It might be said, on the contrary, that the important question for Camus —in the spirit of William James—is what these concepts are experienced as. Logical categories or Platonic forms remain to be incarnated. And the act of incarnation is not akin to the metaphor of the wax and the ring. Only with a static conception of time could such an image be tenable. Dynamically considered, the a priori formal determinations mean little without the dialectic of concrete articulation. In response to the orthodox Marxist view of the classless society as the end of history for which present liberties must be sacrificed, Camus writes, “There is no ideal liberty which one day will be suddenly given to us as we receive our pension at the end of our life. There are liberties to be conquered, one by one, painfully; and those that we already have are steps, insufficient to be sure, but steps nevertheless along the road of a concrete liberation” (A/II, 10).
More fundamentally, “We do not believe here in definitive revolutions. All human effort is relative. The unjust law of history is that immense sacrifices are required of man often for ludicrous results. But as slight as the progress of man towards his own truth may be, we believe that it always justifies his sacrifices. We believe exactly in relative revolutions” (Combat, 9/19/44; TRN, 1527).
ENDS-IN-VIEW
The framework for a political program in accordance with the position we have sought to outline was offered by Camus in 1946: The peace movement of which I have spoken would have to be able to gain expression within nations in working communities, and beyond national frontiers in reflective communities. The first, as a result of co-operative contracts determined in accordance with individual wishes, would relieve the greatest possible number of individuals; the second would try to define the values on which this international order will live, while . . . pleading for this order on every occasion.
More precisely, the task of the latter group would be to oppose with clear words the confusions of terror, and … to define the values indispensable to a pacified world. An international code of justice whose first article would be general abolition of the death penalty, a making explicit of those principles necessary for any dialogic civilization, these would be able to be its first objectives. This work would speak to the needs of an age which cannot find in any philosophy the necessary justification of the thirst for friendship for which the western spirit today yearns. But it is clear that it would, not be a matter of constructing a new ideology. It would only be a question of searching for a style of life (A/I, 172-4, my italics).14
Claims to absolute justice or absolute freedom are but extrapolations based upon concrete experiences of justice and freedom. These extrapolations can be maintained as absolute only by being removed from the actual contexts that provide their constant critiques. The problem of ideology, which I have been considering as the negation of the dialogic civilization, is but another way of posing the question of ends and means. Perhaps the fundamental question of political ethics for Camus, that of the legitimation of murder, is precisely this question of justifying the means by the ends. The claim of ideology being that of an absolute insight that transcends time, the only practical question concerns the certainty and speed with which the assured values are instituted. The question of efficacy alone remains. Camus concludes:
Terror is only legitimate if one admits the principle: “the end justifies the means.” And this principle can be admitted only if the efficacy of an action is posed as an absolute end, as is the case with nihilistic ideologies (everything is permitted, all that matters is success), or with the philosophers who make an absolute of history (Hegel, then Marx: the end being the classless society, everything is good which leads to it) (A/I, 150).
Lenin explicitly drew this conclusion. Camus summarizes this point in The Rebel and levels the essential critique.
When the end is absolute, that is to say, historically speaking, when it is believed certain of realization, one can go as far as sacrificing others. When it is not, one can only sacrifice oneself in the engagement of a struggle for common dignity. The end justifies the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To this question which historical thought leaves hanging, revolt answers: the means (R, 292; L’HR, 361).
Ends, which are only ideas conceived by individuals within the context
of their experience, become hypostatized, taken out of, and isolated from, that concrete flux. An experienced idea—certainly in its psychological basis —gains content from empirical situations, is limited by perspectives, and is subject to transformation resulting from the flow of events, needs, and purposes. Such an idea is of an end or goal—in John Dewey’s words, an end-in-view. It is a hoped-for goal, a projection of the ideal possibilities inherent in the present situation in view of our purposes and needs. In short, an end-in-view can never be an ultimate; it is always part of present experience, having claim over that experience only in light of its purposeful nature and its grasp of present tendencies. It is not so much a revelation of transcendent Truth as a means to meaningful and effective present action. It therefore remains always revisable in the light of novel experiences. It opens out to the future rather than closing us off” from it. It is ultimately always relative to that future—which is nothing more than the permanent possibility of novel presents.
The problem with ideology is that involved with any absolute commitment to a proposed end as the justification of present action. The only justification for the commitment to such an end would be a transempirical leap, an insight that does not receive its justification in experience, whatever may have been its origin. Not receiving its justification in experience, it is not capable of refutation by experience. As a source of values transcending experience it reduces the latter as a point of validation to irrelevance. It thus constitutes a permanent and irreparable breach in temporal experience considered as a permanent possibility of meaning.
An end as a final entity to which all is to be subordinated, as in an ideology, is therefore but a hypostatization of such a limited idea. When the idea is taken out of the context of discussion and correction, it is made sacred. This is the root of ideology. This reification turns historical products into universal Truths. The fixation on an abstraction from experience has the result when pushed of depriving experience of its vitality in favor of the life of the idea, which life becomes its logic—that is, an ideo-logy. This process of reification, which Marx called thingafication, is the essence of the notion of alienation. It constitutes the end of dialogue. Ideology, says Camus, “reigns over a universe of things, not of men” (R, 292; L’HR, 360).
Camus claims that the absolutization of knowledge involves the destruction of our vital tie to experience. Experience can be meaningful and fruitful only to the extent that knowledge is relativized and opened to the flow of time. “In history, considered as an absolute, violence finds itself legitimized; as a relative risk, it is . . . a rupture of communication” (R, 291—2; L’HR, 360).
“The truth is that no one, neither individual nor party, has a right to absolute power or to lasting privileges in a history that is itself changing.”
A DIALOGIC CIVILIZATION
If there is an absolute for Camus, it is an absolute of evidence grounded in human possibilities. It is an absolute given; its significance remains hypothetical and nonexclusive with respect to others, but it defines the range of our commitment. If experience is to prove fruitful, thought must be relativized and corrigible. “Persuasion demands leisure,” observes Camus, “and friendship a structure that will never be completed” (R, 247). We are recalled once again to the definition of dialogue: an open inquiry among persons. The persons are the basic unit; the inquiry seeks to achieve and to maintain guidelines for interaction; while the openness refers to the recognition and acceptance of the permanent possibility of novelty entering into human
experience.
The political problem therefore becomes that of seeking to institutionalize, first, the method of inquiry; and second, its always provisional and pragmatically considered results. The freedom, dignity, and growth of the person and the collectivity are the reference points and limits of action. To pose the problems outside these limits is to remove the discussion from the ethical dimension.
The institutionalization of the method of dialogue just referred to is what Camus means by democracy. He has written: “Justice implies rights. Rights imply the liberty to defend them. In order to act, man has to speak. We know what we are defending. … I am speaking for a society which does not impose silence” (A/I, 229).
Such an act requires a commitment to values that transcend the purely political. The commitment to democracy is at bottom just such a politically transcending commitment to the human community. “The democrat, after all, is the one who admits that the adversary may be right, who permits him to express himself, and who agrees to reflect upon his arguments” (A/I, 125).15