| The history of culture and concept are on the earth the history of human being, accompanied with different definitions of the position of human being throughout periods. The western modernization derived from the human independence, and has constantly been driven by the fulfillment and expansion of the self. The turn of Humanism in the 20th century in the west dialectically avoided the single-mindedness of the Essentialism. People have been absorbed in criticizing the existent reality of Man. They have described the position of human being many times, and expressed a variety of understandings and thoughts.The French writer Albert Camus and the American writer Saul Bellow had always been devoting themselves to inspecting and meditating on human existence. Their views are different from each other and sometimes privately in accordance.. Camus' consideration begins with the character of time in individual life and emphasizes the isolation and limitation of human being. He defines the self as at the outside of the other, exhibiting the isolation of individual. At the same time, he confines the value of human life to the living world, refusing the death and insisting on the presence of being. Such an insistence bases on the consciousness of human being, which demands man keep to living by means of metaphysical rebellion. Starting from the aspects of society and culture, Bellow places the self in its complicate contact with the other. The self often converts unexpectedly between the outside and the inside. In fact, man always finds himself in the inside of the society, the culture and the history, under which Bellow particularly explores the spiritual connection of the self and the other, of man and the era and the culture. In Bellow's mind, human life would rather embody a certain spiritual reality, and the reality is that of the spiritual suffering. Therefore, the position of human being should be oriented in an ultimate transcending of spirit. |
