Albert Camus: Phenomenology and Postmodern Thought

Abstract

The paper contains an analysis of the philosophical dialogue that Albert Camus had with Edmund Husserl, Martin Hediegger, Max Scheler, and which eventually led to the shaping of his philosophical concept of man. It is our belief, that this concept anticipated his future model of man and the corresponding philosophy. Nowadays, this philosophy is described, in most general terms, as a postmodern way of thinking, which was presented in France by Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard, among others. The intensification of these processes of philosophical transformation, which was first observed by the French philosopher, is at present realized mainly through the development of postmodern civilization. This intellectual formation, due most of all to the processes of globalization and creation of a “risk society” as well as to the impact of old and new media, is characterized by a fragmentation of social life, an individualized interpretation of emotional states, cognition, understanding of the truth and axiological phenomena, which is expressed in the multicultural character of contemporary societies. These latter phenomena also heighten the problem of the individual’s identity in the postmodern world, which actualizes the concept of man proposed by Camus in the mid-twentieth century to an even greater extent.