The Logic of the Rebel: On Simone Weil and Albert Camus

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/logic-rebel-simone-weil-albert-camus/

by samclemens • 6 years ago

32 3 6 years ago

This article remarks on the shared experience of suffering from TB among the two. I find it strange how TB had been molded into a glamorous disease reserved for the middle-upper class in times when writers like Camus and Weil were public patients. We, in a way, see a similar sort of sensationalism around a new virus with the Canadian PM's wife and Tom Hanks both being victims. The logic of the rebel is supported by the veneer of a medical malady—contextualized malady.

wideasleep1• 6 years ago

For some, 'shit becomes real' when it happens to a 'virtuous' celebrity, in absence of them personally knowing of any other victim. It fits comfortably into emotional contagion, and the manufacture of heroes through martyrdom.

a9h74j• 6 years ago

There is an argument to be made for immersion in thinkers who lived before one's time. Such immersion can call into question the presuppositions one has grown into.

This is a good article; I learned about one of my favorites. I thought Simone Weil had been forgotten; I am pleased to see not.

"The logic of the rebel is to want to serve justice so as not to add to the injustice of the human condition, to insist on plain language so as not to increase universal falsehood, and to wager, in spite of human misery, for happiness."

The Logic of the Rebel: On Simone Weil and Albert Camus

Related Stories