The problem posed here is of the essence of any deductive ethical standpoint. The ethical question is to establish in specific situations the good in action. But a deductive standpoint seeks to deduce such action from principles that always stand in need of elaboration and justification. If all is implicit in them but not yet known, how can we assent to the first principles until we know the full consequences of that assent? And, if we could know the full consequences, why would we need the first principle and its deductive elaboration? It is just the novelty and unpredictability of the ethical situation that is in question. And the deductive model cannot be a guide here. (To this issue I will turn in greater detail in Chapter 13.) What then is an alternative? To attempt to establish preferable ways of acting in the concrete.
This requires carefully questioning the historically and culturally sedi-mented values at stake in particular situations. If ethical conflicts arise, deductive proofs are of no consequence. What is required is a procedure for solving the problems and for maintaining the values from both the long- and the short-run point of view—and this cannot be predetermined: that is of the essence of human freedom.
What, then, can be the function of an ethical inquiry? For Camus the concern is primarily with those natural and historical conditions that must be taken into consideration if the ethical resolution is to be consistent with humane values: to reveal those constants of the human condition a consideration of which seems essential to the resolution of human conflict. It is further to reveal the values to which human living bears witness, values that provide the framework and guidelines for the further expansion of human action. And it is finally to attempt to reveal how totalizing definitions of the value-to which revolt bears witness can distort mat value and thus be self-defeating. All this, of course, calls into question the metaphysical assumptions of that world in which the notion of humane takes on its normative force.
THE GROUNDS OF REVOLT
Since the framework of this inquiry is provided by human nature and its interactions, Camus focuses upon the conditions that this starting point presupposes. Since the ethical objective involves the establishment of human community, he explores the possibility of grounding and limiting this potential community in the factual commonness of the human being’s natural and social situation. His search is for ethical boundary conditions imposed upon conduct by the conditions of existence. There can be no question of the so-called naturalistic fallacy here since he does not seek to deduce anything from this fact.
He begins with the fact that as natural beings we have much in common, including certain biological needs and limits as well as the finality of death—in short, a common finitude. From these facts, nothing logically can be deduced about action. But that is not the concern. Rather, it is the establishment of grounds for the reflective evaluation of modes of conduct.
If human beings do in fact share certain traits and face a common destiny, is it not possible that making this communality explicit and raising it to the level of common perception could establish at least a minimal framework for the appreciation of shared values? And can this not provide a metaphysical base for the elaboration, construction, and development of an ethical frame lor human community? If dialogue is to be possible and concrete unity established—if, in short, people are to be able to come together communally in any sense—they require a shared conceptual frame for such interaction. The awareness of our common condition and the minimal evaluative standpoint this may establish—or at least that it would be quite difficult to deny—would seem to offer the possibility of providing such a foundation.
In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limit it discovers in itself— a limit where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist. . . . [Rebellion] is a perpetual state of tension. . . . It is the first piece of evidence (which attests to a value beyond the individual). . . . This evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel—therefore we exist (R, 22, my italics).
From the point of view of an understanding of the inner logic of Camus’s thought, the role of the absurd consciousness is crucial. While on one level it represents the individual’s developing awareness—as with the stranger, for instance—of an unbridgeable gulf between people and their destiny, from the perspective of The Rebel the encounter with the plague has forced recognition of the implicit communality of our condition. “We see that the affirmation implicit in every act of rebellion is extended to something that transcends the individual insofar as it withdraws him from his supposed solitude and provides him with a reason to act” (R, 16).
Thus the absurd consciousness mediates the transition from the natural awareness of the first part of The Stranger, through the trial, Nuptials, and
“The Misunderstanding,” to the communal consciousness that first appears in limited form in The Plague.
The establishment of this standpoint does not solve the problem of values, but constitutes an essential first step. It establishes a recognition of the human framework in terms of which a resolution may be envisaged. As Camus had said of the absurd: “To prove the absurdity of life cannot be an end, but only a beginning” (E, 1419). “If men cannot refer to a common value, recognized by all as existing in each one, then man is incomprehensible to man. The rebel demands that this value should be clearly recognized in himself” (R, 23).
But in demanding this value for themselves in the name of their humanity, rebels are, at least implicitly, though far more often than not explicitly also, demanding it for humans in general.
This is the force of Camus’s contention that the rebel’s act is implicitly universal. It is the assertion of a limit not simply in their own name, but in the name of a conception of human nature that is being transgressed. And the transgression is seen as implicitly self-destructive as well as destructive of the humanity of the rebel, whether or not directly affected. Ultimately we have a demand for simple justice. The act of self-definition is here crucial. Rebels are distinguished from those who simply oppose by the fact that they define their opposition at least implicitly in terms of a definition of themselves that is essentially universal in extent and ultimately grounded in the recognition of a common human destiny. The mere assertion is not enough, however.
Its formal universality must ideally be transformed into a universality of content. This universality of content can be progressively approached, Camus suggests, only with and through the particular life of dialogic communities (to a consideration of which I will turn later).
THE MEANING OF REVOLT
Born out of a clear refusal to accept that which denies the human, and a passionate but vague affirmation of the individual’s right to justice and freedom, rebellion emerges in practical struggles to give itself historical form.
It invariably claims that its cause is just, that a universal value is being defended in the name of humanity, and, implicitly at least, that all people have a right to that value—or at least have a right not to have their chances of realizing it infringed upon. The demand is for justice, and in defense of human integrity, or for the reestablishment of a transgressed prior unity. But the position of the rebel is circumscribed, the perspective limited, the formulation of the requirements of unity incomplete. Desired is a concrete unity experienced by the living being. As such, it is essentially open. Any attempt to define this unity definitively before its realization results in ideology. Such an attempt must ultimately deny the value that gave birth to this movement in the name of the intellectual reconstruction that explains it. Rebellion originates in a particular condition and out of a particular experience. Instead of justifying the claim by the experience, the experience tends to be justified by the claim. But what will then justify the claim? As soon as the claim is absolutized, it is removed from the level of an appeal grounded in experience and is placed on the level of a posited doctrine. By the necessities of the dialectic of interpersonal relations, and its theoretical counterpart in the movement of lived ideas, its opposite is bound to be called forth. Thus the possibility of experimental development and reasoned criticism is excluded. This rejection, implicit or explicit, of the fallibilities of a finite position, which is the claim of totality, inevitably condemns those who see differently. The experiential ground or open framework in terms of which the parties might come together and engage in constructive dialogue is implicitly denied by the totalizing theory. This denial soon makes its explicit appearance on the level of ideological conflict and war.