Relation to oneself· Adversity

Revolt

Axis: Relation to the past — Faced with what has happened and cannot be changed, should we embrace it or rebel against it?

To consent to everything that has happened is to risk blessing injustice and evil as well. Human dignity demands that we maintain our refusal: acknowledging what was without ever endorsing it, and drawing from this revolt the strength to act.

Who holds this position

Philosophers 1

Camusexplicit

The slave who says no to his master refuses more than an order: by drawing the line he will no longer let be crossed, he asserts that something in him is worth defending, and worth it for all. Camus draws from this gesture a decisive argument: the rebel's no reveals a value exceeding the individual, so that carries us from the solitary acknowledgment of the absurd to a solidarity, as the cogito carried Descartes from doubt to certainty. The refusal of what humiliates, not consent to the given, thus becomes the principle of a worthy existence, and the immanent ground of a morality without God.

The Rebel (1951)

Foundations and implications

↑ What grounds it

A leaf — an application that grounds nothing further here.

↑ What grounds it

Tonality of reality

If the world is neither rational nor benevolent, if suffering and meaninglessness lie at the heart of the real, lucidity refuses both suicide and consoling hope. Tragic thought then grounds an attitude of revolt, which keeps the tension of living alive without resignation, as in Camus.

↓ What it implies

A leaf — an application that grounds nothing further here.