Albert Camus, novelist, essayist, dramatist, and recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, is esteemed as one of the finest philosophical writers of modern France. The French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about him as "the latest example of that long line of moralistes whose works constitute perhaps the most original element in French letters." Camus' literary legacy includes three novels, namely L'Etranger of 1942, La Peste of 1947, and La Chute of 1957, and a fourth unfinished one that (...) was posthumously published as The First Man in 1995. Camus' works both intensively and extensively explored the theme that was prevalent in the intellectual climate of the post-World War II Europe, the absurdity of human existence together with the notions of alienation and disillusionment, and speculated beyond the crushing pessimism a glimmering faith on human dignity and brotherhood. These concerns, no matter how well ingrained they may be in the European history of ideas, would prove to be too cognitively remote for a contemporary Filipino reader. Thus, there is a need to mediate Camus' literary discourses with a more familiar Filipino text. (shrink)

In this this paper, I will attempt to extract some insights from Rorty’s neo-pragmatic political philosophy with the aim of enriching and fortifying our local postcolonial projects by giving justice to their agenda and methods, critiquing their current status, and providing them a clearer sense of direction and vision. As a preliminary step in order to accomplish this core task this paper would take a look at three things: 1) the main tenets of Rorty’s political philosophy; 2) the highlights of (...) Philippine post-colonial researches and theorizations; and 3) the epistemological, political, directional and modal difficulties encountered by these local post-colonial projects. (shrink)