, an understanding of the parties affected by those values and finally deciding on what actions works best for the values (Harry 45). Business ethics enable us to tell what is right and what is wrong in the course of doing business concerning the law. Good values make the society a better place to live. This essay gives a case study on business ethics in four parts. The first part introduces the ...

The Meaning of the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus

Albert Camus' creativity is one of the most important literature phenomenon of the 20th century. In his writings, the author considers the deep and complex issues related to human existence in the context of a total loss of faith. The novel The Stranger is considered the Camus' most important work. This story touches upon the problem of faith in God and the absurdity of life in detail. The theme of the absurd is not accidental for the culture of the 20th century, in which the universality of common sense and logical constructs lose their importance at all levels. A ...

Camus, A. “The Guest.” Exile and the Kingdom. London: Penguin, 2006. 43-56. Print. In 1957, Albert Camus wrote a short story The Guest, which became a part of his famous collection of stories Exile and the Kingdom. The scene is laid in French Algeria. The main characters of the story are Daru, a young Frenchman who lives in the desert mountains and works as a teacher, the old Corsican gendarme Balducci, and an Arab who has no name. One day, Daru sees Balducci and an Arab climbing up a mountain towards the school. Balducci tells Daru that he was ...

Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach is an exclusive note written the document that includes eleven small pieces of notes, which describe the few light setting works of philosophy on the discovery of the new world. The thesis describes the breakthrough in the world of philosophy, from the world of idealism, to the world of Marxism (Jal, p 1). The hypotheses describe the whole process of transition of knowledge through the provision of the truth, by exerting reality, and the power of knowledge in knowledge attribution. The thesis describes the transition that the world undergoes due to changes in ...

1- Sheikh Zaabalawi

What does Sheikh Zaabalawi represent? Is he symbolic of anything in particular, or does he represent many things at once?  (Try and use specifics from the text to support your argument.) Zaabalawi is not just a man who can perform miracles and cure the body. The narrator’s search for him also represents a search for the mystical, a search for religious discipline. In that way, Zaabalawi comes to represent God. 2 - "Zaabalawi"--thinking about illness

The narrator’s illness is never defined because it is not just a physical illness. It represents more an eponymous malaise that ...

The novel "The Stranger" by Albert Camus is one of the most important and popular of his works. It has a direct connection with the philosophy of existentialism and the absurd like most of the works of the author. The writer once again demonstrates the human and social relationships, as well as the internal conflict of the man himself by the example of the protagonist's life and feelings. The problem of the story touches upon many issues, but one of the main problems is the existence of God. The life of the protagonist Meursault is the way to truth ...