Reconstructing the World: Albert Camus and the Symbolization of Experience

Abstract

Albert Camus's political philosophy of rebellion and limits is ultimately grounded in an aesthetic theory, which in turn is dependent on a broader understanding of the nature of symbols. In his essays and notes. Camus develops a theory of symbols in which he insists that human beings are symbolic creatures and that human experience and symbolization are interdependent realities. Camus felt that art, in particular the philosophical novel, played a significant role in the rearticulation of symbols. The basis of the recollection or the creation of symbols is the consciousness of the community, particularly the shared consciousness of the human condition. Symbols act as mediations between the empirical world and the world of imagination. They are not literal descriptions of that empirical reality, nor are they simply flights of fancy. Symbols are necessarily bound and free. So, too, Camus argues, must be the politics on which they are based.