In this context the noble aspirations of humanity, which have so often given rise to rebellion in the name of justice, have become caricatured, and often reduced to the justification of murder in the name of the historicized absolute that Camus intends when he speaks of the divinization of man. The history of European pride is precisely the belief that collective effort can end the suffering and injustice that have characterized human history. This enterprise he calls the quest for totality; that is, the attempt to refashion the totality of human history in accord with a supposed total understanding of the human condition and a rationalized praxis that follows from that
conception.
Thought thus becomes an instrument in the collective effort to overcome historical injustice and the limitations of our natural condition. “It is not logic that I refute, but ideology which substitutes a logical succession of reasonings for living reality. Traditionally, philosophers tried to explain the world, not to impose a law on it. That is the task of religions and ideologies” (A/I, 60—1). The reduction of philosophy to ideology in the service of a totalizing praxis is the contemporary response to a metaphysical imperative legated to us by the collapse of traditional religion. It is also the source of the degeneration of twentieth-century revolutions, as they seek to serve, often unwittingly, as religious surrogates. The task of The Rebel is to diagnose this pathology of the intellect that underlies and undermines revolutionary experience in order to contribute to the rebirth of creative rebellion.
Before turning to a detailed exploration of this “working hypothesis,” a few words on the style of presentation are in order, followed by a brief consideration of the relation of metaphysical analysis to practical experience.
METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The Rebel is not a popular work, in the traditional sense. It is a crafted literary effort, whose dramatic imagery and balanced cadences have garnered literary acclaim and sarcastic comment.
Too sovereign, too perfect, too noble in sentiments, some said. In a work concerned with the “blood-stained face” of contemporary events, the anguished speech of the oppressed and the exploited, of the degraded and the humiliated, is given short shrift. Little reference is made to the writings or speech of workers, union organizers, journalists, or men of affairs. Primary attention is paid rather to literary figures, to writers, and to theorists of revolution, with some notable exceptions. This suggests not only the audience to whom Camus was speaking, but his conception of the place of this work within the corpus of his writings, as well as within the frame of French literature and culture. I think we would be correct to say that he saw this as his mature philosophical statement. The Rebel was meant not only to complete the “second series” of his work, but to take its place—and establish his place—within the grand tradition of French letters. Such was his primary audience and his unspoken aim. This is not to say that his intent was solely literary. Far from it! But the implicit view of the relation of literature to the broad movements of culture and society requires more detailed consideration.
Everyday action takes place within a conceptual frame by which the experienced world is defined. Whatever may be the natural contours of our environment, different cultures at different times and places have understood and lived their situation in unique ways. It is for this reason that thought and experience must be historically contextualized. Even where such universal themes as death are concerned, cultures face them within the meaning-frame
of their uniquely structured experiential world. That world as lived is what I mean when I speak of a cultural drama.3
Thus the actions, thoughts, feelings, values, and beliefs of individuals are constituted by the cultural drama whose roles and institutions provide the script within which minor improvisations are permitted. Personal problems are simply variations on the metaphysical themes at the root of cultural dramas. It is the more insightful participants in the culture—
philosophers, artists, scientists—who are able to reflect on the taken-for-granted script, thus raising it, at least in part, to the level of explicit text. It is thus not by chance or artistic preference that Camus focuses on the writings of Nietzsche or Dostoevsky, of Hegel or Marx or Sade, when he seeks to make explicit the root structure of thought at stake in the Western world. Rather, it is to such thinkers that one ought to turn to find the structure of Western metaphysics within which meaning-frame the problem of revolt gains that articulated coherence that has given direction to the insurrectional movements that have sculpted the modern world. Let us look briefly at this methodological point from another angle.
Having insisted that thinking is always rooted in feeling, Camus has located the origins of rebellion in the experience of outrage. That initial experience inevitably seeks to give itself expression in thought and deed, in reflection and action. For most reflective beings, and certainly for those who have had a major influence upon recent European history, organized action generally follows reflection. Admittedly, what is done reacts back upon what is thought, thus modifying it. But even then how we evaluate the results is essentially framed by the preestablished structure of meaning that is the world as we live it, that world itself having emerged in the process of our coming to consciousness within the historical contours of our cultural drama. In short, our personal incorporation of the metaphysical frame of our cultural drama tends to prestructure our thinking. This is true both of the initial articulation given to the rebellious outrage, and of subsequent developments and reevaluations. What must be emphasized is that we come to consciousness within and in terms of our history.
This is not said to deny the possibility of obtaining a perspective on that history. Quite the contrary, otherwise the entire effort of The Rebel would be a methodological anomaly from the outset. Rather, it is meant to underscore the historically relative nature of all inquiry, that of The Rebel included, as Camus sought to make quite explicit. It is also noted in order to focus our attention on the importance of the metaphysical dimension of all thinking, including that of political movements that present themselves as being concerned only with matters of practice. In Camus’s view, practical and historical movements arc significantly influenced by the often inarticulate metaphysical
structure of thinking that frames their problematic and programmatic locus.
And further, it is to the works of theorists and artists that one should turn in order to get the best possible grasp on that hidden but pervasive metaphysical dimension.
Never is this more important than when reaching down to the deepest existential sources of action: our need to find and sustain meaning in our lives. Existentially, the lived world is the pervading quality underlying practical concerns. The root conceptual structure of that world determines the meaning of particular events. It thus frames the interpretation we give to encountered resistances, as well as the strategies and programs we consider appropriate. Practical thinking takes place within the metaphysical contours of this lived world. It is because action can be seen as essentially following the lines and remaining within the conceptual frame thus formed by our taken-for-granted metaphysics, that Camus can claim that the excesses of the age are “almost entirely” explained by the hypothesis he is offering.
The historical circumstances—political, economic, national—to which action must respond invariably occasion reflective revisions of strategies and tactics, of policies and programs. Yet they rarely impinge fundamentally on the metaphysical frame that establishes the a priori conditions within which action is seen to take place. It is this world as real that constitutes the horizon for our lived encounters and projected futures. Further, it is our sense of ourselves thus situated that sets forth the conditions to which we demand that events conform. In the long run, of course, both existential project and metaphysical frame are continually undergoing modifications. We demand that action conform to those prereflective conditions of meaning without which it would be lacking in coherence and value for us. Those existential demands for coherence and value find their place within the metaphysical contours of our world, thus framing the possibilities of our thought and action.
It is therefore to this metaphysical level that Camus feels we must turn if we are to understand the excesses of the modern age. It is here that he seeks to locate the degeneration of rebellion.
At stake is a diagnosis of that pathology of the intellect that reveals, behind the appearances, a structure of thought that has led historical rebellions from their initial generous impulses down the twisted path of totalizing revolutions to the justification of murder, often in spite of themselves.
And why this concern with rebellion? Because rebellion bears witness to a refusal to give up. Amid the decaying ruins of a civilization that seems to be tumbling down in a cacophony of nihilistic resonances, rebellion testifies to our refusal to submit, to accept our own or another’s degradation. At a deeper level, the rebel rejects the notion that life is meaningless, not worth the effort, and that nothing matters. “Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronting an unjust and incomprehensible condition. But its blind impulse is to demand order in the midst of chaos and unity in the very