Farewell to teleology : reflections on Camus and a rebellious cosmopolitanism without hope
Abstract
This article reconstructs Albert Camus’s notion of the absurd in order to elucidate his critique of historical teleology. In his life and work, Camus endeavoured to develop a fallibilist historical sensibility suitable to a cosmos shorn of meaning, which led him to reject ideas of progress and their traces of messianism when elaborating his treatment of rebellion. By making use of Camus’s ideas about the absurd and rebellion, I suggest that these two themes productively unsettle contemporary cosmopolitanism as a teleological orthodoxy of human progress and fruitfully if paradoxically lie at the heart of a concept of cosmopolitanism “without hope”.
Citation
Hayden , P 2016 , ' Farewell to teleology : reflections on Camus and a rebellious cosmopolitanism without hope ' , Critical Horizons , vol. 17 , no. 1 , pp. 79-93 . https://doi.org/10.1080/14409917.2016.1117817
Publication
Critical Horizons
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1440-9917Type
Journal article
Rights
© Critical Horizons Pty Ltd 2016. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14409917.2016.1117809
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