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Albert Camus‘ approach to rebellion makes an ethical proposal about the search for answers to the reality failures of which we are all victims. Our lives are contingent, which implies that we have a margin of choice towards our future, but not total freedom. This brief essay seeks to address and deepen the ethical proposal made by Camus from his concept of rebellion, in addition to the work done by Joan-Carles Mèlich. Thus, the rebellion is understood as an ethical stance that reacts not only to personal suffering. Rebellion is seen as a collective act that opens the possibility of imagining and constructing alternative futures.
The gashes of existence are a common point for every person who has rounded the world, they are a sign of our finitude, we are beings who are made up of a tense relationship between presence and absence. Albert Camus said it well: “To breathe is to judge“[1]. Our actions in front of the events that occur every day are a position to the condition of existing, from discomfort to indifference—or blind acceptance—and everything that happens in between, there is no neutral vision. Existing is a condition that becomes distressing, but it is always accompanied by decision. Whether it is the loss of a loved one, a traffic accident, a broken heart, a medical emergency, an injustice, or any event that dislocates our daily lives; life—sometimes—seems meaningless, tempting us to deny and forget the contingency that surrounds our lives. This is why I propose to explore the question of contingency from the reflections of Albert Camus, specifically using his approach to rebellion: that moment when we can gather air in our lungs, and we say: no.
Within the absurd relationship that is generated between human questioning and the unreasonable silence of the world, talking repairs. The act of enunciating occurs when the awakened conscience pronounces no in the face of a given condition—a failure of reality, a moment in which there is a longing to think of the ‘would have’ as a real possibility—and shows a person’s rebellious condition that is attached to a sense of collectivity, because:
The first progress of a spirit invaded by strangeness is then to recognize that it shares this strangeness with all men [all people] and that human reality, in its totality, suffers from this distance in relation to itself and to the world (Camus, 2015, p. 45).
Suffering as a common characteristic of humanity had already been discussed by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, when he defines myth as nothing more than a profound exploration of human pain: “It is not the fable that amuses and blinds, but the earthly face, gesture and drama where a difficult wisdom and a passion without tomorrow are summed up”[2]. The tear as a common ground and a starting point. If there is one thing we cannot deny, it is suffering. Just look at the front pages of newspapers or the trends on social networks, those are spaces full of narratives about human life that prove endless pain in their sources. The matter is in the way of standing oneself to the world, not in search of meaning, but of value.
Camus’ rebellion is based on a collective proposal that is born of solidarity, the rebel is taken out of his solitude when he seeks to act in consequence of what he defends for himself, and therefore for the other. Rebellion can arise from a reaction to the injustices that are committed against those who are in front of ourselves. “I rebel, then we are“[3], wrote Camus. This attitude that seems to derive from a metaphysical rebellion—one that denies a given condition and at the same time accepts itself—is a search for a different existence, however: “rebellion is not realistic“[4].
We live in an illogical and irrational world that takes us on its course, and the freedom we have is always limited and never total. Perhaps it is false to say that life is a perpetual choice, but it is true that one cannot imagine a life constrained of any choice[5]. The preceding sentence raises the problem of existential freedom: we have the capacity to choose, but we cannot choose everything; and even so, we must take responsibility for our actions. That is why the attitude of the rebel is an ethical approach, since within the contingency of our lives there can be the longing for the different, for possibility. The word rebel—the one that seeks to vindicate reason—is a request for justification, the search for an explanation that challenges a silent world, an ethical word.
The condition of the supportive and unrealistic rebel is a position full of sensitivity. Joan Charles Michel (2013) states that the ethical situation emerges due to the ambiguity of our lives, he writes: “Ethics exists because there is a tension (always impossible to resolve) between the world and life, that is, between what we are and what we desire, between reality and desire”[6]. Ethics exists precisely because we never know for sure what we should do, but we react to the slashes of life in search of an explanation and hope for a different future. Ethics exist because there are possibilities. Camus states: There is no freedom, except in a world where what is possible is defined at the same time as what is not[7].
If we have a life framed by possibility, why not get rebellious in search of one life where fatalities can be avoided? This is the ethical sense that I find in Camus’ proposal which, for me, seems to be similar to Mèlich’s conception of the ethical situation; which is originated from compassion as a response to the suffering of others, to pain. Whoever acts ethically, for Mèlich, does not do so because he must, he acts and appeals to his feelings. This is why he says that living ethically is: To be aware of the suffering of the other […] is to never fully know how to live […] it is to be exposed, and to dare to respond to the other[8].
I think of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo[9] and the relatives of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa[10] that resonate because of their opposition to events that could have been avoided. The word appeals to the reason and to look for a motivation, refusing to live on one’s knees. In his Nonconformist Manifesto[11], Óscar de la Borbolla writes:
We know that any attempt at rebellion is useless and suicidal, but we are moved by one certainty: the certainty that reason assists us [...] It doesn't matter that society is asleep. The number of traitors to the cause does not matter. It does not matter the magnitude of the extermination to which we may be subjected. There is something that is incorruptible: the strength of an avant-garde convinced that the future will have to be different, that the future sooner or later will be ours.
Within the rebellion proposed by Camus, believing in our objections is part of the actions that allow a future full of possibilities: looking for the objections, fighting for them, imagining them, and building them is what a rebellious person does, that is the ethical attitude to resists the fatalities of the world through solidarity.
Notes
[1] Camus, A. (2019). El mito de Sísifo. Editores Mexicanos Unidos. p. 28.
[2] Camus, A. (2019). El mito de Sísifo. Editores Mexicanos Unidos. p. 96.
[3] Camus, A. (2015). El hombre rebelde. Mirlo Pocket. p. 45.
[4] Camus, A. (2015). El hombre rebelde. Mirlo Pocket. p. 39.
[5] Camus, A. (2015). El hombre rebelde. Mirlo Pocket. p. 18.
[6] Mèlich, J. (2010). Ética de la compasión. Herder. p. 63.
[7] Camus, A. (2015). El hombre rebelde. Mirlo Pocket. p. 116.
[8] Camus, A. (2015). El hombre rebelde. Mirlo Pocket. p. 66.
[9] Hernández, M. (2024, 21 de marzo). Historia de un pañuelo: la lucha de las Madres Plaza de Mayo por los desaparecidos argentinos. AP News. https://apnews.com/world-news/general-news-3c114de017c57d1a7b1b48ca87e8dcaf
[10] Expansión Política (2023, 28 de septiembre) ¿Qué pasó en Ayotzinapa? De la “verdad histórica” a la nueva investigación. https://politica.expansion.mx/mexico/2023/09/26/que-paso-en-ayotzinapa-resumen
[11] De La Borbolla, Ó. (2010). Filosofía para inconformes. De Bolsillo. p.117.
Translated by Lina María Salazar
José María Urrutia Reyes
José María Urrutia Reyes is Mexican. He holds a Bachelor degree in Communication and Journalism, and a Master of Arts in Applied Contemporary Philosophy. He is a writer, workshop facilitator and researcher.
