The angry man

The Rebel is an essay by one of the most important and representative authors of the 20th century and Nobel Prize winner for Literature.

Albert Camus's works generally emphasize two concepts: the absurd and revolt. In *The Rebel* , the author raises several philosophical questions. He advocates for human freedom and individual dignity and opposes communism, totalitarian regimes, and terrorism, as they incite human revolt, murder, and oppression. Much more than an essay, it is a work against state crimes, particularly those committed during the Stalinist regime. According to Camus, no crime can be justified in the name of history. The author reveals his entire rebellious personality, striving to overcome obstacles and find a path forward, as he finished writing the book a few years after the end of World War II. Despite his premature death, Albert Camus left a legacy for society and for each individual, illuminating the problems of human consciousness.

"When it was first published in 1951, The Rebel earned Albert Camus a veritable lynching by French intellectuals led by novelist and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Camus's attack on crimes committed in the name of rebellion received negative reviews, and he was further accused of defending freedom in a simplistic way, prioritizing the individual. Thus, for several decades, the complexity of his thought was reduced to a right-wing thesis.

Stalin was still alive, and many people were beginning to disagree with the Communist Party, but despite this, Camus could not be forgiven for criticizing violence and totalitarianism from both the right and the left. Such a strong critique of the arrests and murders perpetrated in the name of revolution was unacceptable. Camus's new humanism—perhaps contradictory at times, but certainly sincere—was radically repudiated.

The bitterness of the renowned author of The Stranger and The Plague was channeled in 1956 with The Fall , a monologue-novel of impressive expressiveness and power. The following year, Camus was recognized by the Swedish Academy and received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Still, his ideas were never "rehabilitated" by those who attacked them. An ambitious book that is perhaps one of the most emphatic and passionate anti-authoritarian libels ever written, The Rebel continued to be treated with the coldness and complacency it so vehemently criticizes.

More than 50 years after its first publication, with humanity's ideological disputes and existential questions radically shifted from their axis, the book acquires a special dimension. It is no longer possible to ignore crimes against humanity, whatever their revolutionary pretexts. Revolt does not excuse everything. This is how the humanism proposed by Camus proves fundamental for those who prefer to defend human beings rather than abstract theoretical systems. And it is for this and much more that *The Rebel* is one of the most important books of the century.

(From the ear of João Domenech Oneto)