“Metaphysical rebellion is a claim motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.”
And yet modern rebels claim that death, for them the end of everything, is welcome on the one hand, and that evil doesn’t exist on the other.
So why do they fret so about Hell? And how is it that a non-existent deity is evil?
The rebel can't himself be supreme, if he is subject to a deity for both his life and his death. Since he controls neither the onset of his life nor the termination and annihilation of his essence, he is neither deity nor special nor capable of creating unity of any type; he can only rail at his fate and the circumstances which provide limits on his confounding relative powerlessness.
“At the same time that he rejects his mortality, the rebel refuses to recognize the power that compels him to live in this condition. The metaphysical rebel is not definitely an atheist as one might think him, but he is inevitably a blasphemer. Quite simply he blasphemes in the name of order, denouncing God as the father of death and as the supreme outrage."
From "The Rebel", by Albert Camus, 1956.
Thanks to Anshuman Reddy for the tip.
3 comments:
The very notion of "rebelling" is incoherent unless there is something (or Someone) to rebel against.
With neither good nor evil and no deity, what is there in or about life to "rebel" against?
It simply IS as it IS.
A valuation of "neither good nor evil" provides no grounding for rebellion. Or does the very concept of "A = A" (the Principle of Identity) require too much reason from the "rebel?"
I think I see where you are going Robert, but if I may constructively disagree with your final premise. The idea of rebellion, at least as I see it, is ultimately amoral. The truncated dictionary definition is: a person who refuses allegiance, or who resists authority, control, or tradition. Atheists do this in spades.
This is not a defense of Atheism, far from it. I'm merely pointing out that one doesn't have to justify ones desire to rebel based on morality in order to rebel. Whether or not rebellion is moral or immoral is a discussion for those who believe in morality.
Many Atheist live in a state of perpetual victim hood, which they see the need to rebel against. They greatly oversell the influence of Christianity because they seek to stamp it out, but it is the cause célèbre which they hang their rebellion banner.
In short: Atheists rebel against morality, citing amorality as a form of morality. Their cognitive dissonance makes my head hurt.
Leading Atheists like Keith Augustine believes that death and disease are powerful objections against God and the immortality of the soul.If God exists then he would not have allowed death and disease to affect humanity.
On the one hand the Atheists decries what he sees as unjust acts of God,to which he secretly wishes immortality could exist and on the other hand the Atheist mocks theists for believing in eternal life of the soul.
Talk about hypocrisy!
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