Translated by Anthony Bower With an Introduction by Oliver Todd 'A conscience with style' V.S. Pritchett The Rebel (1951) is Camus's 'attempt to understand the time I live in' and a brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt. Here he makes a daring critique of communism - how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain and the resulting totalitarian regimes. And he questions two events held sacred by the left wing - the French Revolution of 1789 and the (...) Russian Revolution of 1917 - that had resulted, he believed, in the use of terrorism as a political instrument. In this towering intellectual document, Camus argues that hope for the future lies in revolt with revolution - a chance to achieve change without losing our freedom. 'The last French intellectual to take the side of humanity and talk its language... a figure of immense moral stature' Sunday Times Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. (shrink)

This is the editorial for Vol 19 Issue 2 of Philosophy of Management. A reflection is made on COVID-19 measures and a call for papers is made to explore the crisis through philosophical inquiry on 1) disaster management and 2) existentialist views of work. Guidance is given based on papers published previously in the journal, and on Camus’ La Peste / The Plague.

Continual pressure on managers, their efficiency, and the need to search for novel solutions to problems can lead to psychologically demanding situations. In efforts to understand the main obstacles to work and to effectively manage work-related processes, and in the need to achieve personal development, new approaches that are based on existential philosophies emerge. The aim of this article is to highlight the ways in which existential approaches have been used or discussed in management and to show that existential themes (...) and their applications in management can also be found in the Eastern tradition of thought. The paper presents six case vignettes from management practice that use Western and Eastern existential insights and offer recommendations for self-development of managers. The paper concludes that although it is difficult or impossible to create a unified framework of existential philosophy of management because of the diversity of existential approaches and because of the problematic nature of comparing Eastern and Western philosophies, it is possible to work towards gathering applicable insights and values. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the intersection of existentialism and management, in particular to illustrate how existential thought offers three key insights to the pragmatic world of work and applied act of management: (1) Existentialism places a primacy upon the individual and the existential self that is continually being formed within the workplace. (2) Existentialism allows for a coherent examination of individual and organisational-level decision making and ethics as an integral part of the philosophy. (3) Existentialism is inherently ‘applied’ and (...) focused on ‘process’ in that it allows for an understanding of the meaning of work. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the intersection of existentialism and management, in particular to illustrate how existential thought offers three key insights to the pragmatic world of work and applied act of management: (1) Existentialism places a primacy upon the individual and the existential self that is continually being formed within the workplace. (2) Existentialism allows for a coherent examination of individual and organisational-level decision making and ethics as an integral part of the philosophy. (3) Existentialism is inherently ‘applied’ and (...) focused on ‘process’ in that it allows for an understanding of the meaning of work. (shrink)

Body, Community, Language, World, here made available in English for the first time is Patocka's presentation of phenomenology as a living tradition - as a philosophical heritage that requires to be rethought and redirected in light of possibilities that it has itself uncovered. Jan Patocka lived for most of his adult life in Communist Czechoslovakia where he was at times banned from publishing or teaching. Mentor of Vaclav Havel, Patocka defied the regime as one of the spokespersons for Charta 77, (...) and died in 1977, following two months of police interrogation. (shrink)

Organizational behavior--defined as a way of looking at events and life--is made clear for executives, teachers, and students alike, and presented as a way to help people deal with an organization's problems and with the kind of work and career problems that inevitably emerge.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing philosophy, literature, politics and history, John Foley examines the full breadth of Camus' ideas to provide a comprehensive and rigorous study of his political and philosophical thought and a significant contribution to a range of debates current in Camus research. Foley argues that the coherence of Camus' thought can best be understood through a thorough understanding of the concepts of 'the absurd' and 'revolt' as well as the relation between them. This book includes a detailed (...) discussion of Camus' writings for the newspaper "Combat", a systematic analysis of Camus' discussion of the moral legitimacy of political violence and terrorism, a reassessment of the prevailing postcolonial critique of Camus' humanism, and a sustained analysis of Camus' most important and frequently neglected work, "L'Homme revolte". (shrink)

Just as a musician needs a feel for music, so managers need a feel for the business of the organisation. The question is: how do we develop our feeling for the business? Through the use of examples of eminent CEOs, Business Feel: Leading Paradigm Shifts in Organisations outlines a variety of skills involved in the development of business feel. It shows how CEOs developed their business attunement in moments of change where they could not take old habits of doing things (...) for granted but did not yet have fully developed new ways of doing things. In change – or what in this book is called 'the cracks of conventional' ways of doing – effective leaders rely more on their intuition. The idea of a 'philosophical experience' is put forward as a framework that allows managers to develop their gut feel and personal style of judgement. This new edition builds upon the ideas explored by the author in Business Feels, featuring new material on leadership development and philosophy. (shrink)

At first sight, the work of Albert Camus appears to be readily interpretable. However, it is the literary and unsystematic nature of the expression of thoughts that causes different understandings of his texts. It is no wonder that many authors point out to the Camus’s philosophical inconsistencies. In this paper I focus on several interpretations of Camus’s texts, which I consider to be inaccurate. This is, particularly, the critique of “happy Sisyphus” by Eva Beránková in the afterword of Czech edition (...) of The Myth of Sisyphus, but also documentary film Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life by the famous biologist Richard Dawkins. In the context of Irvin Yalom’s reflection on the happiness and meaning of life, I point out that even the recognition of the therapeutic potential of literary-existential texts is not clear. (shrink)