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SAGI, Avi. Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd. Translated by Balya Stein. Value Inquiry Book Series, Vol. 125. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. iii + 193 pp. Cloth, $37.00-"[E]ven if we cannot characterize the whole of Camus's aeuvre by one overall assessment, the leit-motif of his entire work is still his contest with the question: How should we live in this world? What is a worthy human existence?" (p.29).
Professor Avi Sagi presents here the English version of his original Hebrew. He has been teaching for many years courses on Albert Camus (1913-60) at Bar-IIan University in Jerusalem. "In Israeli society," he states in the introduction, "which has long been contending with violence and conflict at levels of intensity unknown in Western society, Camus's thought has found paths to the hearts of young men and women thirsty for a human voice at once consoling and demanding. I have often been amazed at the interest that Camus's thought evokes in Israel, even when issues of life and death have pushed aside other 'philosophical' questions. As a result, I have been privileged with an achievement unusual for philosophers. The Hebrew version of this book became a best-seller, and I tend to think that this is not due to my writing but to Camus's unique powers as a man and as a thinker."
Professor Sagi's enthusiastic admiration for Camus never wanes for a moment. He claims that Camus is a philosopher using the artistic medium of literature and drama to work out his vitalistic philosophy, flowing from an intense experience of his personal life always yearning for transcendence and facing the ultimate ethical questions. Sagi thus believes that Camus follows the models of Augustine, Pascal, and Kierkegaard, to whom he devotes careful attention, as distinct from "systematic"...