Camus: A Critical Examination
David Sprintzen
CONTENTS:
PREFACE xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix
Part One Introduction 1
1 Experiential Sources 3
2 The Death of God 14
Part Two Dramatic Contours 21
3 The Stranger 23
4 The Myth of Sisyphus 41
5 Caligula 65
Part Three Confrontation and Struggle 79
6 Social Dislocations 81
7 Society and Rebellion 106
8 Revolt and History 120
9 Metaphysical Rebellion 139
10 Confronting Modernity 166
11 The Fall 196
Part Four Visions and Possibilities 219
12 The Witness of Liberty 221
13 Searching for a Style of Life 242
14 Concluding in a Dialogic Mode 269
notes 283 bibliography 301
PREFACE
Nothing authorizes me to pass judgment upon an epoch with which I feel in complete solidarity. I judge it from within, blending myself with it. But I reserve the right, henceforth, to say what I know about myself and about others on the sole condition that by so doing I do not add to the unbearable suffering of the world, but only in order to locate, among the obscure walls against which we are blindly stumbling, the still invisible places where doors may open (A/II, 83).
Few writers have achieved greater public recognition than Albert Camus. Honored with the Nobel Prize for “his important literary production, which with clearsighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times,” his works have fascinated the literate public from the moment of their emergence during the Second World War. Camus has been at the center of the passionate controversies that have rocked the modern world: from existential anxiety in the face of the death of God, and the absurdity of human existence, through practical struggles around capital punishment, social injustice, and national liberation, to growing concerns about torture and systemic violations of human rights.
Numerous and extensive as have been the treatments of his work, whether in the popular press or in academic periodicals, few have adequately appreciated its cultural significance. Small wonder that academics often treat his work as if it were simply the product of a previous era. I believe that judgment is deeply flawed, and that Camus’s work remains of vital interest to a civilization now struggling to come to terms with a scientific and technological vision deeply at odds with the religious perspective from which its cultural meanings have historically derived. What is more, I intend to show that his analyses offer constructive suggestions for the dilemmas of our age and that we neglect them at our peril.
Such reflection gains increased urgency in an era in which world wars and mass genocide threaten to be surpassed by nuclear annihilation—a capacity that few now doubt is within our collective power. Addressing our civilization at its metaphysical and mythic roots, Camus seeks to diagnose those interior forces seemingly propelling us toward destruction: to explore their
inner logic in Order to suggest the preconditions of, and the practical steps
required for, a cultural rebirth. In a world without transcendent significance, in which we are all condemned to death, what, he asks, are the possibilities for an honest and clear-sighted coming to terms with our condition? Can we not find a way to celebrate our life on this earth in dignity and self-respect? And what are the paths that lead in that direction?
It is therefore as a thinker at grips with the drama of Western civilization, which was the conceptual horizon of his world, that his work is considered here: to listen carefully to its contemporary resonances, while exploring its Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots. Why have so many been drawn to him, both ennobled and perplexed by his writings? And why does his work continue to receive a respectful reading by the literate public, despite its being all but out of fashion among the intelligentsia? In part, I suggest, this is because he addresses the deepest mythic level of our being. And not by inadvertence.
Of his plays he wrote, “There is no theater without language and style, nor any dramatic work which does not, like our classic drama and the Greek tragedians, involve human fate in all its simplicity and grandeur” (CTOP, x). The simplicity and grandeur of human existence as experienced in the twentieth century is the context of all he lived and wrote. Settings cut to the bone: the essentials grasped; the central dramatic myths explored in whose terms we confront our destiny. Such is the core of Camus’s work. Small wonder then that his titles have such a mythic resonance: The Stranger, The Plague, “The Misunderstanding,” The Tall, “The State of Siege,” Two Sides of the Coin, Exile and the Kingdom, The Rebel, “The Just,” Summer, Nuptials, and (uncompleted) The First Man.
Focusing upon the central drama of the West—its root metaphors or metaphysic, its agony and its future, its exile and its kingdom—his work speaks to us at a level below that of conscious awareness. Precisely because it touches the deepest sources of our being, it engages us even when we arc-not aware of its force. It subtly confronts us with a mirror and seeks to mark out a tortuous and risky path toward our natural salvation. By accepting the invitation it offers and the challenge it demands, we can learn about ourselves through direct encounter with this mythological mirror.
Why then have most academics dismissed him as dated, a product of the immediate post-war period, and not very profound? While his craftsmanship is invariably admired, his positions are not carefully studied. Thus his work appears in considerations of modern, especially European, literature, as well as in analyses of the cultural scene in postwar Europe. But little serious attention is paid to its content. Certainly not by philosophers or political theorists. Ironically, given the antireligious thrust of his writings, an exception might have to be made for sectors of the theological community.
In a sense, Camus has fallen through the cracks in our intellectual subcul-
ture. While his concerns were cultural and philosophical, and his sensitivity and practical orientation were moral and political, his media and artistic focus were literature and theater, interspersed with journalism. Philosophical treatment of his work has been sparse and episodic at best: an occasional glimpse at an essay, novel, or play, taken in isolation from its place in his writing and from its historical context, and thus almost always misread.
On the other hand, Camus’s writings have received extensive and careful treatment at the hands of literary critics such as Germaine Bree, Philip Thody, Henri Peyre, Justin O’Brien, and Carl Viggiani. Many of these have been thoughtful, sensitive, and provocative. But few have done justice to the philosophical and political significance of his work.
An interesting third category is provided by analysts with a prior ideological commitment. In the English-speaking world, that bias has usually been anticommunist or antirevolutionary, often liberal. Here Camus is portrayed as an opponent of Marxism and revolution and is often praised for his pacifism and his liberal humanism—a portrait generally concurred in by the radical left, especially in Europe. Once having served their purpose, however, he is often dismissed without a second thought. Serious reflection on the nature of his political thought is perhaps not to have been expected from them, nor has it generally been forthcoming.
Nevertheless, many volumes have been devoted to Camus, some with notable success. Far be it from me, who has benefited so deeply from them, to deny their contribution. But another task remains to be done. That task is to show how Camus’s writings provide significant insight into our cultural self-understanding. Even more, that we are poorly served if his explorations on the nature of revolt, dialogue, and community are not taken seriously; that the traditional reading of his positions on revolution and violence, as well as on the values to which revolt gives a promise, are in error; and that his analyses of political action offer a radical and nondogmatic perspective from which contemporary struggles can gain significant illumination.
Not only is his thought worthy of more serious consideration than it has usually received, but, of particular interest to American audiences, it draws its strength in large part from a manner of thinking far closer to the American pragmatists, especially John Dewey, than has been generally noticed. Like Dewey, for example, Camus treats theories as hypotheses and treats goals as guides to action, while requiring that values be grounded in and tested by experience. And, like Dewey, he sees experience threatened both by the dead weight of sanctified habit and by the rigidity of absolutist thought, what Dewey called the quest for certainty. The failure to appreciate adequately what might be called Camus’s ethical pragmatism contributes to much of the misreading to which he has fallen victim.
Careful attention will thus reveal that his thought could hardly be more
relevant to the present. Not only does it address our need to learn how to live in a world in which religious belief encounters increasingly serious and pervasive doubt, but it offers a novel way of confronting the ideologies of both right and left, thus shedding new light on the nature of dialogue, friendship, and community. At a time in which such outstanding contemporary thinkers as Jorgen Habermas, Hans Georg Gadamer, Richard Bernstein, and Anthony Giddens have evidenced a renewed concern for language, communication, and the needs of community (replacing prior academic preoccupations with foundations and structures), Camus’s exploration of the preconditions for the creation of dialogic communities—his civilisation du dialogue—makes a significant contribution to the consideration of these issues.