|
 Philosopher
of the Month
June
2004 - Albert Camus
Jonathan Walmsley
Albert Camus was born into Algerian poverty, son of an illiterate mother and father who would shortly die in the First World War. A promising boy, fond of sun, sea, writing, girls and football, his studies toward a bright academic future were cut short by tuberculosis. Incurable, Camus knew that his illness would likely kill him. The young man, who loved everything of life, now faced an arbitrary annihilation.
How, then, to live? How to reconcile the conflict of human aspiration with an indifferent world? This juxtaposition Camus labelled the “absurd” – the mismatch of what we want from the world (order, reason, answers) and what it can provide us (nothing). Aware of the human tendency to project desires onto the universe through means of ‘transcendent' religious or political myth, Camus refused to dissolve the disjunction between man and world. We should not pretend the world has intelligible meaning, nor should we kill ourselves - we must unflinchingly sustain consciousness of the absurd with no respite. Camus' essay, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), presented four exemplars – seducer, actor, conqueror, artist - who act to extract all they can from life. Free from a belief in ‘another life', they pursue their own ends relentlessly and without distraction.
So too Mersault, the protagonist of Camus' narrative L'Etranger (1942). Conscious at all times of his own existence and the joy that he derives from it, Mersault finds himself confronting and then killing an Arab through force of circumstance. He refuses to pretend he was responsible, or feel remorse, and society condemns him to death. When a chaplain comes to visit him the night before his execution, Mersault attacks the pretence of life after death and vigorously asserts the happiness he has experienced in this life alone.
The Second World War trapped Camus in Paris , where he became editor of the resistance newspaper Combat . Nazism's nihilism, not ruled out by mere consciousness of the absurdity of life, demanded principled exclusion. We must live without hope, but not without value – humanity itself, Camus held, is the end and the measure of life. A fictional chronicle of the plague's visitation on Oran , and a parable of the occupation, La Peste showed that the labour to maintain life and alleviate suffering sufficed as an end in itself. The town's inhabitants each sought their own way of adjusting to the chance slaughter of infection, but it was the resolution of the Plague fighters, who risked their own lives struggling against the disease, that illustrated Camus' view of the dignity and worth of humanity itself.
Camus codified the political aspect of his humanism in L'Homme Révolté (1951). Whilst there is no transcendence and “everything is permitted”, suicide was inconsistent with the absurd. Human life has value and murder, of any sort, is therefore anathema. Thus, even in rebellion against injustice, revolt must never lead to political totality – murder cannot be justified by future utopias. As a reasoned call for political moderation, and a detailed obliteration of totalitarian Stalinism, Camus' work was savaged by his contemporaries, Jean-Paul Sartre foremost amongst the critics. The two men, whilst once associates, could not now have been further apart. Where Camus was working class, humanist, moderate, studied, charming and attractive, Sartre was self-hating bourgeoisie, egotistical, extremist, polemical, vituperative and quite ugly. The public dispute about L'Homme Révolté separated the two men irretrievably.
Camus' political and personal sensibilities were tested to the limit by the Algerian independence movement. As a young journalist, Camus had called attention to the economic and political plight of the Algerian Arabs and was sympathetic to their desire for autonomy. However, he felt himself to be Algerian and sought a political accommodation which did not require the forcible expulsion of the colonists. When both French and Arab resorted to extra-military tactics in what was now a war of independence, Camus called for a truce against civilians from both sides. It was in this context that he inadvertently summarised his ethical position. At a rally, he was asked to choose between his mother, still living in Algiers , and justice. He chose his mother. Human feeling was more important that any abstract principle.
Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He died in a car crash 3 years later, his final incomplete novel, The First Man , thrown intact from the wreck. Though not an academic ‘philosopher', Camus has enduring resonance in our post-Christian world – his writings and actions provide the guide to living a life without hope.
Suggested Reading
Camus, A (2000) [1940]. The Myth of Sisyphus . Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Camus, A. (1989) [1942]. The Stranger . London : Vintage Books.
Camus, A. (2000) [1951]. The Rebel . Harmondsworth: Penguin.
A
new philosopher of the month will be feature end of July 2004.
You
will find ninety-nine other introductions to great thinkers in .
Join
Our Café mailing list
To
receive *very* short messages, letting you know when the Café
has been updated, just fill in your email address below - and press
submit.
[If
you wish to unsubscribe from the mailing list, simply fill in your
subscriber email address, select "Unsubscribe", and press Submit.]
Previous
Philosophers of the Month
|
