Man is the only creature who refuses to be what is Albert Camus'

"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is" means, according to the writer and philosopher Albert camus (Algeria, 1913 - France, 1960) that man through a contradictory logic of denial and nihilism has reached the absurd to accept murders considering them fatalistic and inevitable.

In the introduction to the essay The rebellious man written in 1951, there is the phrase “man is the only creature who refuses to be what what is ”as a conclusion to the relationship and the role played by human absurdity and revolt or rebellion.

In the previous essay called The myth of Sisyphus, Camus discusses the issue of living or not living taking into account the implications of suicide and in The rebellious man discuss the issue of tolerate or endure; or not tolerate or not endure; taking into account the implications of the act of rebellion: the rebellion.

Essay The rebellious man is considered a philosophical treatise on aman in revolt, as the essay is subtitled. According to Camus, the revolt of man in society grows when knowledge of him is censored and he is incited to murder or to consent to murders.

Camus exemplifies his theories of rebellion with historical phenomena from before World War II to contemporary movements such as surrealism creating a continuity of the behavior of the revolt in the masses.

Phrase analysis

The relationship between the concepts of absurd and of the revolt And later rebellion in a society it must be understood according to the philosophical exercise of Albert Camus.

The absurd person or the absurd accept that logic is more important than scruples that are considered illusory. The logic of the absurd is already incongruous by definition, such as the dichotomy of the condemnation of suicide and the acceptance of murder.

One of the reasons for the absurdity is what Camus calls existential opposition, that is, the conflict between the human desire for order and for the purpose of life and the emptiness, indifference and silence of the Universe.

The three philosophical options that exist for the absurd are:

• physical suicide: which is considered a cowardly act because it is not considered a real revolt.
• philosophical suicide: it is the creation of a world devoid of meaning and consolation beyond the absurd.
• the acceptance of the absurd: it is the dignity of fighting in a battle that you know you cannot win and is considered a true heroism.

In the face of absurdity and injustice, man is born with the genuinely human impulse to reject the acceptance of his own existence in search of a new way of remaking and change the world.

This impulse is called revolt. Revolt is considered one of the essential dimensions of humanity and has always existed. The individual revolt becomes a group rebellion.

In the era of ideologies that we live in, the rebellion becomes metaphysical, that is, abstract and speculative losing itself in the "deification of man to be able to transform and unify the world "ignoring the historical fact that any massive or widespread transformation of society it is necessarily violent.

In this context, Camus prefers the attitude of rebellion against the acceptance of the absurd for the sole fact that it at least gives a clear direction of violence rather than denial and nihilism of the absurd regarding deaths as inevitable and 'ignorable' because "man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is".