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Elham's Reviews > The Rebel
The Rebel
by
by
The Rebel is the longest and at some points most difficult essay I’ve ever read. I think the title of the book itself is enough attractive for both Camus fans and other readers to choose this book.
But who is a rebel?!
A rebel is someone who says no � to a master. He was a slave, a labor, perhaps a mechanical iron man built by bolts and nuts who did whatever he was said to do. But the moment he rises and rebels he feels the stream of blood in his veins. He feels he’s alive. Despite this alive and fresh change, in order to move ahead, he needs to � kill.
Atrocities have two reasons: love and philosophy. Heathcliff could kill anybody without bothering himself to ask why he killed. He was in love. But once came a day when people killed because they thought they had a rational philosophy for it. They killed because they believed in freedom, peace, equality, a country with no social class. At this point the truth was twisted. Where were they going? Nobody knew.
In 19th century human beings killed God. They proved that there wasn’t any God for real in anytime. Nihilists rode their horses. A true nihilist killed himself a real one killed others. Now that there wasn’t any God, and any purpose to living for, men tried to create their own rules.
In this book only the non-religious rebellion was discussed, however we can have rebellion based on religion. The ideologies are different but I think they have so many similarities with each other; both believe in future, both believe in universality, and both of them kill.
This book was written 60 years ago, but one can see that the idea is still new.
But who is a rebel?!
A rebel is someone who says no � to a master. He was a slave, a labor, perhaps a mechanical iron man built by bolts and nuts who did whatever he was said to do. But the moment he rises and rebels he feels the stream of blood in his veins. He feels he’s alive. Despite this alive and fresh change, in order to move ahead, he needs to � kill.
Atrocities have two reasons: love and philosophy. Heathcliff could kill anybody without bothering himself to ask why he killed. He was in love. But once came a day when people killed because they thought they had a rational philosophy for it. They killed because they believed in freedom, peace, equality, a country with no social class. At this point the truth was twisted. Where were they going? Nobody knew.
In 19th century human beings killed God. They proved that there wasn’t any God for real in anytime. Nihilists rode their horses. A true nihilist killed himself a real one killed others. Now that there wasn’t any God, and any purpose to living for, men tried to create their own rules.
In this book only the non-religious rebellion was discussed, however we can have rebellion based on religion. The ideologies are different but I think they have so many similarities with each other; both believe in future, both believe in universality, and both of them kill.
This book was written 60 years ago, but one can see that the idea is still new.
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Reading Progress
February 22, 2016
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Started Reading
February 22, 2016
– Shelved
February 22, 2016
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0.0%
"There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined. But the Penal Code makes the convenient distinction of premeditation. We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and they have a perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any"
February 22, 2016
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0.0%
"One might think that a period which, in a space of fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings should be condemned out of hand. But its culpability must still be understood. In more ingenuous times, when the tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets,"
February 23, 2016
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7.0%
"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. The problem is to know whether this refusal can only lead to the destruction of himself and of others, whether all rebellion must end in the justification of universal murder, or whether, on the contrary, without laying claim to an innocence that is impossible, it can discover the principle of reasonable culpability."
February 28, 2016
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11.0%
"Only when this strategic retreat has been accomplished does Epicurus, like a god among men, celebrate his victory with a song that clearly denotes the defensive aspect of his rebellion. "I have escaped your ambush, O destiny, I have closed all paths by which you might assail me. We shall not be conquered either by you or by any other evil power. And when the inevitable hour of departure strikes, our scorn for"
February 29, 2016
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15.0%
"Sade denies God in the name of nature—the ideological concepts of his time presented it in mechanistic form—and he makes nature a power bent on destruction. For him, nature is sex; his logic leads him to a lawless universe where the only master is the inordinate energy of desire."
March 1, 2016
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17.0%
"Two centuries ahead of time and on a reduced scale, Sade extolled totalitarian societies in the name of unbridled freedom—which, in reality, rebellion does not demand. The history and the tragedy of our times really begin with him. He only believed that a society founded on freedom of crime must coincide with freedom of morals, as though servitude had its limits. Our times have limited themselves to blending,"
March 5, 2016
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20.0%
"The romantic hero, therefore, considers himself compelled to do evil by his nostalgia for an unrealizable good. Satan rises against his Creator because the latter employed force to subjugate him. "Whom reason hath equal'd," says Milton's Satan, "force hath made supreme above his equals." Divine violence is thus explicitly condemned. The rebel flees from this aggressive and unworthy God, "Farthest from him is"
March 6, 2016
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20.0%
""Everything in this world exudes crime," says Baudelaire, "the newspaper, the walls, and the face of man." Nevertheless crime, which is the law of nature, singularly fails to appear distinguished."
March 14, 2016
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23.0%
"The man who is prevented by the suffering of children from accepting faith will certainly not accept eternal life. Under these conditions, even if eternal life existed, Ivan would refuse it. He rejects this bargain. He would accept grace only unconditionally, and that is why he makes his own conditions. Rebellion wants all or nothing. "All the knowledge in the world is not worth a child's tears.""
March 15, 2016
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25.0%
"Christ, for Nietzsche as for Tolstoy, is not a rebel. The essence of His doctrine is summed up in total consent and in nonresistance to evil. Thou shalt not kill, even to prevent killing. The world must be accepted as it is, nothing must be added to its unhappiness, but you must consent to suffer personally from the evil it contains."
March 18, 2016
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38.0%
"Man, on an earth that he knows is henceforth solitary, is going to add, to irrational crimes, the crimes of reason that are bent on the triumph of man. To the "I rebel, therefore we exist," he adds, with prodigious plans in mind which even include the death of rebellion: "And we are alone.""
March 19, 2016
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50.0%
"Pisarev, the theoretician of Russian nihilism, declares that the greatest fanatics are children and adolescents. That is also true of nations. Russia, at this period, is a adolescent nation, delivered with forceps, barely a century ago, by a Czar who was still ingenuous enough to cut off the heads of rebels himself. It is not astonishing that she should have pushed Germanic ideology to"
March 19, 2016
– Shelved as:
france
March 19, 2016
– Shelved as:
camus
March 19, 2016
– Shelved as:
essay
March 26, 2016
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55.0%
"He not only gave dissertations on universal destruction; his originality lay in coldly claiming, for those who dedicate themselves to the revolution, an "Everything is permitted" and in actually permitting himself everything. "The revolutionary is a man condemned in advance. He must have neither romantic relationships nor objects to engage his feelings. He should even cast off his own name. Every part of him"
April 10, 2016
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70.0%
"[In defense of Marx before investigating his failure:]
It has undoubtedly been correct to emphasize the ethical demands that form the basis of the Marxist dream. It must, in all fairness, be said, before examining the check to Marxism, that in them lies the real greatness of Marx.
The very core of his theory was that work is profoundly dignified and unjustly despised. He rebelled against the degradation of work..."
It has undoubtedly been correct to emphasize the ethical demands that form the basis of the Marxist dream. It must, in all fairness, be said, before examining the check to Marxism, that in them lies the real greatness of Marx.
The very core of his theory was that work is profoundly dignified and unjustly despised. He rebelled against the degradation of work..."
April 16, 2016
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75.0%
"How to live without grace—that is the question that dominates the nineteenth century. "By justice," answered all those who did not want to accept absolute nihilism. To the people who despaired of the kingdom of heaven, they promised the kingdom of men. The preaching of the City of Humanity increased in fervor up to the end of the nineteenth century, when it became really visionary in tone and placed scientific certai"
April 16, 2016
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77.0%
"From now on, the doctrine is definitively identified with the prophecy. For the sake of justice in the far-away future, it authorizes injustice throughout the entire course of history and becomes the type of mystification... It contrives the acceptance of injustice, crime, and falsehood by the promise of a miracle. Still greater production, still more power, uninterrupted labor, incessant suffering, permanent war, .."
April 16, 2016
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80.0%
"It has not sufficed for Marxism to deny or to silence the things in the history of the world which cannot be assimilated by its doctrine, or to reject the discoveries of modern science. It has also had to rewrite history, even the most recent and the best-known, even the history of the party and of the Revolution. Year by year, sometimes month by month, Pravda corrects itself, and rewritten editions of the off"
April 17, 2016
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83.0%
"...let us only note that to the "I rebel, therefore we exist" and the "We are alone" of metaphysical rebellion, 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.
[End of part iii, Historical Rebellion]"
[End of part iii, Historical Rebellion]"
April 17, 2016
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85.0%
"[Part 4, Rebellion and Art]
Pisarev proclaims the deposition of aesthetic values, in favor of pragmatic values. "I would rather be a Russian shoemaker than a Russian Raphael." A pair of shoes, in his eyes, is more useful than Shakespeare. The nihilist Nekrassov, a great and moving poet, nevertheless affirms that he prefers a piece of cheese to all of Pushkin."
Pisarev proclaims the deposition of aesthetic values, in favor of pragmatic values. "I would rather be a Russian shoemaker than a Russian Raphael." A pair of shoes, in his eyes, is more useful than Shakespeare. The nihilist Nekrassov, a great and moving poet, nevertheless affirms that he prefers a piece of cheese to all of Pushkin."
April 19, 2016
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98.0%
"Kaliayev, and his brothers throughout the entire world, refuse, on the contrary, to be deified in that they refuse the unlimited power to inflict death. They choose, and give us as an example the only original rule of life today:
To learn to live and to die, and, in order to be a man, to refuse to be a god."
To learn to live and to die, and, in order to be a man, to refuse to be a god."
April 19, 2016
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100.0%
"At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent furies. The bow bends; thewood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leapinto flight."
April 19, 2016
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Finished Reading
March 16, 2021
– Shelved as:
non-fiction
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به معرفی شما من شروع کردم به خوندم. ممنون.
Mahdi wrote: "به معرفی شما من شروع کردم به خوندم. ممنون."خواهش می کنم. منم خیلی از کتابایی که شما اد می کنید رو دوست دارم بخونم به زودی.
منتظر نظرات شما در مورد این کتاب هستم.
من هم منتظرم ریویوی شما رو بخونم.
Mahdi wrote: "خیلی خیلی ممنون بابت ریویو."خواهش می کنم آقا مهدی.
متشکرم که خوندید .
منتظر نظرات شما راجع به کتاب هستم.
حقيقتش من به خاطر ترجمه ى بد اون رو نيمه رها كردم، به رغم جذابيت مباحثش. ببينم يه ترجمه ى بهتر گيرم مياد.
Mahdi wrote: "حقيقتش من به خاطر ترجمه ى بد اون رو نيمه رها كردم، به رغم جذابيت مباحثش. ببينم يه ترجمه ى بهتر گيرم مياد."چه بد....حیف شد...
این ترجمه ای که من خوندم بد نبود به نظرم...
البته سبک خود کامو برای من سخت بود ولی به خاطر جذابیت و جدیدی مطلبش هر جوری بود تمومش کردم...
شايد ترجمه ى من هم بد نبود، و اون طور كه فرموديد خود متن ثقيل بوده، و خب چون ايام امتحاناته، وقت نمى كردم به قدر كافى تأمل كنم روى عبارت ها. نميدونم.
به نظرم بعضی جاها کامو خیلی مطلب رو پیچونده بود...نمی شه گفت زبانش کاملا علمی بود- ادبی هم بود یه جورایی یه اثر هنری. من با افسانه سیزیف هم همین مشکل رو داشتم. یادمه چند وقت پیش که یه زندگی نامه کوتاه از کامو می خوندم ، نویسنده گفته بود که کامو حتی مقالات روزنامه هاشو هم به یه سبک خاصی می نوشته که اگه حتی مقاله رو بدون اسم هم منتشر می کرده همه متوجه می شدند که نویسندش کی بوده .
همين بوده پس يحتمل... پس بايد دوباره برگردم بخونم.
ممنون، ممنون.
به نظر من ارزش داره آدم فرانسوی باد بگیره فقط برای اینکه آثار کامو رو به زبان اصلیش بخونه.خواهش می کنم
İ
Thank you very much, Jibran!
amazing review Elham i enjoyed reading your philosophical reviewi wonder if Camus has read any of Nietzsche Books
This is a great book, but it is extremely challenging, and will make you think in between your thoughts
I realize I never thanked you properly for drawing my attention to the book, so thank you Elham :))
P.E. wrote: "I realize I never thanked you properly for drawing my attention to the book, so thank you Elham :))"My keen pleasure Pierre! And thank you for reading it. I think it's a time we need to read Camus more than ever.
I look forward to read your thoughts on this book!
By the way, I obviously agree concerning the relevance of the issues tackled by Camus nowadays. There is no gainsaying that!
P.E. wrote: "Hey, here they are, Elham ;)L'Homme révolté"
Hii, Pierre! Oh, you have already read it! :D actually I was thinking of inviting you to a mutual reading- if you ever wanted a fellow slow companion reader :)) This book was heavy for me at the time I was reading it so a rereading is needed.
I have bookmarked your review to read it in a better time.
P.E. wrote: "By the way, I obviously agree concerning the relevance of the issues tackled by Camus nowadays. There is no gainsaying that!"Yeah, some books really doesn't (and will not) have expiration..
It really was! But it's worth it.
Wow, you read it in your seventeen??!!!!! You were really so smart and genius to read such book in that early age! (That time I only could read "Little Prince" :)) I agree, it's a very impressive book!