“What is a
rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He
is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first gesture of
rebellion.”
…
“Meanwhile,
we can sum up the initial progress that the spirit of rebellion provokes in a
mind that is originally imbued with the absurdity and apparent sterility of the
world. In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. But from the moment
when a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience.
Therefore the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness
of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men
and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which
separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single man
becomes a mass plague. In our daily trials rebellion plays the same role as
does the ‘cogito’ in the realm of thought: it is the first piece of evidence.
But this evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first
value on the whole human race. I rebel—therefore we exist.”
(Albert
Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in
Revolt. Trans. Anthony Bower)
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