The Rebel
Albert Camus · 1951 CE
Excerpt
“Camus argues that true rebellion commits itself to the future instead of simply denying the present. (paraphrase of the 1951 book)”
Why the atlas keeps it
Camus argues that rebellion commits itself to the future rather than denying the present, and that revolutions that stop at negation produce a new orthodoxy. The final section's account of rebellion without a cause is the bleakest thing he wrote, and it is the part anyone deploying a revolt should read first. The excerpt below paraphrases the argument rather than quoting the 1951 book.
Terms this text reaches for
Ranked by the codex search index against the summary above, not hand-picked.
Fallibilism
philosophyThe view that our beliefs are revisable and that confidence is never final.
Absurdism
philosophyThe confrontation between the demand for meaning and a universe that supplies none.
Speciesism
ethicsTreating an entity's species membership as the reason for its moral consideration.
Structural transition
alignmentA change in the structure of society, economy or state that recurs across many very different causes.
Deontology
ethicsDuty-first ethics: some things are wrong regardless of the totals they produce.
Outer alignment
alignmentMaking sure the training objective itself encodes what was actually intended.