The Romantic has begun to confront the meaning of individualism to which the West is being increasingly condemned. More and more called upon to rely solely on personal resources—
both by a capitalist ideology that prides itself on the creativity of individual initiative, to which the Romantics were not insensitive, and by the life processes of a society that was rapidly destroying traditional family and community ties—Romantics confronted the problem of death in a new light. To those who are alone in a hostile world, death is the ultimate challenge to the meaning of each life. The burden this nascent individualism places on the rootless individual challenges the West’s sense of the meaning of things. Romanticism is one of the first and most poignant expressions of this developing dilemma.
The Romantic’s situation is a dead end. The terms in which Romanticism struggles to express its emerging sense of isolation and purposelessness are, of historical necessity, Judeo-Christian—even as that era is being replaced by capitalism and science. Thus the burden of Romanticism’s initial expression is directed at a Christian God who has betrayed them. The Romantic rejects this God as the legitimizing principle of a world to be rejected. The rebellion against death and injustice calls for a world where these principles do not reign. But it is a challenge that takes place only in the imagination. Sensing its practical impotence, it increases its fury. The passion of its rejection is totalizing. If there is no place for me in this world, then there is nothing to strive for, no values to be guided by, no goals to work for. “No longer hoping for the rule or the unity of god, determined to take up arms against an antagonistic destiny, anxious to preserve everything of which the living
are still capable in a world condemned to death, romantic rebellion looks to its own attitude for a solution” (R, 51; L’HR, 72).
And what, we might ask, is possible for the uprooted and alienated? Motivated by their outrage, they might strike out in random violence, as many did. Or they might retreat into solitary dreams of revenge—certainly Sade did. Or burst forth in prodigious activity, only to burn themselves out —as did so many, perhaps retreating into the pedestrian or banal, as with Rimbaud or Lautreamont. All these are modes of impotent response; they can do nothing except oppose, challenge, or reject a world by which they feel rejected. They are challenges thrown up in the face of an insensitive deity. But they are essentially only poses, without any possibility of constructively addressing the human condition. They offer no promise of alleviating the suffering, no way out except that of the individual from this painful and unbearable world.
No wonder that the dandy personifies the Romantic’s rage and impotent rebellion. Unable to envisage an objective transformation that would speak to the craving for a lost unity, the dandy creates his unity by aesthetic means. But it is an aesthetic of singularity and negation. “To live and die before a mirror”: that, according to Baudelaire, was the dandy’s slogan. . . .
Up to now man derived his coherence from his Creator. But from the moment that he consecrates his rupture with Him, he finds himself delivered over to the fleeting moment (R, 51-2)7
Here we can see the emergence of the modern concern for novelty. Presupposing a society directed toward the future, and without roots in the life of a sustaining community, increasingly isolated individuals struggle to make their lives significant in the only way that remains possible: by reflection in the eyes of their contemporaries. Not being part of a developing collective drama, they need a strategy for attracting attention to themselves. Without this attention, they are nothing—facing a death that will eternally seal their insignificance. To gain attention they must astonish with the unexpected, the novel. We are here at the center of the pathos of a civilization coming apart at the seams. The dandies live this unraveling in total impotence. The audacity of their efforts seems directly related to the loss of contact with the positive content of the rebellion, and with the natural and social roots that could suggest the direction of a more sustaining response. The dandies would like to correct creation, but can see no way out. But they do suggest the task before the West, as they give expression to its pathos. It is inevitable that others will try to develop a practical program out of this experience.
The positive side of the Romantic rebellion must not be slighted, however. It is true that “by putting emphasis on its powers of defiance and refusal,” the Romantic rebellion forgot “its positive content” (R, 47). Yet Romanticism did point out the impossible position of the individual in a world in which the cosmic order was no longer sufficient. Without a pervasive sense of divine purposefulness, how can we make sense of our life? In the face of a social order undergoing rapid transformation can we still trust in God’s meaning? Where are we to find a rule of life? And how can we come to terms with the uprooting and suffering all around? Both social order and cosmic order are unraveling, without apparent solution. Religion comes into question as the social order that sustained it disintegrates—and as scientific-rationalism subjects religious faith to both withering critical scrutiny and the test of practical efficacy. The entire process found expression in the dramatized struggle of Ivan Karamazov, through which Dostoevsky drew out the logic of this emerging world.
Nietzsche then, according to Camus, draws this vision explicitly up into his own consciousness—thus finally placing us on the metaphysical terrain of the modern era.
IVAN KARAMAZOV
When Camus writes that “Ivan Karamazov incarnates the refusal of salvation,” he is calling attention to the fact that Ivan denies the relevance of any transcendent explanation. “‘If the suffering of children,’ says Ivan, ‘serves to complete the sum of suffering necessary for the acquisition of truth, I affirm from now onward that truth is not worth such a price'” (R, 56). The
rebel affirms a limit and implicitly a human value that must be protected. The question of truth is no longer fundamental. The depth of Ivan’s revolt becomes clear in the affirmation of the even-if with which Ivan incarnates the essential dimension of the rebel’s no: ” ‘I would persist in my indignation even if I were wrong.’ Which means,” writes Camus, “that even if God (or Truth) existed, even if the mystery cloaked a truth . . . Ivan would not admit that truth should be paid for by evil, suffering, and the death of innocents” (R,56).
This rebellion is metaphysical. It is directed against that which denies individuals their humanity. Here Camus sees a progression in the development of rebellion from the Romantic rebels.
Their ambition was to talk to God as one equal to another. Evil was the answer to evil, pride the answer to cruelty. Vigny’s ideal, for example, is to answer silence with silence (R, 55). Ivan goes farther. “He docs not absolutely deny the existence of God,” writes Camus, “he refutes Him in the name of a moral value.” “Ivan Karamazov sides with mankind and stresses human innocence.” He will accept no justification of human suffering, no explanation of the meaning of life that seeks to explain it away. “Faith presumes the acceptance of the mystery and of evil, and resig-nation to injustice”; thus faith is unacceptable. “Ivan will no longer have
recourse to this mysterious God but to a higher principle—namely, Justice. He launches the essential undertaking of rebellion, which is that of replacing the reign of grace by the reign of justice. . . . The struggle between truth and justice is begun here for the first time” (R, 55—6).
Ivan cannot accept a truth based upon a faith that accepts, or is resigned to, unjust suffering. The authentic metaphysical foundation of revolt emerges with Ivan’s rejection of the sacrifice of innocents. Any justification of the suffering of innocents is unacceptable. Without appeal to the transcendent, what then is left as a value? “Life in its most elemental form. … ‘I live,’ says Ivan, ‘in spite of logic'” (R, 57). He knows that the suffering of innocents is unjustifiable, that faith and the promise of salvation cannot provide an answer; and he experiences at the center of his rebellion the irreplaceable value of life. But he cannot draw these together into a coherent pattern, a meaningful if limited rule of action. ” ‘I only know that suffering exists, that no one is guilty, that everything is connected, and that everything passes away and equals out.’ But if there is no virtue,” writes Camus, “there is no law: ‘Everything is permitted,'” Ivan concludes (R, 57).
Although he rejected God and absolute justification, Ivan still seeks an absolute answer. “‘My mind is of this world,’ he said; ‘what good is it to try to understand what is not of this world?’