The norm in existentialism of J.-P. Sartre and A. Camus

The article analyzes the positions of the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus concerning the norms of the person and society as a whole. The normal being in J.-P. Sartre’s philosophy undergoes a serious transformation. The scientist changes the notion of a normal social existence of a man from the perspective of subjective existentialism. He analyzes the existential conditions of loneliness, fear, despair, and disgust. He pays special attention to such negative emotions as fear, melancholy, anxiety, and disappointment. Each ordinary person seeks to avoid these emotions but instead, in authors’ opinion, they lead a person to realize the world hostility and, at the same time, be free from it. In common sense, the happiness of a person is not the thing that people should strive for. The normal means suffering and the impossibility to overcome an unfortunate state, i.e. the abnormal is normal in existence from the viewpoint of an ordinary man. Criticizing the modernity, A. Camus argues that the previous era is different because in earlier times the crime was alone like a cry, but in the modern times it is universal. The thing that was prosecuted by the court yesterday has become the law today. The world turned upside down: something that was abnormal had become a daily reality. The world is full of the abnormal things, so people no longer see them as abnormal. Moreover, the philosopher brings this transformation to global proportions, arguing that even the law, which must be a guardian of order, is criminal. A. Camus notes that nowadays innocence has to justify itself, the abnormal takes the form of the norm, therefore the manifestation of the norm requires explanation and even justification. In this case, according to A. Camus, the boundaries between the false and the true, the norm and the abnormal disappear and the force dictates the rules.