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”.