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Existentialism is a Humanism – but not in Erdogan's Turkey

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Suppressed:
Existentialism is a Humanism – but not in Erdogan's Turkey
Monday 22nd January
Now banned in Turkish libraries, the works of Albert Camus still teach us what it means to be free
Tanja Staehler | Professor of European Philosophy, University of Sussex
https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/existentialism-is-a-humanism-but-not-in-turkey-auid-1026



It is indeed quite absurd – but not in the sense which Albert Camus deemed philosophically interesting. Philosophers Baruch Spinoza and Albert Camus are now banned in Turkish public libraries because they are deemed to be active members of a terrorist organisation. Their names were mentioned in the notebooks of a journalist who was brought to court for membership in a terrorist organisation. Owning and reading books by Spinoza or Camus is now a criminal offense.

That is absurd. After all, Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He wrote literature about real human conflict, and about the importance of loyalty. His novels are preoccupied with the most extreme situations (such as in The Plague) as well as the everyday. They provide close studies of personality as well as revelations of historical worlds. Camus’ novels are also concerned with how to be together in the midst of moral dilemmas – existence, after all, is full of them.

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