In finding-experiencing oneself, one finds a universal humanity
Tester:
At the very beginning of his book, Camus asks the question: ‘What is a rebel?’. He answers that the rebel is, ‘A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself’ (Camus, 1953: 19). Camus gives the example of a slave who says ‘no’ to some new command. He argues that in that negation of the order the slave is confirming the existence of a borderline which might not be prominent cognitively but is known as soon as it is transgressed, beyond which the crushing of human dignity cannot be accepted. The slave says no but, in so doing, affirms something: ‘Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified. It is in this way that the rebel slave says yes and no at the same time. He affirms that there are limits and also that he suspects – and wishes to preserve – the existence of certain things beyond those limits’ (1953: 19).
According to Camus, as soon as the rebel slave intuits these things beyond the limit, he steps beyond the sphere of her or his own peculiar insults and injuries and moves instead towards an affirmation of a common humanity. In saying ‘no’ the rebel negates the common sense of the world which teaches that this is simply the way that things are and must be, and
thus makes the everyday seem strange. It is opened up to critique. The rebel comes to feel a distance between her- or himself and everyday common sense. But, for Camus: ‘the first step for a mind overwhelmed by the strange- ness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that the entire human race suffers from the division between itself and the rest of the world. The unhappiness experienced by a single man becomes collective unhappiness’. Consequently: ‘I rebel – therefore we exist’ (Camus, 1953: 28). Camus’ position rests easily with social thought that is indebted to Gramsci.
First, Camus is saying that humanity is distinct and distinctive in relation to the natural world; there is something about being human that makes us radically different from the rest of the environment. One logical extension of that claim is that human affairs consequently demand a form of understand- ing that is different from that which is applicable to nature. Another logical extension is that it therefore follows that any forms of cognition or organiz- ation which, on the contrary, seek to naturalize human relationships and soci- ation must be condemned as affronts to human dignity and freedom. This theme from Camus, if read through the Gramscian revision of the tenets of actually existing communism, entails a negation of the everyday common sense of historical inevitability or of the Party ‘knowing best’.
Second, Camus makes it clear that this negation does not mean that the rebel who says ‘no’ is consigned to a lonely individualism. Rather, the act of individual rebellion is also the affirmation of a human solidarity. It is a gesture towards an ethic of human solidarity and universality. From Camus’ point of view, any forms of cognition or arrangements that consign individuals to an isolated individuality (and which say that such an individuality is natural and inevitable) is an offence to human dignity. Traces of precisely this kind of theme of the need to rebel against, negate, isolated individualism can be found in Bauman’s discussions of consumerism (see Bauman, 1988), con- temporary strategies of individualization (Bauman, 2000a) and mortality (Bauman, 1992b).
But Camus knew that if this was the promise held out by the figure of the rebel, the historical appearance of negation has had a much more ambiva- lent impact.
From:Paths in Zygmunt Bauman's Social Thought
Note: Connects with Fromm and Suzuki (from Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis) in terms of self being the pathway to universal human values, but clashes with Buddhist belief in total interdependency between subject and object, people and nature.