Suicide, proclaimed Albert Camus, a French Algerian author, philosopher, and journalist, in "The Myth of Sisyphus", is the only

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问题     Suicide, proclaimed Albert Camus, a French Algerian author, philosopher, and journalist, in "The Myth of Sisyphus", is the only serious philosophical problem. In France at the moment it is also a serious management problem. A series of attempted and successful suicides at France Telecom—many of them explicitly prompted by troubles at work—has sparked a national debate about life in the modern corporation.
    There are some insular reasons for this melancholy trend. France Telecom is making the difficult transition from state monopoly to multinational company. It has shed 22,000 jobs since 2006, but two-thirds of the remaining workers enjoy civil-service-like job-security. This is forcing it to pursue a toxic strategy: teaching old civil servants new tricks while at the same time putting new hires on short-term contracts. Yet the problem is not confined to France. And suicide is only the tip of an iceberg of work-related unhappiness.
    The most obvious reason for the rise in unhappiness is the recession, which is destroying jobs at a startling rate and spreading anxiety throughout the workforce. But the recession is also highlighting longer-term problems. Unhappiness seems to be particularly common in car companies, which suffer from global overcapacity, and telecoms companies, which are being strongly impacted by a technological revolution.
    A second source of misery is the drive to improve productivity, which is typically accompanied by an obsession with measuring performance. Giant retailers use "workforce management" software to monitor how many seconds it takes to scan the goods in a grocery cart, and then reward the most diligent workers with prime working hours. The public sector, particularly in Britain, is brimming with inspectorates and performance targets. Taylorism, which Charlie Chaplin mocked so memorably in "Modern Times", has spread from the industrial to the post-industrial economy. In Japan some firms even monitor whether their employees smile frequently enough at customers.
    A more subtle problem lies in the mixed messages that companies send about loyalty and commitment Many firms—particularly successful ones—demand extraordinary dedication from their employees. Some provide fringe benefits that are intended to make the office feel like a second home. But companies also reserve the right to trim their workforce at the first sign of trouble. Most employees understand that their firms do not feel much responsibility to protect jobs. But they nevertheless find it wrenching to leave a post that has consumed so much of their lives.
Albert Camus is mentioned to

选项 A、show suicide is the only serious philosophical problem.
B、indicate that France is now suffering from a high suicidal rate.
C、introduce the topic of unhappiness at work by starting with suicide.
D、show that suicide has prompted great debates among philosophers.

答案C

解析 快速定位到第一段。文章首句引用Albert的话指出自杀是“哲学”问题;第二句是过渡句,指出自杀在法国成了“管理”问题从而引出下文关于life in the modern corporation(第一段末)乃至work-related unhappiness(第二段末)的讨论。可见,文章引用Albert的话是为了引出全文的主题,故选C。
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