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The Fastidious Assassins
A daring critique of communism and how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain, Camus’ essay examines the revolutions in France and Russia, and argues that since they were both guilty of producing tyranny and corruption, hope for the future lies only in revolt without revolution.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
114 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 23, 2008
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About the author
Albert Camus
1,075 books37.7k followersWorks, such as the novels
The Stranger
(1942) and
The Plague
(1947), of Algerian-born French writer and philosopher Albert Camus concern the absurdity of the human condition; he won the Nobel Prize of 1957 for literature.
Origin and his experiences of this representative of non-metropolitan literature in the 1930s dominated influences in his thought and work.
He also adapted plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Requiem for a Nun of William Faulkner. One may trace his enjoyment of the theater back to his membership in l'Equipe, an Algerian group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons.
Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest, he came at the age of 25 years in 1938; only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation served as a columnist for the newspaper Combat.
The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds notion of acceptance of the absurd of Camus with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction."
Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later - when the young killer faces execution - tempted by despair, hope, and salvation.
Besides his fiction and essays, Camus very actively produced plays in the theater (e.g., Caligula, 1944).
The time demanded his response, chiefly in his activities, but in 1947, Camus retired from political journalism.
Doctor Rieux of La Peste (The Plague), 1947, who tirelessly attends the plague-stricken citizens of Oran, enacts the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice, and confirms words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them."
People also well know La Chute (The Fall), work of Camus in 1956.
Camus authored L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) in 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He styled of great purity, intense concentration, and rationality.
Camus died at the age of 46 years in a car accident near Sens in le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin.
Chinese 阿尔贝·加缪
Origin and his experiences of this representative of non-metropolitan literature in the 1930s dominated influences in his thought and work.
He also adapted plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Requiem for a Nun of William Faulkner. One may trace his enjoyment of the theater back to his membership in l'Equipe, an Algerian group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons.
Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest, he came at the age of 25 years in 1938; only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation served as a columnist for the newspaper Combat.
The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds notion of acceptance of the absurd of Camus with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction."
Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later - when the young killer faces execution - tempted by despair, hope, and salvation.
Besides his fiction and essays, Camus very actively produced plays in the theater (e.g., Caligula, 1944).
The time demanded his response, chiefly in his activities, but in 1947, Camus retired from political journalism.
Doctor Rieux of La Peste (The Plague), 1947, who tirelessly attends the plague-stricken citizens of Oran, enacts the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice, and confirms words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them."
People also well know La Chute (The Fall), work of Camus in 1956.
Camus authored L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) in 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He styled of great purity, intense concentration, and rationality.
Camus died at the age of 46 years in a car accident near Sens in le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin.
Chinese 阿尔贝·加缪
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
February 28, 2021
This is a critique of Communism and how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain.
This essay examines the evolutions in France and Russia and argues that since they both produced tyranny and corruption, hope for the future lies only in revolt without revolution.
In order to exist, man must rebel but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist.
In contemplating the results of an act of rebellion, each time, whether it remains faithful to its first noble promise or whether, through lassitude or folly, it forgets its purpose and plunges into a mire of servitude or tyranny.
Rebellion is the common ground on which every person bases his first values.
I rebel therefore we exist.
This essay examines the evolutions in France and Russia and argues that since they both produced tyranny and corruption, hope for the future lies only in revolt without revolution.
In order to exist, man must rebel but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist.
In contemplating the results of an act of rebellion, each time, whether it remains faithful to its first noble promise or whether, through lassitude or folly, it forgets its purpose and plunges into a mire of servitude or tyranny.
Rebellion is the common ground on which every person bases his first values.
I rebel therefore we exist.
February 10, 2016
I've never quite understood the fuss about Camus's fiction, but I think if I had read this first I would have had a much more favorable reaction. Here Camus makes surprisingly clear the political philosophies behind such befuddling works as 'The Stranger.' The rebel and his revolution are placed in a paradoxical immobility between absolute nihilism and absolute justice--the inevitable outcome, Camus argues, is a violent and bloody struggle that culminates in the rebel becoming the oppressor he once opposed. Though the outlook is decidedly bleak, Camus maintains that a future revolution might succeed where so many others (but chiefly the socialist/communist revolutions in France and Russia, respectively) have failed, if only it can learn from the grim history that precedes it.
January 31, 2022
GOD-- amazing. I am in love with this play. I have to see it on stage.
February 26, 2015
En El Extranjero ya es evidente lo provocador que es Camus. En este ensayo su provocación es coyuntural y la no ficción deja al desnudo su atrevimiento. Me encanta.
De una manera muy lúcida presenta las incoherencias del quehacer revolucionario, sus trampas y mentiras, evidencia la falta de carácter que lleva al adoctrinamiento, reflexiona bellamente sobre la dialéctica de los escenarios de poder, advierte las trampas del liberalismo, también del nihilismo, es demoledor con la racionalización de los crímenes en nombre de la revolución y al final reivindica la rebeldía que conquista una existencia sin precedentes ni ataduras morales, que sostiene valores colectivos y que da la vida por ellos.
Lo amo.
De una manera muy lúcida presenta las incoherencias del quehacer revolucionario, sus trampas y mentiras, evidencia la falta de carácter que lleva al adoctrinamiento, reflexiona bellamente sobre la dialéctica de los escenarios de poder, advierte las trampas del liberalismo, también del nihilismo, es demoledor con la racionalización de los crímenes en nombre de la revolución y al final reivindica la rebeldía que conquista una existencia sin precedentes ni ataduras morales, que sostiene valores colectivos y que da la vida por ellos.
Lo amo.
January 24, 2018
As mesmerizing as Camu's fiction, this essay examines the contradictions in the essence of revolutions and rebellions and their shortcomings throughout history.
December 21, 2025
“I rebel, therefore we exist” guards the opening page.
There has been SO much political violence in just the last week. This book gave me some language to help mar through all the confusion.
Camus uses the figure of the “fastidious assassin”—drawn largely from Russian revolutionary terrorists—to describe those who kill for an idea yet insist on moral purity. They agonize over their act, impose strict limits on violence, and often accept their own death as the price of killing. In their minds, murder is justified only if it is restrained, targeted, and accompanied by personal sacrifice.
Camus’s point is double-edged:
What he admires: their refusal of indiscriminate slaughter; their insistence that violence must have limits; their willingness to die for what they do.
What he condemns: the belief that an abstract idea can ever justify killing a concrete human being.
The fastidious assassin kills reluctantly, under self-imposed limits, and often accepts his own death as the price of taking another’s life. Yet Camus insists that this posture is inherently unstable: once murder is justified in the name of an idea, restraint becomes a temporary fiction. Contemporary terrorism exemplifies the endpoint of this logic. Modern attackers rarely claim tragedy or personal sacrifice; instead, violence is framed as strategic, symbolic, or divinely sanctioned, and victims are reduced to anonymous instruments of a cause. What Camus foresaw is not merely an increase in brutality, but a qualitative shift—from killing accompanied by anguish to killing without moral remainder.
Terrorism, in this sense, represents the triumph of abstraction over humanity: an ideology so totalizing that it no longer recognizes the individual life it destroys. Camus’s critique remains urgent precisely because it exposes how political violence, once detached from personal responsibility, expands until the idea alone survives—and the human disappears.
What remains of the fastidious assassin is only the rhetoric of necessity; the anguish that once constrained violence has disappeared, leaving behind a politics in which human life is subordinated entirely to abstract causes.
He also deciphers between rebellion and revolution. Rebellion begins with a human refusal—an individual’s “no” to injustice that simultaneously affirms a shared dignity with others. It is grounded in limits, oriented toward the present, and committed to resisting oppression without sacrificing human life. Revolution, by contrast, emerges when this refusal is detached from moral restraint and subordinated to an abstract end such as history, the nation, or a promised future order. Once violence is justified in the name of that future, murder ceases to be tragic and becomes instrumental, systematic, and often legal. For Camus, this shift marks the moral collapse of rebellion itself: the moment justice is pursued through unlimited violence, the revolution no longer liberates but reproduces the very tyranny it claims to oppose.
Quotes:
“But as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in a doctrine, as soon as he makes his crime reasonable it multiplies like Reason herself and assumes all the figures of the syllogism”
“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees”
“If he prefers the risk of death to a denial of the rights that he defends, it is because he considers that the latter are more important than he is”
“According to Scheler, resentment always turns into either unscrupulous ambition or bitterness, depending on whether it flourishes in a weak mind or a strong one. But in both cases it is always a question of wanting to be something other than what one is. Resentment is always resentment against oneself. The rebel, on the other hand, from his very first step, refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is”
“But to kill men only leads to killing more men. To allow a principle to triumph, another principle must be overthrown”
“Those who love, friends or lovers, know that love is not only a blinding flash, but also a long and painful struggle in the darkness for the realization of definitive recognition and reconciliation. After all, if history is endowed with virtue to the extent that it gives proof of patience, real love is as patient as hatred”
There has been SO much political violence in just the last week. This book gave me some language to help mar through all the confusion.
Camus uses the figure of the “fastidious assassin”—drawn largely from Russian revolutionary terrorists—to describe those who kill for an idea yet insist on moral purity. They agonize over their act, impose strict limits on violence, and often accept their own death as the price of killing. In their minds, murder is justified only if it is restrained, targeted, and accompanied by personal sacrifice.
Camus’s point is double-edged:
What he admires: their refusal of indiscriminate slaughter; their insistence that violence must have limits; their willingness to die for what they do.
What he condemns: the belief that an abstract idea can ever justify killing a concrete human being.
The fastidious assassin kills reluctantly, under self-imposed limits, and often accepts his own death as the price of taking another’s life. Yet Camus insists that this posture is inherently unstable: once murder is justified in the name of an idea, restraint becomes a temporary fiction. Contemporary terrorism exemplifies the endpoint of this logic. Modern attackers rarely claim tragedy or personal sacrifice; instead, violence is framed as strategic, symbolic, or divinely sanctioned, and victims are reduced to anonymous instruments of a cause. What Camus foresaw is not merely an increase in brutality, but a qualitative shift—from killing accompanied by anguish to killing without moral remainder.
Terrorism, in this sense, represents the triumph of abstraction over humanity: an ideology so totalizing that it no longer recognizes the individual life it destroys. Camus’s critique remains urgent precisely because it exposes how political violence, once detached from personal responsibility, expands until the idea alone survives—and the human disappears.
What remains of the fastidious assassin is only the rhetoric of necessity; the anguish that once constrained violence has disappeared, leaving behind a politics in which human life is subordinated entirely to abstract causes.
He also deciphers between rebellion and revolution. Rebellion begins with a human refusal—an individual’s “no” to injustice that simultaneously affirms a shared dignity with others. It is grounded in limits, oriented toward the present, and committed to resisting oppression without sacrificing human life. Revolution, by contrast, emerges when this refusal is detached from moral restraint and subordinated to an abstract end such as history, the nation, or a promised future order. Once violence is justified in the name of that future, murder ceases to be tragic and becomes instrumental, systematic, and often legal. For Camus, this shift marks the moral collapse of rebellion itself: the moment justice is pursued through unlimited violence, the revolution no longer liberates but reproduces the very tyranny it claims to oppose.
Quotes:
“But as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in a doctrine, as soon as he makes his crime reasonable it multiplies like Reason herself and assumes all the figures of the syllogism”
“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees”
“If he prefers the risk of death to a denial of the rights that he defends, it is because he considers that the latter are more important than he is”
“According to Scheler, resentment always turns into either unscrupulous ambition or bitterness, depending on whether it flourishes in a weak mind or a strong one. But in both cases it is always a question of wanting to be something other than what one is. Resentment is always resentment against oneself. The rebel, on the other hand, from his very first step, refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is”
“But to kill men only leads to killing more men. To allow a principle to triumph, another principle must be overthrown”
“Those who love, friends or lovers, know that love is not only a blinding flash, but also a long and painful struggle in the darkness for the realization of definitive recognition and reconciliation. After all, if history is endowed with virtue to the extent that it gives proof of patience, real love is as patient as hatred”
August 27, 2025
Rebellion at grips with history adds that instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.
November 18, 2025
Interesting read, after reading 0utsider urged me to try another Camus book and it didnt dissapoint.
January 9, 2020
Do not let its diminutive size fool you: this is by far the most difficult book I have ever read. I had to read every paragraph at least 3 times to understand it. Some parts I still don't understand.
Because it was written in the late 40s/early 50s, I had to do a lot of research to fully get the context in which it was written. It refers to people and events that I had never heard of or knew very little about.
However, the pay-off makes it worth the struggle. There are so many brilliant ideas in this tiny book; I underlined so many sentences and wrote so many exclamation marks. I really feel like this will have a lasting influence on my thinking.
"Inversely, every form of contempt, if it intervenes in politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, Fascism."
"They did not know: nor did they know that the negation of everything is in itself a form of servitude and that real freedom is an inner submission to a value which defies history and its successes."
"But rebellion, in man, is the refusal to be treated as an object and to be reduced to simple historical terms. It is the affirmation of a nature common to all men, which eludes the world of power."
"The climax of every tragedy lies in the deafness of its heroes. (...) Dialogue on the level of mankind is less costly than the gospel preached by totalitarian régimes in the form of a monologue dictated from the top of a lonely mountain. On the stage as in reality, the monologue precedes death."
Because it was written in the late 40s/early 50s, I had to do a lot of research to fully get the context in which it was written. It refers to people and events that I had never heard of or knew very little about.
However, the pay-off makes it worth the struggle. There are so many brilliant ideas in this tiny book; I underlined so many sentences and wrote so many exclamation marks. I really feel like this will have a lasting influence on my thinking.
"Inversely, every form of contempt, if it intervenes in politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, Fascism."
"They did not know: nor did they know that the negation of everything is in itself a form of servitude and that real freedom is an inner submission to a value which defies history and its successes."
"But rebellion, in man, is the refusal to be treated as an object and to be reduced to simple historical terms. It is the affirmation of a nature common to all men, which eludes the world of power."
"The climax of every tragedy lies in the deafness of its heroes. (...) Dialogue on the level of mankind is less costly than the gospel preached by totalitarian régimes in the form of a monologue dictated from the top of a lonely mountain. On the stage as in reality, the monologue precedes death."
May 30, 2020
I found this book very insightful, much is packed in such few pages. At times it can be dense, especially if one (such as myself) is not well-versed in intricacies of the history of Russian revolution and its integral players. However, while there are parts that seem objectively dated (ex. "The spirit of revolt can only exist in a society where a theoretic equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of revolt, therefore, has no meaning outside our Occidental society.") most of the book felt relevant, especially within the context of a world that feels increasingly tumultuous. It certainly made me think of the concepts of revolution, rebellion, freedom, and justice in a new light.
July 23, 2024
“He who kills or tortures will only experience the shadow of victory: he will be unable to feel that he is innocent. Thus, he must create guilt in his victim so that…universal guilt will authorise no other course of action but the use of force and give its blessing to nothing but success”
Interesting but purely a thought exercise in parts, and would recommend only reading immediately after a strongly caffeinated drink
Interesting but purely a thought exercise in parts, and would recommend only reading immediately after a strongly caffeinated drink
May 31, 2017
The historical bits in it are interesting. But the purely philosophical and almost entirely subjective exploration of what rebellion and revolution means, and Camus' constant declaration of what is "for or against history" (without even explaining what he means by history) are very tiring. Some paragraphs are even incomprehensible if you cannot grasp his elusive train of thought.
December 22, 2023
what bitch reads “On Authority” once and immediately wants to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat? find jesus or whatever
(i have many thoughts but they are neither here nor there. i am camus-pilled, stalin was a bitch and nietzsche should’ve worried less about killing god and more about his god-awful moustache. so stalin should’ve too, actually. and trotsky. and hitler. hmm…)
(i have many thoughts but they are neither here nor there. i am camus-pilled, stalin was a bitch and nietzsche should’ve worried less about killing god and more about his god-awful moustache. so stalin should’ve too, actually. and trotsky. and hitler. hmm…)
September 8, 2024
This beautifully written book details the difference between rebellion and revolution, the historical origins of Russian Communism through nihilistic thought, and gives a sharp insight into the minds behind the philosophy.
November 16, 2017
I need to see this live.
December 23, 2025
“I rebel—therefore we exist”. I’m here, we also exist and as a group we will let our voices be heard! Reading this alongside “The Hunger Games” was not planned beforehand but went so well together since the “innocent” one’s are in a dilemma to murder in order to survive or change the world, ”…when crime puts on the apparel of innocence”.
What does total dictatorship look like? Well, we are living in a capitalistic version of it disguised as democracy in our current years. It is also similar to what “The Hunger Games” is all about, “One-tenth of humanity will have the right to individuality and will exercise unlimited authority over the other nine-tenth. The latter will lose their individuality and will become like a flock of sheep; compelled to passive obedience, they will be laid back to original innocence and, so to speak, to the primitive paradise where, nevertheless, they must work”.
The rebel cannot stay silent no more, accept despair and adapt to their unjust situation. Encountering authority beyond a limit where it infringes on human rights, they got to take a stance on this “…irrational coupled with unjust and incomprehensible condition”. The rebel has an opinion since they have realized that they can identify their situation and are not alone in their predicament. No longer compromise and submission; now it is “all or nothing”—freedom or death. They are awakened and ready to act unified with others on their common goal. Not just for them but for all. If they forget their original, noble purpose and find themselves narcissistically crowning an individual, it is a sign of tyranny. Rebellion is not just about a singular person’s suffering (absurdist experience) but a collective experience of suffering. This feeling of “strangeness” is shared with all. Thus, rebellion is the common ground and should remain as such for it to be meaningful. They dedicate themselves to the goal of creation so as to exist more and more completely rather than remain as a destructive force…They know they do not understand the world but do not fall into despair like nihilism does but instead pushes back to create their own meaning out of nothingness (absurdism)…
Metaphysical rebellion has a thing with God. Why, they ask, am I alone to die? Why should I die but not be immortal? I deserve to live. They cannot accept that they are mortal beings and are in frustrated agony. So, they defy the God, while not denying its existence. They want to be the dominant force in the world while feeling solitude. These people are usually the one’s who use philosophy to justify their reason for murder. Nihilism is their escape-goat. They deny everything that is not satisfaction of the self. If my ego is satisfied, I’m satisfied mindset. This world is strange, I’m a stranger in it and I have nothing to do with it—type of mindset that accepts murder. Hitler for instance, denies guilt for his fascist revolution. With irrational arrogance, terror and despair they do unthinkable actions that will deny human rights. They want to be remembered and sadly, they are, “…terror remains the shortest route to immortality”. Existence proven for all to read about, analyze and study. Moreover, It is interesting to compare “Fascisim” with “Russian communism”. While fascism liberated at least some to a privileged life, the latter liberated all by provisionally enslaving them all.
On the contrary, the rebel feels the burden of guilt after liberation. Since they know that killing should not be accepted as the norm, they believe in an equal exchange. A life for a life. Suicide for their crimes, “Thus the rebel can never find peace.he knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil”. Their evil is usually a sacrifice for better futures. Their evil haunts them and the only way for them to reach freedom after liberation is death…
Last but not least, who is the one who does not rebel? The one who is happy with reality. Usually the 1% rich people: the conformist, “He who has understood reality does not rebel against it but rejoices in it”. They are usually the one’s who allow themselves to be manipulated, brainwashed and dwell in ignorance for their pleasure to remain untainted. A good example would be “Effie” from “The Hunger Games”…
What does total dictatorship look like? Well, we are living in a capitalistic version of it disguised as democracy in our current years. It is also similar to what “The Hunger Games” is all about, “One-tenth of humanity will have the right to individuality and will exercise unlimited authority over the other nine-tenth. The latter will lose their individuality and will become like a flock of sheep; compelled to passive obedience, they will be laid back to original innocence and, so to speak, to the primitive paradise where, nevertheless, they must work”.
The rebel cannot stay silent no more, accept despair and adapt to their unjust situation. Encountering authority beyond a limit where it infringes on human rights, they got to take a stance on this “…irrational coupled with unjust and incomprehensible condition”. The rebel has an opinion since they have realized that they can identify their situation and are not alone in their predicament. No longer compromise and submission; now it is “all or nothing”—freedom or death. They are awakened and ready to act unified with others on their common goal. Not just for them but for all. If they forget their original, noble purpose and find themselves narcissistically crowning an individual, it is a sign of tyranny. Rebellion is not just about a singular person’s suffering (absurdist experience) but a collective experience of suffering. This feeling of “strangeness” is shared with all. Thus, rebellion is the common ground and should remain as such for it to be meaningful. They dedicate themselves to the goal of creation so as to exist more and more completely rather than remain as a destructive force…They know they do not understand the world but do not fall into despair like nihilism does but instead pushes back to create their own meaning out of nothingness (absurdism)…
Metaphysical rebellion has a thing with God. Why, they ask, am I alone to die? Why should I die but not be immortal? I deserve to live. They cannot accept that they are mortal beings and are in frustrated agony. So, they defy the God, while not denying its existence. They want to be the dominant force in the world while feeling solitude. These people are usually the one’s who use philosophy to justify their reason for murder. Nihilism is their escape-goat. They deny everything that is not satisfaction of the self. If my ego is satisfied, I’m satisfied mindset. This world is strange, I’m a stranger in it and I have nothing to do with it—type of mindset that accepts murder. Hitler for instance, denies guilt for his fascist revolution. With irrational arrogance, terror and despair they do unthinkable actions that will deny human rights. They want to be remembered and sadly, they are, “…terror remains the shortest route to immortality”. Existence proven for all to read about, analyze and study. Moreover, It is interesting to compare “Fascisim” with “Russian communism”. While fascism liberated at least some to a privileged life, the latter liberated all by provisionally enslaving them all.
On the contrary, the rebel feels the burden of guilt after liberation. Since they know that killing should not be accepted as the norm, they believe in an equal exchange. A life for a life. Suicide for their crimes, “Thus the rebel can never find peace.he knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil”. Their evil is usually a sacrifice for better futures. Their evil haunts them and the only way for them to reach freedom after liberation is death…
Last but not least, who is the one who does not rebel? The one who is happy with reality. Usually the 1% rich people: the conformist, “He who has understood reality does not rebel against it but rejoices in it”. They are usually the one’s who allow themselves to be manipulated, brainwashed and dwell in ignorance for their pleasure to remain untainted. A good example would be “Effie” from “The Hunger Games”…
August 16, 2025
A small, dense, and engaging volume. No idea why I have not heard of this before. Much shorter than the 'Mythos' but possibly more compelling still.
February 26, 2016
I've not read "L'Homme révolté", from which this essay is taken, for about 30 years. In that time, the pseudohistorical, pseudorationalist totalitarianism of Soviet Communism, which looms darkly in the background of Camus' argument against the inhumanity of all-encompassing revolutionary systems, has disappeared, to be replaced by a more consciously atavistic, but no less inhumane enemy of liberalism and the Rights of Man, political Islam.
It is a huge tribute to this clearest, and least dogmatic, of thinkers, that his thesis holds up as well now in times of religious obscurantism and kneejerk repressive reaction as it did during the ideological standoff of 1951, when it was first published. As a voice crying in the intellectual wilderness at that time, when so many of his fellow Leftists were prepared to make convoluted ideological excuses for the intrinsically murderous Communist worldview, Camus still speaks to a modern age in which the same wilful blindness has struck many of their successors in respect of Islamism.
That he does so not through polemic but in a cool, tightly-argued philosophical essay which examines the claims of totalitarianism from first principles and acknowledges the intentions of its propagators in their own terms, before showing up their stark and sinister contradictions, is remarkable. I would recommend this little book to anyone who claims that political ends can in any circumstances negate the means of attaining them.
It is a huge tribute to this clearest, and least dogmatic, of thinkers, that his thesis holds up as well now in times of religious obscurantism and kneejerk repressive reaction as it did during the ideological standoff of 1951, when it was first published. As a voice crying in the intellectual wilderness at that time, when so many of his fellow Leftists were prepared to make convoluted ideological excuses for the intrinsically murderous Communist worldview, Camus still speaks to a modern age in which the same wilful blindness has struck many of their successors in respect of Islamism.
That he does so not through polemic but in a cool, tightly-argued philosophical essay which examines the claims of totalitarianism from first principles and acknowledges the intentions of its propagators in their own terms, before showing up their stark and sinister contradictions, is remarkable. I would recommend this little book to anyone who claims that political ends can in any circumstances negate the means of attaining them.
September 25, 2020
Camus is truly an interesting writer and philosopher. While I can't bring myself to agree with his premise that to "rebel, [is to] therefore... exist", I can understand his point. The act of rebellion is an act of sacrifice, and in that, to sacrifice yourself is to give yourself up in the name of a greater ideal or the greater community. In this, to rebel is to prove that you exist in the world. I would be a lot more skeptical of this claim had it not been for the compelling stories Camus provides detailing the history of rebels in pre-revolutionary Russia and their relationship to the state.
While I can't say I am too enchanted by this work, it is still a great read. Camus has a way with words and his ability to relate history to philosophy is impressive. I also like how nested in this philosophical text is a warning against the absurdities of nihilism. I never thought of characterizing the Nazi's or Mussolini's Italy as nihilist. That connection now seems unavoidable.
While I can't say I am too enchanted by this work, it is still a great read. Camus has a way with words and his ability to relate history to philosophy is impressive. I also like how nested in this philosophical text is a warning against the absurdities of nihilism. I never thought of characterizing the Nazi's or Mussolini's Italy as nihilist. That connection now seems unavoidable.
June 11, 2024
The Just Assassins (as my version is called) is a play that takes place in Russia and focuses on a group of revolutionaries who are plotting to kill the Grand Duke. They plan to throw a bomb at him on his way to the theater. Their plan gets delayed when they realize there will be children with him (though one of the characters seems to not care about that and wants to go through with it anyway. A few days later the plan does come to fruition and then we see the main assailant in prison where the Grand Duchess comes to visit him. The story ends back with the group discussing their friend's demise/debating if he really spoke to the duchess in order to get a pardon. I think this was probably the best of the plays in this collection (I did skip out on State of Siege...read a bit of it but found myself bored so decided not to bother with it). It was interesting and also interesting that this is based on real historical events.
Grade: B-
Grade: B-
September 30, 2024
this ws a toss up between a 2 and 3 star, it was pretty boring but some bits were really good. it was interesting in the way camus philosophy normall is, he takes a subject you have basic thoughts about and explains explicitly the logical consequences of those thoughts so you believe you cant believe anything other than what he says without being evil or irrational or both. my only qualms with camus philosophy books is i cant always tell when he speaks literally or metaphorically, making it hard to standardise and formulate his arguments in my head because i dont know which parts he means metaphorically so doesnt work well as a logical argument because sometimes he just... be sayin shit?? either way i love my babes and love how much of a little rebel he is what a king!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 11, 2023
this book was one of if not the best one ive ever read, camus’ ideas and the philosophical questions he puts out are extremely amusing and interesting. everyone was written in the most precise and staggering way(which isn’t surprising for camus) and i think no one could have portrayed this real/true situation better.
the interactions, the different ideas clashing - i dont think there was one thing i didn’t like about this book, pls pls take time out of your day/week to read this, it opens your eyes on the difference between an idea and a person(killing someone or killing an idea, a good question the book puts out) love camus and his work truthfully
the interactions, the different ideas clashing - i dont think there was one thing i didn’t like about this book, pls pls take time out of your day/week to read this, it opens your eyes on the difference between an idea and a person(killing someone or killing an idea, a good question the book puts out) love camus and his work truthfully
May 12, 2020
How bizarre to advertise this as a 'critique of communism and how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain'!
No wonder people don't find their way to this. Philosophy is beyond me, but this is a clear companion piece to The Stranger.
I don't know anything about existentialism, and this didn't help much. Half the time I don't know what it's all about. But oh well I know now that Camus didn't like nihilism, which is something.
'To conquer existence, we must start from the small amount of existence which we find in ourselves and not deny it from the beginning.'
No wonder people don't find their way to this. Philosophy is beyond me, but this is a clear companion piece to The Stranger.
I don't know anything about existentialism, and this didn't help much. Half the time I don't know what it's all about. But oh well I know now that Camus didn't like nihilism, which is something.
'To conquer existence, we must start from the small amount of existence which we find in ourselves and not deny it from the beginning.'
September 19, 2023
Extracts from The Rebel. Thought I would broaden my literary horizon by reading more essays, this also being one of my favourite authors. Realized very early that I have no interest in the subject at all which instantly kills any potential enjoyment in essay reading.
Also very much a relevant subject of it’s time, maybe not as much now. Important to note that I didn’t really fully attempt to read this thoroughly. However found some parts and insights rather interesting, just not very moving or inspiring personally.
Also very much a relevant subject of it’s time, maybe not as much now. Important to note that I didn’t really fully attempt to read this thoroughly. However found some parts and insights rather interesting, just not very moving or inspiring personally.
September 24, 2023
A great philosophical take on revolutions as sanctified mass murder. The author focusses on the difference between rebellion and murder; "rebellions kills men, revolutions kill men and ideas". In it, Albert Camus is in favour of reformation (rebellion) rather than revolutions which usher in more authiritarianism than the deposed system.
August 14, 2024
“I rebel, therefore we exist.”
Excellent read, focusing on various historical events from Russian revolution to communism and World war II, Camus discusses about rebellion and revolution.
The book is a abridged version of 'The Rebel' so I'll be probably reading that one to have a better understanding but nevertheless this was a great read.
Excellent read, focusing on various historical events from Russian revolution to communism and World war II, Camus discusses about rebellion and revolution.
The book is a abridged version of 'The Rebel' so I'll be probably reading that one to have a better understanding but nevertheless this was a great read.
April 7, 2016
Fantastic book
"Instead of saying, with Hegel and Marx, that all is necessary, [rebellion] only repeats that all is possible and that, at a certain point, on the farthest frontier, it is worth making the supreme sacrifice for the sake of the possible."
"Instead of saying, with Hegel and Marx, that all is necessary, [rebellion] only repeats that all is possible and that, at a certain point, on the farthest frontier, it is worth making the supreme sacrifice for the sake of the possible."
March 3, 2021
Very confusing. The blurb, as so often, is bullshit. The reviews appear to be for 2 different books, one a play and the one I read, an essay. And then I found the writing so dense, and the concepts beyond my understanding.
August 2, 2011
Camus argues that communism had not really worked out in Soviet Russia: no shit Sherlock!
January 5, 2018
začína to sľubne, ale keď začne do hĺbky analyzovať ruských revoluciinárov 19. storočia, trošku ma stráca. ale to je viac moja chyba ako jeho. interesting read anyway.
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