Bumper Stickers and New Perspectives

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

I’m a sucker for bon mots, those witty, punchy sayings that are the bumper stickers of literature and philosophy. I ran into one just today: “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” Albert Camus wrote that in his 1951 book L’Homme révolté, translated into English as The Rebel.

BTW, the line in question in French goes like this: “l’homme est la seule créature qui refuse d’être ce…