Coming Back to the Absurd: Albert Camus's the Myth of Sisyphus 80 Years on (Value Inquiry Book / Studies in Existentialism, Hermeneutics, and Phenomenology, 380) 9004526757, 9789004526754

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Coming Back to the Absurd

Value Inquiry Book Series Founding Editor Robert Ginsberg Editor-​in-​Chief J.D. Mininger

volume 380

Studies in Existentialism, Hermeneutics, and Phenomenology Series Editor Mark Letteri (University of Windsor) Editorial Board Peter Durno Murray (University of Sydney) Janusz A. Polanowski (Nashville State Community College)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vibs and brill.com/se

Coming Back to the Absurd Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus 80 Years On Edited by

Peter Francev and Maciej Kałuża

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Image courtesy of Peter Francev, 2022. The Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data is available online at https://​cata​log.loc.gov lc record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/2022045882​

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 0929-​8 436 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​5 2675-​4 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​5 2676-​1 (e-​book) Copyright 2023 by Peter Francev and Maciej Kałuża. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents  Notes on Contributors vii Introduction 1 Peter Francev and Maciej Kałuża 1  Sickness, Heartache, Punishment, and War: Lessons on the Absurd, or Birth of an Ethic 13 Meaghan Emery 2  The Myth of Sisyphus, the Absurd, and the Question of Empathy 31 Peter Francev 3  Benjamin Fondane and Albert Camus: Reason and the Absurd 53 Bruce Baugh 4  Revolt, Absurdity, and the Artist as Sisyphus 72 Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray 5  The Metaphorical Language of the Absurd 93 Sophie Bastien 6  Why Did the Stranger Kill the Arab? A Camusian Study in the Absurdity of Moral Motivation 115 George Heffernan 7  The Blood That Trickles from the Gospels Is the Color of Printers’ Ink: The Relationship between Religious Texts and the Absurd 139 Eric B. Berg 8  Unlikely Heroism: Sisyphus, Camus, and the Absurd Posture 156 Matthew Bowker 9  Explanation and the Unreasonable Silence of the World 176 Craig DeLancey

vi Contents 10  Sisyphus in Hell: The Absurd Thought against (New) Fascism 202 Samantha Novello  Bibliography 219  Index 232

Notes on Contributors Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray lectures at King’s University College (uwo) in Canada, for the departments of philosophy and social justice & peace studies (which includes the gender, sexuality, and women’s studies program). She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Camus Studies, treasurer for and a founding member of The North American Society for Early Phenomenology (nasep) and scientific advisory board member for the new journal of nasep –​Phenomenological Investigations. Her current research in phenomenology investigates the ontology of negation, and in other projects she is exploring the relationship between social justice and art/​ artists. Her current list of interests include: tattoo culture and history, women of Dadaism, art of the avant-​garde and anti-​art movements, and the philosophical works of Adolf Reinach, Johannes, Daubert, Benjamin Fondane, Lev Shestov, and Günter Anders. She has published several articles and chapters on the phenomenology of Adolf Reinach, and a variety of printed pieces on the absurd and Albert Camus. E-​mail: [email protected]. Sophie Bastien is Full Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada (in Kingston, Ontario). She edited the issue entitled La Scène surréaliste in L’Annuaire théâtral (59, 2016), and co-​edited three collections of essays: Camus, l’artiste (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015), Le Surréalisme et les arts du spectacle (Lausanne, L’Âge d’homme, 2014), and La Passion du théâtre. Camus à la scène (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2011). Her monograph Caligula et Camus. Interférences transhistoriques won in 2007 the Association of Canadian University French Professors Award. She published some sixty articles and chapters, co-​organized several multidisciplinary conferences, and was the president of the Société québécoise d’études théâtrales (sqet) from 2015 to 2018. E-​mail: [email protected]. Bruce Baugh is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy, History, and Politics at Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops, British Columbia). His most recent book is Philosophers’ Walks (Routledge, 2021). Previous books include French Hegel: From Surrealism to Postmodernism (Routledge, 2003) and his translation of Benjamin Fondane’s Existential Monday. Philosophical Essays (nyrb Classics, 2016). He has published numerous articles on philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger, Benjamin Fondane, Jacques Derrida, Hegel,

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Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Jean-​Paul Sartre. He lives in Kamloops. E-​mail: [email protected]. Eric B. Berg holds a Masters degree from Luther Seminary, St. Paul Minnesota, a Doctorate from the University of Kansas and a two time research fellow at the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College. He is currently a member of the philosophy faculty at Bemidji State University, Bemidji, Minnesota, and the author and manager of the podcast Albert Camus Radio. E-​mail: [email protected]. Matthew Bowker is a professor in the Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Program at suny, University at Buffalo. He is the author of numerous books and essays on psychoanalytic political theory including Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity (Routledge). E-​mail: [email protected]. Craig DeLancey is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Oswego. His publications include Passionate Engines (Oxford University Press) and Consciousness as Complete Event (Routledge). E-​mail: craig.delancey@oswego .edu. Meaghan Emery Associate Professor of French at the University of Vermont, specializes in 20th-​ and 21st-​century French and Francophone literature, cinema, and culture with a particular focus on intellectual resistance and collaboration during the Second World War, decolonization, and contemporary French narrative. Her book The Algerian War Retold: Of Camus’s Revolt and Postwar Reconciliation (Routledge, 2020), focuses on the legacy of Albert Camus and the philosophical paradigms of resistance and revolution used by contemporary authors and filmmakers when speaking about the still controversial and hitherto state-​ censored events of the Algerian War. Her scholarly articles have been published in the Athenaeum Review, Contemporary French Civilization, Fiction and Film for Scholars of France, French Cultural Studies, French Historical Studies, H-​France Salon, and the Journal of Camus Studies. She is currently working on a new monograph, which focuses on the erotic subject in postcolonial literature and contemporary works from the Francophone world. E-​mail: Meaghan [email protected].

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Peter Francev is an Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) at Victor Valley College, where he is the chairperson of the English Department. He is the editor of the Journal of Camus Studies and has published widely on Camus and Lord Byron. He is currently working on monograph on the topic of Camus and empathy (for Brill), and when he is not researching or writing, he enjoys learning to play the piano and viola, as well as spending time with his children and his partner Julia whilst they discuss the intersections of art, politics, history and philosophy. E-​mail: [email protected]. George Heffernan is Professor of Philosophy at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. He received his B.A. and M.A. from The Catholic University of America and his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne. He specializes in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism, and concentrates on evidence, understanding, and meaning. His publications include Bedeutung und Evidenz bei Edmund Husserl (Bouvier, 1983), Isagoge in die phänomenologische Apophantik (Kluwer, 1989), René Descartes: Regulae ad directionem ingenii/​Rules for the Direction of the Natural Intelligence: A Bilingual Edition of the Cartesian Treatise on Method (Rodopi, 1998/​Brill, 2014), “A Tale of Two Schisms: Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s Move into Transcendental Idealism”, in The European Legacy (2016), “Camus and Husserl and the Phenomenologists”, in Brill’s Companion to Camus: Camus among the Philosophers (Brill, 2020), and “Phenomenology, Psychology, and Ideology: A New Look at the Life and Work of Else Voigtländer”, in Phenomenological Investigations 1 (2021). His research has been supported by the Basselin Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Order of Saint Augustine. He is completing an edition of Augustine’s Contra Academicos vel De Academicis/​ Against the Academics or On the Academics that addresses the perennial issues raised by Hellenistic skepticism, revised by Cartesian rationalism, and revisited by contemporary epistemology. E-​mail: [email protected]. Maciej Kałuża is Lecturer at Cracow University of Economics. Author of two books on Camus’s philosophy and co-editor of two collections of essays: From the Absurd to Revolt: Dynamics in Albert Camus’s Thought (Jagiellonian University Press, 2017) and Brill’s Companion to Camus: Camus among the Philosophers (Brill, 2020). He is the founder and President of the Polish Albert Camus Society and on the editorial board of the Journal of Camus Studies. E-mail: [email protected].

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Samantha Novello teaches Philosophy and History. MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge (UK), Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute (Florence) and Ph.D. in Political Thought. Theory and History at the Università degli Studi di Torino, she edited Albert Camus-​ Nicola Chiaromonte, Correspondance (1945–​59) (Gallimard, 2019) and co-​edited volumes i and iii of the new Pléiade edition of Albert Camus’s Œuvres complètes (Gallimard, 2006 and 2008). She is the author of Albert Camus as Political Thinker. Nihilisms and the Politics of Contempt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and of various articles in French, Italian and English on Albert Camus’s ethical and political thought. E-​mail: [email protected].

Introduction Peter Francev and Maciej Kałuża 1

Can We Still Imagine Sisyphus Happy?

The task of introducing the reader to this volume is certainly a difficult one. It very rarely happens that one possesses the talent of introducing to the volume with such skill, as Albert Camus. Almost everybody who has read The Outsider may agree that he was the master of introductory lines. Alas, hardly anyone may forget the initial impact of words, that open the Absurd reasoning: There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. It immediately follows that the essence of the Camusian pensée is far from abstraction, and rooted in the existential tradition of human centered approach. The task Camus has undertaken stems from awareness of severe cognitive limitations of the asking subject. These limitations are additionally enforced by Camus’s stubborn decision not to resign from such a human-​centered and limited approach. Such ‘bracketing out’ may have been –​and almost instantly was –​criticized and condemned as a form of implicitly introducing nihilism, by Camus’s theistic counterpart Gabriel Marcel. Nevertheless, it seems that Camus firmly believed that he is simply offering ‘merely the description, in the pure state, of an intellectual malady’. Such a phenomenological stance might not have allowed to broaden the description with anything else than criticism of answering through and by eternal values, transforming the serious initial question to a rhetorical one. Camus also noted that he is not inventing, but studying a phenomenon, ‘an absurd sensitivity that can be found widespread in the age—​and not with an absurd philosophy which our time, properly speaking, has not known’. In such a claim, Camus was far from isolated: French intellectuals at the time were engaged in a widespread debate, the ‘Bad masters quarrel’ accusing writers, poets and philosophers of poisoning the souls of the nation with philosophy of despair, leading, among others, to the military catastrophe of 1940. Instead of lamenting, like all generations have, on the scandalous disobedience of the young to the values of the old, Camus wanted to focus on the most disturbing aspect of the absurd, he felt, as represented by the literary figure of Kirilov from Dostoevsky.

© Peter Francev and Maciej Kałuża, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_002

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The Myth of Sisyphus was (and still is), read as an analysis of using logic in decision-​making process, regarding living on, or resigning from life by sheer act of suicide, making the absurd one of most disturbing representations of philosophy in practice. It may be that from an ethical standpoint, the question, whether life is or is not worth living is, in itself, far too abstract, to allow for a serious consideration, as it implicitly assumes that solving the issue in the realm of logic and reasoning will suffice. It may be that the context of the asking person is essential, and one can hardly separate the question from the situation of the asking person, his gender, culture, health and many other factors. On the essayistic level, however, Camus’s stubborn resignation from eternal values along with his firm refusal to follow, like Caligula, the logic of absurd to the very end, have made him, and his Sisyphus remarkably interesting, leading to many, many excellent philosophical, ethical, and literary resonations.1 It would seem unsatisfactory, however, to claim that because of the resonance (and criticism)2 of the philosophical theme, we should simply study it further, adding to countless books, and articles, published so far. There seems to be much more of an urgency, given our context and times, in the decision to celebrate the 80th anniversary of publication of The Myth of Sisyphus. Hardly anyone in 2022 would agree that the world, which was depicted as indifferent and distant to human struggles in 1942 can still be seen as such. As Dale Jamieson remarked: ‘Climate change confronts us with questions of global justice, of how to live, of how to think about science and policy, and of how to move ourselves and others to act’.3 It may have been that the world responded with silence to human questions about the meaning of life. But it seems to be shouting at us today, calling for action, for solidarity and care for the natural environment. In this context, the feeling of absurd Camus described, seems to resonate well to our growing anxiety, caused by alarming news about carbon dioxide, Earth’s temperature and sea-​level. Shortly after the publication of his Sisyphus, Camus wrote his Letters to a German Friend. He noted, that conquest of Nazi-​Germany was, at the heart, initiated by the same feeling of absurd, the French experienced in difficult interwar period. But one of possible ways of revolting against absurdity, Camus

1 See George Heffernan, ‘The Meaningless Life is Not Worth Living: Critical Reflections on Marcel’s Critique of Camus’, (Raleigh: Lulu Press, 2016), pp. 53–​100. 2 See John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960). 3 See, Dale Jamieson, ‘‘The Philosophers’ Symposium on Climate Change’, Critical Inquiry. 43.3 (Spring 2008). (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 612–​619. https://​www.jstor .org/​sta​ble/​10.1086/​589​483.

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noted, was ‘not to let yourself be “possessed” by the absurd, in any case, is to seek no advantage from it’4 The political reaction to the absurd –​Camus had warned –​results in contempt of intelligence and affirmation of efficacy.5 Both of these features may well be seen today in the global rise of populism and far-​ right political movements. Camus consequently developed his ideas to search for a remedy in renunciation (but not: resignation), in limiting one’s desires and ambitions for the sake of common good and in dialogue and solidarity with others. Such advice, in the era of post-​truth seems not only timely. It seems to be urgent, as being ‘possessed’ by the absurd seems to limit the possibility of communication. It seems to be urgent also, because the contempt for intelligence which Camus saw as one of dangerous consequences of the absurd, almost certainly may lead us back to watching political debates, where the winner simply shouts louder. Finally, what seems to change entirely our perception of Camus’s essay nowadays is not only the political plague of post-​ truth and nihilism but the fact of living in the global pandemic, in isolation and fear for life, accompanying us since 2020. When enumerating ways, in which we may experience the absurd, Camus remarked: ‘Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show’.6 So many of us today may relate to this experience after lockdowns. We have been seeing people we care about only on our phone or laptop screens; our brothers and sisters separated by hospital windows. A virus has alienated us from each other, teaching us to maintain social distance, to remain vigilant, to avoid others. At the very core, for the last two years we have been experiencing not a pandemic, but absurd.

…

Merleau-​Ponty –​who, shortly after the war, will be violently criticized by Camus for his political essays –​inspired many generations of thinkers to closely study

4 ‘The only way not to let yourself be “possessed” by the absurd, in any case, is to seek no advantage from it. It’s best to turn away. And sometimes, I admit […] that one of the conclusions is a certain renunciation’ Albert Camus and Jean Grenier, Correspondence 1932–​1960, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), p. 60. 5 See Samantha Novello, Albert Camus as Political Thinker: Nihilisms and the Politics of Contempt, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 6 Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. (New York: Vintage, 1991 [1955]), p. 11.

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the subject of analysis in its multiple relations with the environment. Camus’s essay may easily be understood as a work, limited to the time and space of the French intellectual current, shaped by: Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Marxism and Existentialism. Hundreds of pages were written, to ground the place of Camus’s absurd next (or against) the philosophical conception of Sartre, his ties with existential phenomenology and other philosophical conceptions of that time. In such view, rethinking Camus’s essay is predominantly of historical value, appreciable mainly by academics.7 Others, like Benatar or Nagel, treat Sisyphus as a starting point for own reflections on the question of the meaning of life, developing, rather than situating the debate around the conception of the absurd, which Camus himself treated rather as a starting point, not a conclusive element of his philosophical journey. With different ways of understanding absurdity, quite obviously, conclusions differ, leading Nagel to a much more stoic approach to the ‘cosmic insignificance’. Benatar seems to have gone in the opposite direction, judging that living with the consequence of awareness of life, suffering and inescapable death may lead to conclusions opposite to what Camus could have agreed to.8 Much has also been written about the role of the writer or an artist, whom Camus portrays as an important figure for communicating the problem of absurdity by means of art, provoking scholars to devote special attention to the literature of the absurd, treating the feeling of absurdity as an aesthetic, rather than purely ethical or existential experience. Interestingly, however, the discussion of the book in the Marxist or post-​ Marxist surrounding is rather scarce. Such an observation may be considered even stranger given the special place Simone Weil had in Camus’s thought. If we focus on Camus’s chosen, mythical character, this observation becomes even more curious. Sisyphus, as seen by Camus, derives his most notable (and famous) experience of accepting and revolting against absurd (accepting his condition while rebelling against consolation coming from outside of his condition) from labor. It is from seemingly endless, repetitive work that Camus’s hero gains consciousness and, finally existential freedom, allowing him to find a way to live meaningfully (or, a meaningful life, see George Heffernan). Labor, like the absurd, is between consciousness and the world, Sisyphus and the 7 Out of plethora of books, on Camus’ thought in relation to existentialism, Jonathan Webber (2018) seems to have made an excellent case and argumentation for why Camus was very distant to Sartre (or Beauvoir) view and understanding of human existence. 8 See David Benatar, ‘Suicide is Sometimes Rational and Morally Defensible’ in Exploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives. Ed. Michael Chobli and Travis Timmerman. (New York: Routledge, 2020) pp. 217–​223.

Introduction

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stone: without the possibility to perform his seemingly useless job, Sisyphus would be condemned to immobility, to boredom; to an existential impasse of not having a moment to decide, whether to continue or surrender. Camus observers, in the presentation of different moments that initiate the feeling of absurdity: ‘Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows’. ‘The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn’, making Camus’s Sisyphus a mindful, conscious worker confronting his unsurpassable condition, rather than an artist, resisting his fate by creation. And whilst each of our excellent, invited authors will give you a different answer, as to why we came back to The Myth of Sisyphus 80 years after the publication of the essay, we would like to add here another one we have recently debated. Many of us, forced to experience the pandemic and lockdowns, looked for an analogy between our situation and The Plague. In contrast, what we think is happening now, in times of ‘disappearance of labor’ and the development of ‘intelligent capitalism’ makes re-​reading The Myth of Sisyphus especially interesting and thought provoking.9 Will we still be able to imagine Sisyphus happy, when his heroic, conscious effort is followed by the vision of him being replaced by “intelligent” machine, taking over his mundane, repetitive task? Or, on the contrary, will technology and science weaken our feeling of absurdity, by taking away the repetitive work, giving us more time for creation, art and finding meaningful lives? The reality of Sisyphus of 1942 was the reality of industrialism and political violence; genocide performed on industrial scale and with industrial means, making his confrontation a revolt of human dignity, confronted with the cold silent and possibly meaningless world. Camus believed that to win, one has to confront this silence, to break this silence, and (Combat pp. 44–​45) uncover the lies of ideologies, tied with political realism. His rebellion, initially levelled against metaphysics and suicide, gradually became more occupied with murder and politics. In both cases, Camus noted, courage is essential to act;

9 See Zhao Wei and Michael A. Peters. “Intelligent capitalism’ and the disappearance of labour: Whitherto education’? in Educational Philosophy and Theory. (51.8). pp. 757–​766.

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awareness does not suffice. And while such rebellion, against both social and metaphysical absurdity10 is born in isolation of human consciousness, it (Je me revolte), it aims at solidarity with others (donc nous sommes) David Carroll perceptively noted, that ‘Le Mythe says nothing more as to where such a proletarian consciousness could lead in the case of the worker, however, especially if he were to join with others in active protest and then resistance’. In this aspect, reading The Myth without The Rebel seems incomplete and demands continuation in the study of the intersubjective realm of human fraternity and solidarity. But even if for Camus, the outcome of the absurd is to be found in rebellion, he quickly acknowledges that such a rebellion must rest on both negation (saying no to someone or something) and affirmation (affirming the truth, the bond between humans). In 1942, he seemed not ready yet to provide anything more than outlines of such a solution. But he was fully aware that such a state must require constant attention, and resistance to withdraw from the tension, caused by the tension between the desire to live meaningfully and the difficulty of finding such meaning in life. An introduction to a volume, dedicated to Camus’s study of the absurd would be pointless without noting, what consequences of the absurd Camus arrived at himself, after the publication of the essay. And it seems equally important to note, that separation of absurd from his later works is detrimental to the perception and understanding of his oeuvre. In 1940 when drafting the essay, Camus certainly had more questions than answers. But in his later works, he clearly underlined, that the experience he described in The Myth if Sisyphus was never a final position: ‘Written fifteen years ago, in 1940, amid the French and European disaster, this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism. In all the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this direction’.11 It is not an isolated statement. The essay Le Meurtre et L’absurde,12 later integrated as the introduction to The Rebel, contains confirmation that it is both possible and necessary to move beyond nihilism in search for meaning. The same statement is also presented in less-​known but propably most important lyrical essay on the absurd, The Enigma (1950):

10

As Camus will note later, that the transition from solitary to solidary revolt is one of most important themes of his best-​known book, The Plague: The Plague does, beyond any possible discussion, represent the transition from an attitude of solitary revolt to the recognition of a community whose struggles must be shared. (lace, Letter to Roland Barthes 1955). 11 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (Preface), p. x. 12 See, oc iii, pp. 344–​350.

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… in the experience which interested me, and which I happened to write about, the absurd can be considered only as a point of departure—​ even though the memory and feeling of it still accompany the further advances. (…) how can one limit oneself to saying that nothing has meaning and that we must plunge into absolute despair? Without getting to the bottom of things, one can at least mention that just as there is no absolute materialism, since merely to form this word is already to acknowledge something in the world apart from matter, there is likewise no total nihilism. The moment you say that everything is nonsense you express something meaningful. Refusing the world all meaning amounts to abolishing all value judgments. But living, and eating, for example, are in themselves value judgments.13 Coming but to the absurd may then be seen as coming back to the doubt, that is a necessary first step for further development of a more positive answer. In an unpublished draft, Camus wrote down: ‘The existential philosophy is the recognition and acceptance of the absurd. But the absurd should have been recognized, but not accepted’.14 Taking this judgment into consideration, Sisyphus never comes back to his stone in full acceptance of fate. He comes back, but with a new, redefined meaning of the world, of the stone and of himself: this is what allows us to imagine him happy. Our coming back to Sisyphus and to the absurd should have, and most certainly has accomplished this. Rather than being an acceptance of an agreeable vision of the absurd, we offer to the reader a multidimensional view of the absurd, taken from the perspectives of different scholars, different fields of thought. What binds them, we firmly believe, is the conviction that we all agree with Camus on one issue: if the absurd is –​as he claimed –​a serious philosophical problem relating to real-​life experience, it demands constant attention and hopefully a possibility of transgression. Let us see, in the second part of this introduction, how such movement beyond the absurd is understood by our most-​valued colleagues and friends. 2

Sisyphus at 80: The Essays

The following collection of essays mark some of the dynamic research that is currently be conducted within the field of Camus studies. In recent years the 13

Lyrical and Critical Essays. Camus made a very similar observation already in 1943, in a letter to Pierre Bonnel (1943) (See oc i, 320). 14 See, oc I, 317.

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annual conference has helped germinate the ideas for some of these papers, and the field has grown considerably (despite the setbacks incurred due to the global covid-​19 pandemic) and fostered new avenues for research, discussion and friendly debate (among these is Eric Berg’s podcast ‘Albert Camus Radio’). The scholars before you are some of the brightest minds within Camus studies and their approaches to The Myth of Sisyphus reflects the diversity of thought and perceptions of understanding from where we come in our appreciation for what Camus was trying to do with his philosophical essay. He was not, by any circumstances, trying to establish a foothold within the budding development of Existentialism (In fact, Camus famously argued that he was not a philosopher.), and while the authors here will not engage in that debate what we see, as a collective whole, is a work that is fundamentally trying to guide its reader within the parameters of absurdism. The essays before you illustrate the ways in which one can explore Camus’s absurdist philosophy by utilising The Myth as a ‘guidebook’ (if you will) to exploring and understanding this most relevant of humanistic philosophies. The collection begins with Meaghan Emery’s essay ‘Sickness, Heartache, Punishment, and War: Lessons on the Absurd, or Birth of an Ethic’. Here, Emery examines Camus’s early life and the circumstances surrounding his life that would enable the earliest of ideas to be planted in his mind. These ideas would then grow into The Myth. If life amounted to suffering for Albert Camus in 1936 and 1937, when he was formulating the ideas that would be central to his oeuvre on the absurd, then rising above suffering through resistance and love –​without completely being relieved of it –​is perhaps where his ethics lie. Eager to become a writer, but for whom tuberculosis had precluded brilliant university studies, Camus would nonetheless go on to engage with the most important issues of his time: colonialism and racism, antisemitism, the demise of the Spanish and French Republics, and world war. His personal life, however, would cause him the most heartache. Just at the moment when the meaning of life appeared to elude him, faced with a failing marriage. For in a world where one is condemned to suffer and die, which Camus believed to be an imminent sentence, suicide is an act of freedom. It is also potentially an act of sacrifice. However, as the first section of The Myth makes clear, the essay is not a philosophical reflection on whether to live but rather how to live. The ultimate question the essay raises, therefore, is what to do with one’s freedom when death is the only absolute. Camus begins his philosophical essay on the absurdity of life by approaching suicide as a conscious act. In his formulation of the literary genre that he would pursue, and his fiction come to embody, the search for meaning in a godless world was nothing less than a courageous quest. Emery argues that

Introduction

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Camus takes as his point of departure this indefinable or indescribable feeling that made him alert to the precariousness of life’s meaning and which ultimately led him to a purpose. For Camus, the absurd quest for creative self-​ realization as a writer had taken form when he was studying philosophy at university. Demonstrating that Camus seeks to avoid the ‘leap of faith’ taken up by Kierkegaard, Emery argues that he lays out his thoughts and ambition and specifically explores his own limitations which had to be overcome, or ‘conquered’ as she traces the emotional connection to the absurd. Continuing with the ‘emotional connection’, Peter Francev’s ‘The Myth of Sisyphus, the Absurd, and the Question of Empathy’ seeks to establish a connection between Edith Stein’s phenomenology of empathy and Camus’s philosophy of the absurd. Whilst there is no mention of the empathy or ethics of Edith Stein (1891–​1942) in the fiction and non-​fiction of Albert Camus (1913–​1960), one can easily surmise that Camus, being a part of the Parisian café scene during the years leading up to, including and beyond the second world war, would have encountered some discussions of Stein’s thought through Jean-​Paul Sartre (1905–​1980), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–​1986) or Maurice Merleau-​Ponty (1908–​1961), prior to his falling out with both men. Whilst these two philosophies appear mutually exclusive of one another, Francev contends that one can examine Camus’s absurdist philosophy from a Steinian phenomenological point of view and makes the case that these ideas can be taken together in order to see the absurd from an empathetic point of view. Bruce Baugh’s essay ‘Benjamin Fondane and Albert Camus: Reason and the Absurd’ continues the pattern of exploring the interconnected relationships that help shape Camus’s thought, especially those related to the absurd. In June 1943, Albert Camus paid a visit to the Romanian expatriate Benjamin Fondane. The young Camus had recently attracted the literary world’s attention with two books published the previous year: The Stranger and his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. Fondane, for his part, was by then a well-​known poet and exponent of the existential philosophy that forms the background to Camus’s essay, most notably in his 1936 book, The Unhappy Consciousness. The two men would have had a lot to talk about, not least the philosophy of Lev Shestov, sharply criticized by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, and vigorously defended throughout Fondane’s philosophical works. Baugh goes on to point out that had both men lived to meet each other again, after World War ii, then it is possible that Fondane would have help persuade Camus to soften his tone against Shestov, that, really, both men were aiming to achieve the same thing –​a philosophy of existence, rather than a philosophy of existentialism as posited by Heidegger and Sartre.

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Francev and Kałuża

Next comes Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray’s essay ‘Revolt, Absurdity, and the Artist as Sisyphus’. Here, she will argue that the necessary groundwork for ‘Create Dangerously’ was crafted in the pages of Myth –​specifically, in the three consequences drawn from the absurd: revolt, freedom, and passion. She then connects these two works thematically; after a brief discussion of the absurd, the essay will explore absurd art and the absurd artist –​the one who is supposed to take risks, envision better alternatives, and thereby thrust society forward by unsettling the status quo. For Camus, the artist must be truthful, and truth is always dangerous, ‘To create today means to create dangerously. Every publication is a deliberate act, and that act makes us vulnerable to the passions of a century that forgives nothing’. The artist must draw attention to the social issues that crush and divide us, and this means she or he must be immersed in the reality of their time, to wrestle from it something timeless that can be understood by the audience as universal, and as beacon for change. The greatest hope lies in artists’ obligation to their own freedom, which is also bound to that of others –​present and future. The artist, much like Sisyphus, is an absurd hero but unlike the Greek tragic figure, the artist lives and struggles amongst us, and brings us along with each push forward. Finally, it should be noted that Baltzer-​Jaray’s essay is one of the first to examine ‘Create Dangerously’ in English, and it will no doubt foster new scholarship within the field. ‘The Metaphorical Language of the Absurd’ by Sophie Bastien examines the metaphorical language that Albert Camus used to express the absurd, and then the reclamation of that language by another writer, Samuel Beckett. It is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on The Myth of Sisyphus, the theoretical reference for the concept of the absurd, and identifies three main metaphors that Camus regularly employed to develop this concept throughout his essay: the theatre, the desert and the walls. The second part of the study looks at Camus’s works of fiction in the cycle of the absurd. It demonstrates that The Stranger and the plays Caligula and The Misunderstanding apply the same three metaphors. Finally, the last part of the study examines the treatment of these metaphors by a major playwright in the second half of the 20th century. Bastien’s essay provides a nice balance between the analysis of language and a comparative study on Camus and Beckett, who clearly influenced the French-​ Algerian author. ‘Why Did the Stranger Kill the Arab? A Study in the Absurdity of Moral Motivation’ by George Heffernan continues the concentrated analysis of The Stranger and provides an added dimension to its analysis by looking at Meursault’s motives in killing the Arab on the beach. During his interrogation, the examining magistrate repeatedly asks Meursault why he first fired one shot at the Arab, then paused for a short time, and finally fired four more shots into

Introduction

11

the motionless body lying on the beach. Meursault has no answer to the magistrate’s question. Rather, he thinks that the magistrate is wrong to focus on it because it really does not matter. Yet Meursault learns at his trial that his pause is crucial because it makes all the difference between a case of self-​defense and a case of premeditated murder, as well as that it has profound existential implications and legal-​moral consequences. Heffernan thoroughly and methodically examines several plausible answers to the question of why Meursault not only shot but also killed the Arab and explores the roles of rationality and absurdity in human moral motivation. Following Heffernan’s essay, Eric Berg asks readers ‘What is it about Camus that harnesses such a strong grip on Christian theologians and on Christian apologetics?’ This thought-​ provoking question is the basis for his essay ‘The Blood that Trickles from The Gospels Is the Color of Printers’ Ink: The Relationship Between Religious Texts and the Absurd’. Berg’s essay is the only one in this collection that looks to rectify the theist and atheistic positions in finding some common ground within the absurd. It seems there is an unusually strong bond between Christianity and Camus and Berg argues that beyond the intentional, relentless, Christian imagery and language Camus uses in his work, it is the relationship between his fundamental concept of the absurd, best articulated in The Myth of Sisyphus, and the historical construction of the foundational texts of the Christian faith, The Gospels. By way of this relationship, they both articulate the same unique metaphysic. Berg’s essay is a desperately needed addition to the field of Christianity and Camus and will be of interest to all readers. Matthew Bowker’s essay ‘Unlikely Heroism: Sisyphus, Camus, and the Absurd Posture’ looks to re-​establish the myth of Sisyphus for a new generation of scholars. Looking well-​beyond the myth, as outlined at the end of Camus’s essay, Bowker seeks to establish a connection with Greek mythology as a way for the reader to understand where Camus obtains his ideas that ultimately culminate in using the Sisyphean myth as the groundwork for his absurdist philosophy. Next is the essay ‘Explanation and The Unreasonable Silence of the World’, by Craig DeLancy. Here, DeLancy offers an analytic philosophical interpretation of The Myth. DeLancy holds that some of Camus’s concerns are teleological, and some of them are epistemic. The teleological accounts of the absurd concern purpose, and our sense that we lack a justified or sufficient purpose. Camus also makes use of a teleological approach when he uses the term ‘absurd’ to refer to a passion or experience. He describes a tension, a struggle, between our desire for a sufficient purpose, and a recognition that history and the universe are without purpose, but, in contrast to these teleological uses, Camus also

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Francev and Kałuża

makes an explicit argument that the absurd is our inability to understand the world. This epistemic absurd he describes as a failure of ‘rationality’. DeLancy continues by looking at these two different approaches to the absurd which present readers with a problem: they appear independent. Therefore, DeLancy asks ‘Can we then reconcile Camus’s two approaches? Or is he using diverse and independent notions of the ‘absurd’ in The Myth of Sisyphus?’ In this essay, he will argue that we can reconcile Camus’s approaches. Although they are distinct, and some aspects of his account are indeed independent of others, readers can reconcile the teleological and epistemic notions of the absurd by recognizing the central importance of teleological (often called ‘functional’) explanation in our everyday lives. By using this account of teleological explanation, DeLancy shows how the teleological and epistemic accounts of the absurd are fundamentally related. The final essay in the collection is ‘Sisyphus in Hell: the Absurd Through Against (New) Fascism’, by Samantha Novello. Novello seeks to challenge the political philosophical input of The Myth by delineating ‘Absurd Thought’ as a phenomenological method of rational agency for resisting against phenomena of emotional contagion and mimetic behaviour which plague the political sphere coalescing in the contemporary phenomenon of (new) fascism. The first part of Novello’s essay examines Maurice Blanchot’s interpretation of The Myth by focusing in particular on the image of Hell as negation of the political community founded by the rebellious act. The second part of her essay explores the affinities and differences between Georges Bataille’s and Camus’s understanding of freedom. Finally, in the third part, Novello’s contribution dwells on the role played by emotional acts in our capacity for revolt, bringing the phenomenological matrix of the ‘Absurd Thought’ as theorised in The Myth to the forefront of contemporary consciousness. As you can see the field of Camus studies is alive and vibrant, and with each of these essays scholars have relied on their areas of expertise to elucidate and expound upon a new arena of scholarship –​one that looks to The Myth of Sisyphus not as a document that has ‘run its course’, but one that is still very much at the forefront of Camus’s philosophy. It is our sincere hope that each of these essays fosters an inquiry in their readers, as well as inspire a new generation of Camus scholars who can contribute to the absurdist discussion.

­c hapter 1

Sickness, Heartache, Punishment, and War: Lessons on the Absurd, or Birth of an Ethic Meaghan Emery If life amounted to suffering for Albert Camus in 1936 and 1937, when he was formulating the ideas that would be central to his oeuvre on the absurd, then rising above suffering through resistance and love –​without completely being relieved of it –​is perhaps where his ethics lie. Eager to become a writer, but for whom tuberculosis had precluded brilliant university studies, Camus would nonetheless go on to engage with the most important issues of his time: colonialism and racism, antisemitism, the demise of the Spanish and French Republics, and world war. His personal life, however, would cause him the most heartache. Just at the moment when the meaning of life appeared to elude him, faced with a failing marriage, Camus would write in his May 1936 journal entry, ‘One must not cut oneself off from the world. … But even within this sadness I feel a great leap of joy and a great desire to love simply … Smiling despair’. (‘Ne pas se séparer du monde. … Et même dans cette tristesse en moi quel désir d’aimer … Désespoir souriant’).1 On a loose leaf of paper found intermixed with the pages for Betwixt and Between, first published in 1937, the same year that Camus was banned from the Algerian Communist Party (pca), Camus writes: ‘. … the real meaning of life which is in the suffering and death of my loved ones’ (‘. … le sens vrai de la vie qui est dans les souffrances et la mort des miens’).2 In the previous year when he was writing his first important published work –​in an effort to bring order to a life of disorder as his biographer Olivier Todd remarks –​his thoughts turned to suicide, which The Myth of Sisyphus poses as the central philosophical problem in an unjust world, that is without God or reason.3 For in a world where one is condemned to suffer and

1 Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935–​1942, translated by Philip Thody, (New York: Knopf, 1969), p. 25. Cahier i: mai 1935-​septembre 1937, Carnets (mai 1935-​décembre 1948). In Œuvres complètes ii (1944–​1948), edited by Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). (pp. 795–​834), p. 808. 2 Albert Camus, Fragments d’un combat: 1938–​1940 Alger Républicain. 2 vols. Cahiers Albert Camus 3, edited by Jacqueline Lévi Valensi and André Abbou. (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), p. 21. My translation. 3 Regarding Camus’s suicidal thoughts, see ‘Commentaires’, p. 1412.

© Meaghan Emery, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_003

14 Emery die, which Camus believed to be an imminent sentence, suicide is an act of freedom.4 It is also potentially an act of sacrifice. However, as the first section of The Myth makes clear, the essay is not a philosophical reflection on whether to live but rather how to live. The ultimate question the essay raises, therefore, is what to do with one’s freedom when death is the only absolute. Camus begins his philosophical essay on the absurdity of life, The Myth of Sisyphus by approaching suicide as a conscious act. In his formulation of the literary genre that he would pursue, and his fiction come to embody, the search for meaning in a godless world was nothing less than a courageous quest. Therefore, he bases his concept of the absurd on a fundamental question: What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. Quel est donc cet incalculable sentiment qui prive l’esprit du sommeil nécessaire à sa vie ? Un monde qu’on peut expliquer même avec de mauvaises raisons est un monde familier. Mais au contraire, dans un univers soudain privé d’illusions et de lumières, l’homme se sent un étranger. Cet exil est sans recours puisqu’il est privé des souvenirs d’une patrie perdue ou de l’espoir d’une terre promise.5 He takes as his point of departure this indefinable or indescribable feeling that made him alert to the precariousness of life’s meaning and which ultimately led him to a purpose: ‘absurd creation’. For Camus, the absurd quest for creative self-​realization as a writer had taken form when he was studying philosophy at university. Seeking to avoid the ‘leap of faith’ taken by Søren Kierkegaard, who serves as a philosophical foil in The Myth, a twenty-​two-​year-​old Camus articulates this purpose in a passage in his notebooks, also dated May 1936, more than six years before the essay’s publication. Having crossed the threshold to adulthood, he lays out his thoughts and ambition and specifically explores his own limitations which had to be overcome, or ‘conquered’. 4 Olivier Todd writes that in 1936 Camus believed he had four years left to live. 5 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus. In The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, translated by Justin O’Brien, (New York: Vintage International, 1955). (pp. 1–​138), p. 6; Le Mythe de Sisyphe. In Œuvres complètes i (1931–​1944), edited by Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, pp. 217–​315. (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). (pp. 217–​315), p. 223.

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On the very edge –​and over the edge lies a game player’s attitude to life. I deny, I am cowardly and weak, I act as if I were saying yes, as if I were strong and brave. Question of will power –​carry absurdity through to the very end –​I am capable of … Hence, take this game player’s attitude tragically, as far as the effort one makes is concerned, but see it as comic (or, rather, as unimportant) in the result obtained. But to do this, don’t waste time. Look for the extreme experience in solitude. Purify the game by conquering yourself –​knowing such conquest to be absurd. Aux confins –​Et par-​dessus: le jeu. Je nie, suis lâche et faible, j’agis comme si j’affirmais, comme si j’étais fort et courageux. Question de volonté –​ pousser l’absurdité jusqu’au bout –​je suis capable de … D’où prendre le jeu au tragique, dans son effort; au comique dans le résultat (indifférent plutôt). Mais, pour cela, ne pas perdre son temps. Rechercher l’expérience extrême dans la solitude. Épurer le jeu par la conquête de soi-​même –​la sachant absurde.6 In a following entry, he prepares an outline delineating his literary goals, noting the presupposition that circumstances will continually work to sap his courage and disabuse him of his illusions, and the need to push forward through sheer force of will –​that is, to act as though an actor conscious of playing a role until the heroism and sacrifices required of him surpass the act: ‘Literary work: strength, love, and death under the sign of [absurd] conquest’. (‘Œuvre littéraire: force, amour et mort sous le signe de la conquête [absurde]’).7

6 Camus, Notebooks, p. 26; Cahier i, op. cit., pp. 808–​809. Philip Thody translates ‘le jeu’ by ‘gambling’, which I believe to be erroneous. I have therefore altered Thody’s original translation by replacing ‘gambler’ by ‘game player’ and ‘gambling’ by ‘the game’. In Camus’s letters to Francine in November and December 1939, translator Benjamin Ivry uses the word ‘game’ in a similar context (see Albert Camus: A Life, pp. 92–​93). Similarly, as Camus wrote in a 1955 preface to an American edition of The Stranger, Meursault ‘does not play the game. […] he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn’t true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened’. Further on, as I develop the Don Juan character and side to Camus’s personality more deeply, I will correlate playing the game to playacting, which is also how Justin O’Brien translated ‘le jeu’ in his translation of The Myth. 7 Camus, Notebooks, p. 27; Cahier i, p. 809.

16 Emery Although the absurdity of conquest becomes more clear in Camus’s later philosophical essay, The Rebel, it is important to keep in mind the qualifier ‘absurd’, or vain, which implicitly serves as an ethical restraint on the conquest in this earlier essay. The search for absolute domination is ‘vain’, he wrote in May 1936; and further on, ‘All contacts –​does this mean the Cult of the Self? No. The Cult of the Self presupposes either optimism or a dilettante’s attitude toward life. Both nonsense. Do not select a life, but make the one you have stretch out’. (‘Tous les contacts =​culte du Moi? Non. Culte du moi présuppose amateurisme ou optimisme. Deux foutaises. Non pas choisir sa vie, mais l’étendre’).8 Later, in an entry dated February 1938, Camus reflects on rebellion, ‘the spirit of rebellion’, as a ‘protest against the human condition. … A revolution is always carried out against the Gods’. (‘L’esprit révolutionnaire est tout entier dans une protestation de l’homme contre la condition de l’homme. … Une révolution s’accomplit toujours contre les Dieux’).9 In these notes and brief sketch of his ambitions, the three models of ‘the absurd man’ take shape: Don Juan the amorous seducer, the actor, and the conqueror, in addition to Sisyphus, who would assume a prominent place in the title. Death features prominently as a subject worthy of Camus’s art. In a notebook entry dated 10 October 1937, a year after his separation from Simone, his first wife, he weighs the ‘aesthetic’ value of two manners of ending one’s life: ‘To be worth something or nothing. To create or not to create. In the first case everything is justified. Everything, without exception. In the second case, everything is completely absurd. The only choice then to be made is of the most aesthetically satisfying form of suicide: marriage, and a forty-​hour week, or a revolver’. (‘Avoir ou n’avoir pas de valeur. Créer ou ne pas créer. Dans le premier cas, tout est justifié. Tout, sans exception. Dans le second cas, c’est l’Absurdité complète. Il reste à choisir le suicide le plus esthétique: mariage +​40 heures ou revolver’).10 Life was ultimately a death sentence; and falling into the trappings of a standard life, full-​time work and marriage, was equally potent as a loaded cold iron barrel pressed against one’s temple. The absurdist genre provided Camus the means and a reason to face the absurdity of life with courage, that is to live and indeed embrace life in full recognition of one’s fate. In Camus’s contemporaneous notes for his first unpublished novel, A Happy 8 Camus, Notebooks, pp. 25–​26; Cahier i, p. 808. 9 Albert Camus, Notebooks, p. 84 ; Cahier ii: septembre 1937-​avril 1939, Carnets (mai 1935-​ décembre 1948). In Œuvres complètes ii (1944–​1948), edited by Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). (pp. 834–​878), p. 849. This sentence reappears in the chapter titled ‘Conquest’ in The Myth of Sisyphus (ms p. 87; p. 279). 10 Camus, Notebooks, p. 70; Cahier ii, p. 839.

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Death, in which the character Mersault contemplates suicide, one finds such an example of aestheticized absurdist angst: Every day he used to put the gun on the table. When he had finished work, he would put his papers in order, put his head close to the revolver, place his forehead against it, roll his temples on it, cooling his hot, feverish cheeks against the cool metal. Then, for a long time, he would let his fingers wander along the trigger, playing with the safety catch, until the world grew silent about him, and, already half asleep, his whole being huddled down into the one sensation of this cold and salty metal from which could spring death. As soon as one does not kill oneself, one must keep silent about life. And, as he woke up, his mouth filled with an already bitter saliva, he licked the barrel, poking his tongue into it and with a death rattle of infinite happiness said again and again in wonder and astonishment: ‘My joy is priceless’. Il posait tous les soirs cette arme sur la table. Le travail fini, il rangeait ses papiers, approchait le revolver et y plaquait son front, y roulait ses tempes, apaisait sur le froid du fer la fièvre de ses joues. Et puis il restait ainsi un long moment, laissant errer ses doigts le long de la gâchette, maniant le cran d’arrêt, jusqu’à ce que le monde se tût autour de lui et que, somnolent déjà, tout son être blottît dans la seule sensation du fer froid et salé d’où pouvait sortir la mort. Dès l’instant où l’on ne se tue pas, il faut se taire sur la vie. Et lui se réveillant, la bouche pleine d’une salive déjà amère, léchait le canon de l’arme, y introduisait sa langue et, râlant d’un bonheur sans fond, répétait avec émerveillement: ‘Ma joie n’a pas de prix’.11 Mersault, having awoken to find himself alive after descending into the depths of mental torment, is able to experience the deepest sense of joy. The character Patrice, an aspiring writer, was a clearer double for Camus, and yet, in the above scene, there is an echo of Camus’s descent into despair in 1936–​1937. As Camus wrote, ‘It is death which gives the game and heroism their true meaning’. (‘La mort qui donne au jeu et à l’héroïsme son [sic] vrai sens’).12 One could also say that death gives to playacting and heroism their true meaning. This idea is central to The Myth of Sisyphus, not only in its retelling of the myth and 11 Camus, Notebooks, p. 21; Cahier i, op. cit., p. 805. 12 Camus, Notebooks, p. 16; Cahier i, p. 802.

18 Emery the elaboration of its characters (i.e., Don Juan, the actor, and the conqueror) but also the absurd hero’s overcoming of the feeling caused by the absurd, requiring both courage and sacrifice, in order to feel joy. These are intrinsically ethical values. Secondary literature on Camus’s absurdist fiction, The Stranger, The Fall, and his collection of short stories in Exile and the Kingdom, has drawn links between the author’s creative works and his lived experiences. The same is true for his personal essays such as Betwixt and Between and Nuptials. The Myth of Sisyphus is no exception. It takes the author’s personal biography as a source of inspiration. Reading through Camus’s notebooks, one sees, for instance, his fascination with Don Juan. He had played the part in a 1937 production of Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri. According to his high school teacher and lifelong mentor Jean Grenier, it was Mozart’s version with whom Camus had identified, Herbert Lottman writes. Lottman, Camus’s biographer, suggests that Albert’s experience of sexual jealousy and the betrayal of his first wife Simone Hié appears to have spurred him to exact revenge though sexual conquests. Although he did value his long-​lasting friendships with women, Lottman also notes some degree of self-​punishment in this behavior, which precluded the possibility of Camus finding a stable loving partner. As Lottman writes, his failed marriage affected him deeply, implanting a sense of failure, which was compounded by solitude and impoverishment since he lost the financial protection that Simone’s relations had provided him. Afterward, ‘he would assume the character that close friends would recognize all his adult life: a more than usual pride, a more than necessary susceptibility, an “African temperament”’, in the words of Grenier. He ‘cultivated’ his ‘“Spanish” side’ (reminiscent of a ‘bullfighter’s soul’ according to Emmanuel Roblès) and a ‘“Mediterranean” character’ in his attitude toward women.13 These are telling words used by friends and by Lottman to characterize the noted changes to Camus’s personality after he had returned from a trip to Central Europe during which he uncovered his wife’s infidelity. He was struggling at a young age with the absurdity of his life and was perhaps trying on a role or roles in order to find the courage to face it head on. After receiving his university diploma and definitively separating from Simone in late summer 1936, he sought full-​time work in Algiers and landed a year-​long acting job in radio theater.14 Between that and tutoring secondary students preparing for the baccalauréat, he was just scraping by. His Radio 13 14

Herbert L. Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979). p. 120. Albert and Simone Camus would divorce four years later, prior to Albert’s marriage to Francine Faure.

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Alger job included two-​week traveling tours through smaller towns and villages, which were exhausting, and his fragile health was cause for concern. Lottman quotes a letter written by Claude de Fréminville to his friend André Belamich, ‘I’m furiously angry with Camus. … He is too much in love with a false existence which leaves him no time, exhausts and isolates him’.15 Tuberculosis had made him ineligible for the entrance exams that could have led to a stable teaching position in a state school, and now, deprived of a steady wage and situation, he had begun coughing up blood. In 1937, he was also increasingly at odds with the local Communist Party in Algiers and was undoubtedly forced out after the Algiers’s House of Culture (Maisons de la Culture were instituted under the new Popular Front government in Paris) hosted a discussion of André Gide’s Return from the ussr, a critical and pessimistic assessment of the new Communist state. Camus was the director of the amateur theater programs there and an actor in the plays. The activities of the Houses of Culture were as much political as cultural. He led petition efforts; and he coordinated and gave talks, including one entitled ‘Intellectuals and the Viollette Bill’ regarding the proposal to extend suffrage to a small proportion of Muslim Algerians. In response to a resurgent antisemitism, he represented his House of Culture at a rally organized by the Ligue Internationale contre l’Antisémitisme (lica) alongside a Muslim religious leader, Sheikh El Okbi, and Bernard Lecache, lica’s founder. Camus was a charismatic speaker and a popular figure in these well-​attended events. Lottman surmises that, as secretary-​general, Camus defended the decision made by the young directors of the Algiers’s House of Culture to host a discussion on Gide’s book, which led to his ejection from the Party. However, despite these personal setbacks (‘catastrophes’ in Camus’s words), he was overcoming his self-​doubts and persevering in his writing. His first published work Betwixt and Between would be published in Algiers the same year. It is interesting to note that one of his first essays to be published in that work, ‘Death in the Soul’, composed during the fateful summer of 1936, is set in the city of Prague. It offers not only insight into Camus’s conception of the absurd in The Myth but also foreshadows Camus’s kindred feeling toward an author who hailed from the city, Franz Kafka. Camus would discover Kafka in late 1938 when translated editions of his works, many of them posthumous, became available. Kafka, like Camus, had experienced loneliness and a lack of connectedness with the world. Also, like Camus, he had fallen ill with tuberculosis, which ultimately took his life. When Camus had visited Prague in the 15

Cited by Lottman, Albert Camus, op. cit., p. 127.

20 Emery summer of 1936, he was the first of a three-​person party to arrive in the city, having separated with his traveling companions, his wife Simone and Yves Bourgeois, in Salzburg. It is in Salzburg that Camus had read a letter addressed to his wife from her doctor and learned of their affair. It was there that his world had crashed down around him. He would go on to spend six miserable days in Prague with little money and little understanding of German or Czech before Simone and Yves, who was a friend from Algiers, rejoined him after making the journey from Salzburg by canoe (which proved too physically difficult for Camus). Although Camus does not mention Kafka in this early essay, it contains an absurdist quality found in Kafka’s works, and the atmosphere is nightmare-​like, a reflection of his mental state when he had hit one of his lowest points. The original version of The Myth had included a chapter on Kafka, which now figures in the Appendix under the title ‘Hope and the Absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka’. It had likely been written between late 1938 to early 1939.16 At the time, Camus had read several of Kafka’s works and was powerfully drawn to the bleak and confusing, often bureaucratic, world into which the characters were thrown. Indeed, Kafka’s Joseph K. in The Trial is a Camusian-​like hero. Camus was writing as a courtroom journalist for Alger Républicain and working on The Stranger, in addition to The Myth, when he set to work on an analysis of it. The war, however, changed the course of events, and not only was the study on Kafka not published in 1939, Camus, a pacifist, soon found himself blacklisted as a journalist, which led him to take a job in Paris at Paris-​Soir, until the war again led to loss of work. From Oran, he would submit both his new novel, The Stranger, and his essay to Gallimard, who accepted to publish them separately in 1942. However, to Camus’s disappointment, the essay’s chapter on Kafka had to be removed. The Jewish identity of its subject, Kafka, ‘novelist of hope’ (‘romancier de l’espoir’), and the totalitarian setting of his works, would never have passed through the German Propagandastaffel censors.17 The study on Kafka would be restored in the 1945 edition and placed after the chapter on Kirilov from Dostoevsky’s novel Demons, which had replaced it in the original.

16 17

See Louis Faucon, “Commentaires”, “Commentaires” on Le Mythe de Sisyphe. In Essais, edited by Roger Quilliot and L. Faucon, pp. 1410–​1416. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. (Paris: Gallimard, 1965). p. 1414. Although Gallimard himself insisted on the chapter’s removal, in 1938 Gallimard had published at least two of Kafka’s works in translation, The Metamorphosis and The Castle, at the same time that Adolf Hitler, Führer and German Chancellor, had unleashed an unrelenting assault against the Jews.

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Since the study on Kafka had appeared in the Lyon journal L’Arbalète in 1943, the chapter’s restoration undoubtedly had to do with a concern for the integrity of the essay. After completing Caligula, Camus had moved on from the problem of nihilism to write about love, and notably fraternal love. As he wrote to Gaston Gallimard in September, 1942, The Myth was only the ‘preface’ to a longer reflection on how to withstand and overcome nihilism.18 In this light, too, Camus’s choice to restore the missing chapter appears to suggest that what it represented to him personally in 1939–​1942 still held meaning. Not only was the analysis on Kafka integral to The Myth, his treatise on the absurd, but also it is possible to surmise that, along with the summer of 1936 and Camus’s depression and formulation of the absurdist aesthetic afterward, it was core to his consciousness. His letter to Grenier of 2 February 1939, when he was writing it, insists on the ‘personal’ nature of his philosophical study. His letters to Francine Faure later that year echo his penchant for what he called a ‘philosophy of the heart’ (‘philosophie “sensible”’).19 In a letter dated 7 October 1939, he writes, ‘As I told you –​and myself as well –​I would start my novel, in fact I began my essay on the Absurd. It is far more ready inside me than the novel […] I hope to continue without stopping’ (‘Comme je t’avais dit (et je m’étais dit) que je commencerais par mon roman, c’est mon essai sur l’Absurde que j’ai entamé. D’ailleurs il est beaucoup plus mûr en moi que le roman […] J’espère continuer sans m’arrêter’).20 His letters, dated 26 November and 3 December 1939, similarly evoke the personal nature of his philosophical essay: ‘Until now I’d only written scattered fragments, whatever suited my mood of the moment, but the real work remains to be done’ (‘Jusqu’ici j’en ai écrit des fragments 18

19 20

As Camus wrote to Gaston Gallimard in a letter dated 22 September 1942, The Myth ‘takes into consideration [the nihilism] of the enlightenment we acquired in our exile. It proposes to the mind to live with one’s contradictions and to make of them the principles of progress. Regarding modern understanding, it shows faithfulness and confidence. In this way, it can be seen only as an explanation, the preliminary definition of a “good nihilism” and to be perfectly frank a preface’ (Le Mythe ‘tient compte au contraire [du nihilisme] des lumières que nous avons acquises dans notre exil. Il propose à l’esprit de vivre avec ses négations et d’en faire les principes d’un progrès. Vis-​à-​vis de l’intelligence moderne, il fait acte de fidélité et de confiance. Dans ce sens, on ne peut le considérer que comme une mise au point, la définition préalable d’un “bon nihilisme” et pour tout dire une préface’) (‘Lettre à Gaston Gallimard’ (22 September 1942). “Appendices” to Mythe de Sisyphe, Œuvres complètes i (1931–​1944), edited by Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). (pp. 319–​320), p. 320. My translation.) Marie-​Louise Audin, “Notice” to Le Mythe de Sisyphe and “Note sur le texte.” In Œuvres complètes i (1931–​1944), edited by Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). (pp. 1269–​1283), p. 1276. Cited by Todd, Albert Camus: A Life, translated by Benjamin Ivry, (New York: Knopf, 1997). p. 88. Albert Camus: une vie, p. 282.

22 Emery disperses –​ceux qui s’accordaient avec mon humeur du moment. Mais le vrai travail reste à faire’)21; and later he expresses frustration that it was progressing only by sheer will, that he was not succeeding in writing with ‘all of his being’ (‘tout l’être’). The ‘real work’ involved achieving cohesion and coherence between the chapters, and it required a ‘vibration […] which gives it essential value’ (‘vibration contenue sans quoi rien n’est valable’).22 His act of restoring the chapter on Kafka, therefore, opens itself to a reflection on how his experience of both resistance and love –​their resonance with ‘all his being’ –​during the final dramatic years of the war and occupation had proven to him the value of rebellion in the face of absurdity. With the return of the more ‘hopeful’ conclusion to his treatise, one can sense that hope had also been revived in Camus, reminiscent of Sisyphus’s ‘happiness’. This hope is not absolute but rather relative to the circumstances, as was the case for Kafka’s absurd hero K. (The Castle). K. takes the existentialist ‘leap’, without having recourse to faith or falling into nothingness, by connecting with others and ultimately ordering his quest according to the logic of his predicament –​although the foreseen end was to find him victorious though near death from sheer exhaustion, as conveyed by Max Brod, Kafka’s friend, biographer, literary executor, and the editor of Kafka’s posthumous works. Having access only to the unfinished work, Camus saw in K.’s trajectory a ‘deification of the absurd’ (ms 133; 311). By submitting to it, K.’s perseverance led to a tragic rather than desolate end. In many ways, the story mirrors the postwar political context for Camus, who had lost so many resistant comrades. Yet, democracy had conquered totalitarianism, and the act of restoring so soon after the war the censored chapter on a Jewish author could be read as a final pronouncement on that world conflict and conflagration. It may not be a coincidence either that the fully restored version of The Myth of Sisyphus appeared the year after Camus and the young Spanish actress Maria Casarès first crossed paths on a Parisian boulevard. In addition to his ambitions and the sensorial experience of his creative production, it also follows that renewed hope in what would be a love conquest imbued with tragedy gave additional impetus to the final edit to his essay.23 Love, as he wrote in his portrait of Don Juan ‘is clothed in illusions of the eternal’ (‘est paré des illusions de l’éternel’) (ms 73; 269). Camus was equally wary of this entrapment as he was susceptible to it. As he wrote in a letter to the critic Pierre Bonnel on 18 March 1943, there are some things ‘that are worth the trouble’ (‘qui en valent la peine’). To Bonnel he wrote of art, friendship, 21 Todd, Albert Camus, p. 92. Albert Camus, p. 292. 22 Todd, Albert Camus, p. 93; Albert Camus, p. 293. 23 See note 19.

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and political affairs: ‘I believe it entirely possible to connect an absurdist philosophy with political thought that is concerned with human improvement and places its optimism in the relative’ (‘je crois parfaitement possible de lier à une philosophie absurde une pensée politique soucieuse de perfectionnement humain et plaçant son optimisme dans le relatif’).24 Though left unsaid, this statement could also apply to his liaisons with women. In a letter to Maria Casarès dated 17 July 1944, he pleaded with her to come visit him in the countryside where he had taken refuge as the situation in Paris was increasingly becoming more dangerous for resisters and collaborators alike –​an invitation she declined. ‘But you spoke to me once about my cynicism, and there was truth in that. … You didn’t realize that all at once I focused on a single being a force of passion that I had been spreading around a little bit here and there, without thought, and at every chance’ (‘Tu m’as pourtant parlé un jour de mon cynisme et il y avait du vrai. … Tu ne t’es pas rendu compte que tout d’un coup j’ai concentré sur un seul être une force de passion qu’auparavant je déversais un peu partout, au hasard, et à toutes les occasions’).25 In his notebooks from late summer/​early fall 1944, one finds the following reflection which communicates the tug and pull of a singular passion and a qualified excuse for Don Juanism which he overall rejects as an ‘abstraction’: Those who love all women are those who are on the path to abstraction. They go beyond this world, regardless of what it seems. Because they turn away from the particular, from the singular case. The man who would escape every idea and all abstraction, the truly desperate man, is the man who has only one woman. Attached by stubbornness to this singular face that cannot fully satisfy. Ceux qui aiment toutes les femmes sont ceux qui sont en route vers l’abstraction. Ils dépassent ce monde, quoi qu’il y paraisse. Car ils se détournent du particulier, du cas singulier. L’homme qui fuirait toute idée et toute abstraction, le vrai désespéré, est l’homme d’une seule femme. Par entêtement dans ce visage singulier qui ne peut satisfaire à tout.26 24 25 26

Albert Camus, “Lettre à Pierre Bonnel”, (18 March 1943). “Appendices” to Mythe de Sisyphe, Œuvres complètes i (1931–​1944), edited by Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). (pp. 320–​322), pp. 321–​22. My translation. Albert Camus Correspondance (1944–​1959), edited by Béatrice Vaillant. (Paris: Gallimard, 2017). p. 30. All translations of the correspondence between Camus and Casarès are mine. Albert Camus, Cahier iv: Janvier 1942-​septembre 1945 Carnets (mai 1935-​décembre 1948). In Œuvres complètes ii (1944–​1948), edited by Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). (pp. 937–​1025), p. 1017. All translations of Cahier iv are mine.

24 Emery As a result, his analysis of Don Juan appears more a philosophical premise that he would not only later qualify in his personal correspondence but also surpass in these personal notes. Don Juan embodies neither ignorance nor hope. ‘He is an ordinary seducer. Except for the difference that he is conscious, and that is why he is absurd’ (‘Il est un séducteur ordinaire. À cette difference près qu’il est conscient et c’est par là qu’il est absurde’) (ms 72; 269). During his years with the intellectual resistance and in the months following 6 June, 1944, the date of his first encounter with Casarès, and at the time he was writing La Peste, Camus would conceive of his second literary iteration of the ordinary absurd hero, a more hopeful, though measured figure. In the chapter on ‘Don Juanism’ appearing in The Myth, Camus writes, ‘There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-​lived and exceptional. All those deaths and all those rebirths gathered together as in a sheaf make up for Don Juan the flowering of his life. It is his way of giving and of vivifying. I let it be decided whether or not one can speak of selfishness’ (‘Il n’y a d’amour généreux que celui qui se sait en même temps passager et singulier. Ce sont toutes ces morts et toutes ces renaissances qui font pour Don Juan la gerbe de sa vie. C’est la façon qu’il a de donner et de faire vivre. Je laisse à juger si l’on peut parler d’égoïsme’) (ms 74; 270). Behind this philosophical premise lay an ocean of desperation, and it is necessary to distinguish Camus’s ‘will to overcome’ from his ultimate goal of self-​realization as he had earlier formulated: ‘Look for the extreme experience in solitude. Purify the game by conquering yourself –​knowing such conquest to be absurd’. Behind the role, one finds a tormented man seeking to make his act more ‘pure’, or in other words resonant with his whole being. At the time he was playing Don Juan in the 1937 Théâtre du Travail production, he wrote of his acute sadness and loneliness, but also of his ‘thirst for love’ (‘soif d’aimer’).27 Later, in his notes on A Happy Death and The Stranger, there are likewise passages on love that take on a less egotistical and more sacrificial aspect. In a 1938 entry, written at the time he was reading Kafka, one reads the following imagined exchange between two characters from A Happy Death, Mersault and Patrice: Theme: the world of death. A tragic work: a happy work. ‘But, Mersault, it doesn’t seem as if this world satisfies you, from the way you talk about it’. ‘It doesn’t satisfy me because it’s going to be taken from me –​or, rather, it’s because it satisfies me too much that I can feel all the horror of losing it’. 27 Camus, Notebooks, op. cit., p. 51; Cahier i, op. cit., p. 828. I find Camus’s use of the active verb significant, which is why I retain the original expression.

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‘I don’t understand’. ‘You don’t want to’. ‘Perhaps’. After a while, Patrice goes away. ‘But, Patrice, there is love’. He turned back, his face distorted with despair. ‘Yes’, said Patrice, ‘but love is of this world’. Thème: L’univers de la mort. Œuvre tragique: œuvre heureuse. … –​Mais cette vie, Mersault, ne vous satisfait pas si j’en juge par votre ton. –​Elle ne me satisfait pas parce qu’on va me l’ôter –​ou plutôt c’est parce qu’elle me satisfait trop que je sens toute l’horreur de la perdre. –​Je ne comprends pas. –​Vous ne voulez pas comprendre. –​ Peut-​être. Après un temps, Patrice s’en va. –​Mais Patrice, il y a l’amour. Il se retourna, le visage décomposé par le désespoir. –​Oui, dit Patrice, mais l’amour est de ce monde.28 Just as Camus rejects the religious leap of faith in The Myth, in his literary works of the time, love, like revolutionary action, are ‘of this world’. Despite the accompanying despair, they have the potential to lead to self-​fulfillment and, moving beyond the individual, inspire collective acts based on the defense of human rights and justice.29 Camus clearly provides this insight in the character of Dr Rieux and his team of volunteers in La Peste who unite to take on the plague, perhaps the most Sisyphean of all of Camus’s characters. In the ‘Myth of Sisyphus’ chapter, resistance, love, and readiness for self-​sacrifice likewise present virtue as a prerequisite to Camus’s formulation of ethics, as captured in the last word of the Sisyphus chapter: ‘happy’ (‘bonheur’). Whereas Don Juan is ‘the logical outcome of a life completely imbued with the absurd, the grim ending of an existence turned toward short-​lived joys’ (‘le logique aboutissement d’une vie tout 28 Camus, Notebooks, pp. 100–​101. Cahier i, p. 860. 29 Towards the end of 1943, Camus writes the following notes for his essay on revolt, ‘Freedom is only the wish of a few intellects. Justice that of the greatest number and the greatest number even conflates justice and freedom’ (‘La liberté n’est que le vœu de quelques esprits. La justice celui du plus grand nombre et le plus grand nombre confond même la justice et la liberté’) (Camus, Cahier iv, p. 1015).

26 Emery entière pénétrée d’absurde, le farouche dénouement d’une existence tournée vers des joies sans lendemain’), Sisyphus embodies ‘absurd revolt [one of the] tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance’ (‘la révolte absurde, [un] des hommages que l’homme rend à sa dignité dans une campagne où il est d’avance vaincu’) (ms 76, 93; 272, 283). His ‘force’ comes from his dignified bearing and the joy of looking down the mountain and contemplating his life of conquest, despite the personal cost of the effort. It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. […] That hour like a breathing-​space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock. C’est pendant ce retour, cette pause, que Sisyphe m’intéresse. […] Cette heure qui est comme une respiration et qui revient aussi sûrement que son malheur, cette heure est celle de la conscience. À chacun de ces instants, où il quitte les sommets et s’enfonce peu à peu vers les tanières des dieux, il est supérieur à son destin. Il est plus fort que son rocher. ms 121; 302

Camus’s notes from the summer of 1937 exhibit the same joy as he looks back on the previous year. On a trip to Florence, Italy, he writes in an entry dated 15 September, I can easily stop now, and finally reach the end of a year of unrestrained and overstrained life. My effort now is to carry this presence of myself to myself through to the very end, to maintain it whatever aspect my life takes on –​even at the price of the loneliness which I now know is so difficult to bear. Not to give way –​that is the whole secret. Not to surrender, not to betray. All the violent part of my character helps me in this, carrying me to the point where I am rejoined by my love, and by the furious passion for life which gives meaning to my days. Je puis bien m’arrêter là, trouver enfin le terme d’un an de vie effrénée et surmenée. Cette présence de moi-​même à moi-​même, mon effort est de la mener jusqu’au bout, de la maintenir, devant tous les visages de ma vie –​même au prix de la solitude que je sais maintenant si difficile à supporter. Ne pas céder: tout est là. Ne pas consentir, ne pas trahir. Toute

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ma violence m’y aide et le point où elle me porte mon amour m’y rejoint et, avec lui, la furieuse passion de vivre qui fait le sens de mes journées.30 Rebellion deprived of love does not succeed in giving meaning to one’s life, and since life leaves open the possibility of love, Camus argues, it gives meaning to our daily experience. In The Stranger, contemporaneous with The Myth, this spirit of rebellion is perhaps best embodied by the character of Mr. Pérez, the companion of Meursault’s mother who struggles to keep up with the procession leading from the retirement home to the churchyard. ‘He is going to the burial because she is his only friend. At the home, they used to say: ‘She’s your finacée’, as if he were a child. And he used to laugh. And he was happy’ (‘Il va à l’enterrement parce que c’est sa seule amie. À l’asile, on lui disait comme aux enfants: ‘Ah c’est votre fiancée’. Et il riait. Et il était content’).31 Pérez’s joy and then anger defy their teasing, old age, and death, just as with tears of frustration he propels himself forward in pursuit of the funeral procession across barren fields under the punishing sun. His passion additionally escapes the reach of religion since it is firmly anchored in human love. This hope-​filled realization dawns on Meursault, too, confined to his individual prison cell awaiting the day of his execution. His life had been worth the pain and suffering after all. He had loved his mother, celebrated her attachment to life, and believed no one had the right to judge his feelings. Meursault had loved Marie, too, whose face shone like a golden sun on his gray cement block walls. Indeed, Camus notes in the summer of 1938, love more than truth is that to which one, including the absurd hero, aspires in the world.32 Camus similarly experienced a great passion (‘une joie folle’) with Maria Casarès, one that caused heartache given her mother’s disapproval and his commitment to Francine, but their passion lasted to his death in 1960.33 Since 2017, it is possible for Camus scholars to gain insight into their relationship thanks to the publication of the extensive correspondence between them. In the initial months, between June and November 1944, we only have access to his letters, which number twenty-​one in all. Between their brief visits, as he wrote in July 1944, exhausted from his work at Combat, he lived on the ‘hope’ of their being reunited, and the days they had together seemed to him ‘sufficient 30 Camus, Notebooks, op. cit., p. 58; Cahier i, op. cit., pp. 832–​33. 31 Camus, Notebooks, p. 101; Cahier ii, op. cit., p. 860. The totality of this description and dialogue do not appear in the novel. 32 Camus, Notebooks, p. 94; Cahier ii, p. 856. 33 Camus, Correspondance, op. cit., p. 16.

28 Emery to justify one’s life’ (‘suffisants pour justifier une vie’).34 However, timing was not on their side. Their relationship ended once Francine had announced her return to Paris in October after two years of separation from Albert. His letters did not end, however, and they convey the punishing torment he would experience, having dared act on his feelings for Maria. Even when he knew that being with Maria daily and established as a couple was impossible, he nonetheless accepted the suffering caused by distance and longing, and he continued writing until Maria finally put an end to it at the end of that year.35 This is the nature of the sacrifice that Sisyphus accepts in order to look down the mountain and find solace and even joy. As Camus’s chapter on the myth explains by way of introduction, one of the explanations for the gods’ anger –​which he alters for his own purpose from the original –​is Sisyphus’s trickery, which allows him to escape death in order to love his wife one last time.36 Pluto gives him permission to leave the underworld to punish his wife for displaying herself in the public square. She had been in on Sisyphus’s ploy, however, and was acting under her husband’s orders. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, led him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him. Mais quand il eut de nouveau revu le visage de ce monde, goûté l’eau et le soleil, les pierres chaudes et la mer, il ne voulut plus retourner dans l’ombre infernale. Les rappels, les colères et les avertissements n’y firent rien. Bien des années encore, il vécut devant la courbe du golfe, la mer éclatante et les sourires de la terre. Il fallut un arrêt des dieux. Mercure vint saisir l’audacieux au collet et l’ôtant à ses joies, le ramena de force aux Enfers où son rocher était tout prêt. ms 120; 302

34 Camus, Correspondance, p. 1620. 35 Camus and Casarès would cross paths a second time on 6 June 1948 and rekindle their love affair that lasted until the end of his lifetime. 36 Camus, “Notes et variantes”, n.4, p. 1298.

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For Camus, that rock would be his solitude and sadness. At the end of that year he wrote in his notebook, ‘December. This heart full of tears and night’ (‘Décembre. Ce cœur plein de larmes et de nuit’), followed by a reflection on the theme of separation for La Peste.37 Indeed, it is separation that affects most poignantly Dr. Rieux, whose wife had left Oran before the authorities announced a quarantine and closed the city to the outside world. Rieux would receive word of her death months later, just as the authorities claimed victory and the inhabitants were rejoicing their newfound freedom. The letters that Albert wrote to Maria between July and November 1944 shed new light on this theme and reveal the greatest sacrifice of all made by the hardworking doctor who beat death but could not prevent hers. ‘I spent my life refusing resignation –​my life choosing what appeared to me essential and holding on to it obstinately. […] I place no importance on anything that isn’t creation, man, or love’ (‘J’ai passé ma vie à refuser la résignation –​ma vie à choisir ce qui me paraissait essentiel et à m’y tenir obstinément. […] Je n’attache d’importance à rien de ce qui n’est pas la création, ou l’homme, ou l’amour’).38 On 21 July 1944 Camus would write these lines to Maria, and he would remind himself of their meaning again in December 1944. After writing in 1943, ‘It took me ten years to conquer what seems to me priceless: a heart without bitterness’ (‘J’ai mis dix ans à conquérir ce qui me paraît sans prix: un cœur sans amertume’), he would take up the theme again a year later: ‘There is no freedom for man as long as he hasn’t overcome his fear of death. But not by suicide. To overcome one must not give up. To be able to face death, without bitterness’ (‘Il n’y a pas de liberté pour l’homme tant qu’il n’a pas surmonté sa crainte de la mort. Mais non par le suicide. Pour surmonter il ne faut pas s’abandonner. Pouvoir mourir en face, sans amertume’).39 Soon after, one reads, ‘Corrected creation. Story of suicide finished’ (‘Création corrigée. Histoire du suicide à terme’).40 Could this be referring to the restoration of the chapter on Kafka, ‘the novelist of hope’, and to his treatise that was now fully complete? A half a year later, on 30 July 1945, he wrote, We are entering the positive side. Much to do and much to give up. Settle in naturally but with one’s mask. I knew enough to be able to renounce almost everything. There remains a prodigious effort, daily, obstinate.

37 Camus, Cahier iv, op. cit., p. 1017. 38 Camus, Correspondance, op. cit., p. 34. 39 Camus, Cahier iv, op. cit., pp. 1015, 1018. 40 Camus, Cahier iv, p. 1020.

30 Emery The effort of the secret, without Hope, nor bitterness. No longer reject anything since anything can be true. Superior to heartbreak. Nous entrons dans le positif. Tout à faire et tout à renoncer. S’installer dans le naturel mais avec son masque. J’ai connu assez de choses pour pouvoir renoncer à presque tout. Il reste un prodigieux effort, quotiden, obstiné. L’effort du secret, sans Espoir, ni amertume. Ne plus rien nier puisque tout peut s’affirmer. Supérieur au déchirement.41 He had overcome his fear of death and conquered his demons to ‘be what he was’ (‘être ce qu’il est’), an absurd hero. The philosophical problem of suicide behind him, he was ready to take up the pressing question of freedom in a world that remained unjust. Rather than the gods, Camus would set his sights on humankind. He would fight against the death penalty, atomic war, torture, and terrorism and dedicate himself to defending the innocent in his continued conquest against a nihilistic world. 41 Camus, Cahier iv, p. 1025.

­c hapter 2

The Myth of Sisyphus, the Absurd, and the Question of Empathy Peter Francev 1

Edith Stein: Life and Philosophy1

Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1891, into a practicing Jewish family; however, by the time that Stein was a teenager, she came to reject the Jewish faith and became an atheist. Witnessing the horrors of World War i, Stein had been emotionally moved and felt compelled to write her Ph.D. thesis on the subject of empathy, whist studying under Edmund Husserl (1859–​1938) at the University of Göttingen; the degree was awarded in 1915. At the suggestion of Husserl, Stein slightly revised the thesis and 1916 it was published as: Zum Problem der Einfühlung (On the Problem of Empathy). It would become one of Stein’s most important treatises (despite some misunderstandings of Theodore Lipps’s ideas)2 and come to mark the beginning of her philosophical output. At this time, Husserl hired Stein to become one of his research assistants, and she would follow her mentor when he moved from Göttingen to the University of Freiburg in 1916. (It was at Freiburg that she would meet and work alongside Martin Heidegger [1889–​1976]). In 1918, Stein applied for a lecturer position at Freiburg; Husserl’s reference letter was not the favorable letter of recommendation that she had hoped it to be, so she decided against a career in academia, converted to Catholicism, and took her orders to become a Carmelite nun. Even after discovering St. Thomas Aquinas’s theosophy and entering the convent, she would continue to write philosophical treatises (namely, The Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities [1922], Finite and Eternal Being [1946], and Potency and Act [1986]. The latter two works were published posthumously). On the Problem of Empathy is an attempt at clarification of Husserl’s ideas on empathy which Stein, in turn, receives from Theodore Lipps (1851–​1914), who first writes about empathy and its connections to aesthetics and psychology 1 This essay is dedicated to Dr Julia Wendt, who was more than happy to discuss the ideas at length and who represents all that is sympathetic and empathetic in the world. 2 Conversations with Dr Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray.

© Peter Francev, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_004

32 Francev in his 1903 work Leitfaden der Psychologie (Guide of Psychology). Husserl and Lipps would become close colleagues, so it understandable that Stein would come to know Lipps’s philosophy through Husserl. With regards to empathy, Stein expands on Lipps’s theories and moves away from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological interpretation of the individual and brings forward her notions that the ability empathize is one element that binds humans together.3 Interestingly enough, Stein’s post-​doctoral studies, Finite and Eternal Being and Potency and Act sought to wed Aquinas and Husserl’s philosophy together. In many respects, it was as if Stein’s admiration for both thinkers was so great that she needed to disclose the closeness of their philosophies for her own sake. For Lipps, empathy is the way in which individuals come to know the egos of other individuals; for Husserl, empathy is found in the understanding of the individual; and for Stein, empathy Is not merely the culmination of Husserlian thought vis-​à-​vis Logical Investigations ii or Cartesian Meditations, but the lived experiences that connect individuals with one another. 1.1 On the Problem of Empathy In their collection of essays on Husserl and Stein, Richard Feist and William Sweet tell us that empathy is ‘an important issue for phenomenologists’ and that it is ‘central to philosophical analysis … in understanding how other people see things and each other’.4 While Descartes argues that doubting is the primary truth of philosophy and it constitutes the basis from which all philosophical thought is to derive, I would argue that, from a non-​existential point of view, phenomenology is situated in a unique position, because it affords individuals to understand on another through empathy; and it is empathetic understanding that can bring individuals close to understanding the Other rather than judging them.5 For Stein (like Jean-​Paul Sartre) the ego is central to the issue of intersubjectivity in addition to empathy and, like the Anglo-​Irish writers of the early twentieth century, namely Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, Stein’s usage of the ego as the ‘I’ employs a stream-​of-​consciousness construction of 3 For a good introduction to Theodore Lipps on empathy, see ‘Theodore Lipps on the Concept of Einfühlung (Empathy)’, by Timothy Burns in Theodore Lipps (1851–​1914): l’oeuvre, son context et sa postérité. Une perspective interdisiciplinaire, eds. David Romand and Serge Tchougounnikov (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Dijon, 2018). 4 Richard Feist and William Sweet, Husserl and Stein (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2003). 5 Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray’s essay ‘Absurdism: The Second Truth of Philosophy’ holds that Camus’s existentialist philosophy of absurdism is as significant to the development of the history of philosophy as Descartes’s cogito, ergo sum. See Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray, ‘Absurdism: The Second Truth of Philosophy’ in The Journal of Camus Studies (Raleigh: Lulu, 2013), pp. 3–​15.

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the person. By doing so, Stein ‘personalizes’ the empathetic experience and, as I will demonstrate in this paper, this is something that Camus utilizes in his fiction, despite neglecting to mention Stein in The Myth of Sisyphus.6 On the Problem of Empathy begins like most doctoral dissertations, in that it addresses the methods of the investigation and then provides the reader with an introduction that frames the purpose of the research, despite the entire first chapter missing from the manuscript. For Stein, the bulk-​work of the thesis is to critique Theodore Lipps’s account of empathy whilst creating an extension, if you will, of Husserl’s allusions to empathy from Ideas ii. Presently, I would like to avoid a digression into the contrasts of Stein and Lipps as well as the Husserlian influence. Instead, I would like to simply display Stein’s ideas on empathy and then illustrate where and how these ideas fit into The Myth of Sisyphus. In her introduction to the phenomenological basis for empathy, Stein holds that the ‘living body’ of the “I” is one that ‘senses, thinks, feels, and wills’. It is ‘itself the center of orientation of such a phenomenal world. It faces this world and communicates with me’.7 It is our ‘I’, part and parcel with the ego, that is our individuality and that allows us to perceive the world before us. Coming to know our ego and, thus, our ‘I’, we are able to then relate to ourselves with the outside world. ‘Since empathy deal with grasping what is here and now …. It is possible for every experience to be primordially given’.8 Empathy, according to Stein, ‘is a kind of act of perceiving’ and ‘is the experience of foreign consciousness in general, irrespective of the kind of the experiencing subject or of the subject whose consciousness is experienced’.9 Empathy is the act by which our consciousness comes to know and understand the consciousness of the Other; however, we cannot directly know the Other’s consciousness, because it is not ours. Thus, ‘empathy is a non-​primordial experience that announces a primordial one’.10 Judy Miles clarifies that individuals cannot directly empathize 6

Just because Camus neglects to mention Stein in The Myth of Sisyphus does not prevent him from critiquing phenomenology. George Heffernan discusses Camus’s engagement with Edmund Husserl in his superb essay ‘Absurdity, Creativity and Constitution: Critical Observations on Camus’s Critique of Husserl’s Phenomenology in The Myth of Sisyphus’. See, George Heffernan, ‘Absurdity, Creativity and Constitution: Critical Observations on Camus’s Critique of Husserl’s Phenomenology in The Myth of Sisyphus’ in The Journal of Camus Studies (Raleigh: Lulu, 2013), pp. 73–​116. 7 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 5. 8 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 7–​8. 9 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 11. 10 Judy Miles, ‘Other Bodies and Other Minds in Edith Stein: Or, How to Talk about Empathy’ in Husserl and Stein, eds. Richard Feist and William Sweet (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2003), pp. 87–​91 (p.88).

34 Francev with another individual, because the empathetic act is one that bridges the primordial experience of the Other with what would be our secondary experience, and it is impossible to share primordial experiences as they are unique to and only to the individual experiencing them, even if there are two individuals experiencing the same situation at the same moment. For example, two individuals are sitting on a couch, chatting about current event, and an earthquake strikes. Even if both individuals are deathly afraid of earthquakes, their experiences are going to be as unique as they are and will only be individualized for their individual self. They can share in the experience (i.e. the shared experience); however, the empathetic moment will be individualized to the particular individual. I would like to pause briefly and look at what would appear to be a passing comment by Stein as she moves from her discussion of the ‘I’ and empathy towards a transition to the foreign individual: ‘The physical body occurs as a living body; consciousness occurs as the soul of the unified individual’.11 I would like to briefly examine the second clause in this statement. For Stein, consciousness occurs as the soul of the unified individual. Here, the key word is ‘unified’. Although Camus does not explicitly state in The Myth of Sisyphus that there is a kind of unification between individuals, I would argue that, as we will come to see, there is a unification between the individual and the self that will afford the individual the ability to empathize with the other, or, as Stein refers to the ‘foreign person’. Of course, as one can surmise, this will be difficult if not non-​existent for individuals who are narcissistic, have narcissistic tendencies, or are autistic, as Isabelle Wentworth points out in her essay ‘Autism and Absurdism: Philosophical Ramifications of Cognitive Criticism in Camus’ L’etranger.12 According to Dermot Moran, ‘Stein argues that one can never get an orientation from which one can perceive the other’s pain directly, just as in similar fashion there are aspects of my awareness of an object which are not given in the perception of the profile I am now experiencing. I can live in the other’s experience in an intuitive manner but I don’t undergo that experience myself in an original fashion. Empathy is, for Stein as for Husserl, a non-​primordial experience which reveals a primordial experience. Empathy is not a matter of judgement, reasoning, or ideation in general. It is a founded experience’.13 11 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 52. 12 Isabelle Wentworth, ‘Autism and Absurdism: Philosophical Ramifications of Cognitive Criticism in Camus’ L’etranger. Ed. Peter Francev in Journal of Camus Studies (2015). 2015. pp. 133–​160. 13 Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, London: Routledge (2000). p. 176.

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Moran’s interpretation of Stein affords empathy to be an individualized experience that is grounded within the individual and leads to the individuality of the said individual. No two experiences are exactly alike, no matter how similar they appear to the individual or the other, because they are specifically individualized, founded and grounded experiences. Finally, Stein is consciously aware of avoiding the phenomenological problem. She knows that empathy could fill the gap of intersubjectivity in Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl’s ideas on intersubjectivity (1905–​1935) do not have an overtly phenomenological understanding of empathy, and this is precisely what Stein saw and what, I would argue, is the basis of her revisions of Ideas ii as well as her need to explore the idea for her Ph.D. thesis. Empathy is a phenomenological process that is individualized in consciousness and, for Stein, based off her thesis, the ‘goal of phenomenology is to clarify and thereby to find the ultimate basis of all knowledge. To reach this goal, it considers nothing that is in any way “doubtful”, nothing that can be eliminated’.14 This quote appears to call attention to Husserl’s use of epoché as a way to suspend all thought and judgment whilst the individual gathers all pertinent and relevant information, before making an exposition into reason and argument. Part of the problem with discerning Stein’s philosophy of empathy is that the first chapter of On the Problem of Empathy has not survived; thus, Chapter 2 is acting in a way as Chapter 1; therefore, we can only speculate on what was contained in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 does a good job of elucidating the fact that it is the individualized ego, the ‘I’ as it were, that is concerned with the phenomenological process started by Husserl and taken into its Steinian direction vis-​à-​vis through empathy. As previously mentioned, On the Problem of Empathy heavily criticizes Lipps, this is immediately apparent early in Chapter 2. Through her heavy-​ handed criticism of Lipps so early in the thesis, Stein does not afford herself the opportunity to situate, clarify and expound upon her position. Yet, for it’s seemingly nearsightedness, Stein does a good job of describing the ‘three levels or modalities of accomplishment’ in the representation of experience These are (1) the emergence of the experience, (2) the fulfilling explication, and (3) the comprehensive objectification of the explained experience. On the first and third levels, the representation exhibits the non-​ primordial parallel to perception, and on the second level, it exhibits the non-​primordial parallel to the having of the experience. The subject 14 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 3.

36 Francev of the empathized experience, however, is not the subject empathizing, but another.15 Here we find that Stein is working towards the phenomenological basis for empathy, and to that end she works through the process of expounding on the steps. In the first instance, there is the givenness of the situation through its presentation to the subjective ‘I’. As Stein points out, this is coupled nicely with the objectification of the situation as it happens. The individual ‘I’ comes to or is presented within the situation’s givenness as the experience emerges, then the experience has its explication fulfilled through the moment of experience’s existence, and finally, there is the individual’s enabling of the objectification of the experience. The problem of level three is that it begs the question of the objectivity in the givenness of the situation for the individual ‘I’. It would appear that a counterargument would be one in which the validity of the experience’s objectivity is called into question and, if this is indeed the case, then how can an individual be truly objective and not governed or controlled by the biases of subjectivity? Stein tries to evade the issue by holding that empathy is a form of perception. Be that as it may, it still does not answer the issue of the ‘poisoned well’ of objectivity through the primary individual’s subjectivity and is one that will not be developed at this moment. For now, let’s turn to The Myth of Sisyphus. 1.2 The Myth of Sisyphus The Myth of Sisyphus was begun in 1940, and it was Camus’s intent to have the essay be published by Gallimard alongside The Stranger as a way to help explain the philosophy of the absurd, as it was demonstrated in Meursault’s actions. However, the essay’s publication was delayed several months as the Nazi censors were not too pleased with the supplemental essay appendixed at the end of The Myth: ‘Hope and the Absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka’.16 In the Pléiade edition of Camus’s works, The Myth of Sisyphus contains the original three sections (‘An Absurd Reasoning’, ‘The Absurd Man’, ‘Absurd Creation’), as well as Camus’s retelling of the myth of Sisyphus and the essay on Kafka.17

15 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 10. 16 As readers are probably aware, the Nazis withheld publication because Kafka was a Jewish writer. The Myth was published, minus the Kafka essay, in early 1943 after the publication of The Stranger. 17 What is missing, however, from the Pléiade edition, compared to the American edition of 1955, are the early writings: ‘Summer in Algiers’, ‘The Minotaur, or the Stop in Oran’, ‘Helen’s Exile’, ‘Return to Tipasa’ and ‘The Artist and His Time’.

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For the purposes of this essay and the forthcoming research, Camus’s ideas on empathy reside only in two sections from The Myth—​‘An Absurd Reasoning’ and ‘The Absurd Man’—​and this is where I shall concentrate my analysis. 2

‘An Absurd Reasoning’

2.1 Absurdity and Suicide The four subsections of ‘An Absurd Reasoning’ (Absurdity and Suicide, Absurd Walls, Philosophical Suicide, Absurd Freedom) constitute what I believe to be the ‘philosophical’ or ‘theoretical’ elements of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd. It is here, in ‘An Absurd Reasoning’, that Camus indulges his readers on what exactly the philosophy of the absurd is and how individuals are to overcome the despondency that sometimes arise with the realization that the university is absurd and ultimately indifferent. In the section Absurdity and Suicide Camus begins with a shocking opening that is reminiscent of the opening of The Stranger: ‘There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy’.18 Notwithstanding the Cartesian debate, Camus holds that it is the question of absurdity that must first be addressed before any kind of philosophical investigation can occur. Presupposing that the individual has overcome the initial question of absurdity and not committed suicide, then the individual will be faced with what Camus believes to be the ‘divorce between man and his life’, where ‘man feels an alien, a stranger’.19 Therefore, broadly speaking, I propose that Stein’s concept of empathy, as postulated in her treatise On the Problem of Empathy, should offer a kind of ‘cure’ to the feelings of alienation and outsideness that the absurd seems to convey in the individual. Like Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, which is entirely rooted in the single person, Stein’s philosophy on empathy holds that the individual, represented as an ‘I’, ‘senses, thinks, feels, and wills. The living body of this “I” not only fits into my phenomenal world but is itself the center of orientation of such a phenomenal world. It faces this world and communicates with me’.20 It is the ‘I’ of 18 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. (New York: Vintage, 1955). p. 3. Also, it should be noted that the opening lines of The Stranger are: ‘Maman died today. Or yesterday, maybe, I don’t know’. Albert Camus, The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. (New York: Vintage, 1988). p. 3. 19 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6. 20 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 6.

38 Francev individuality that presupposes the existential self that will, over time, according to Camus, come to realize that life itself is absurd. It is also through this thinking being that can reject the meaninglessness of life, and to choose to finding meaning in the meaninglessness by revolting against absurdity. It is the revolt that gives life it’s meaning. If we think of Camus’s and Stein’s philosophies from a comparative perspective, then we can see that Camus’s philosophy of the absurd could be taken in a macro sense, that is it is applicable to all individuals; whereas Stein’s philosophy of empathy is more akin to a micro philosophy as it is concerned with the individual. I am well-​aware that critics will immediately point back to Camus’s philosophy of the absurd and claim that it is also an individualistic philosophy; however, I would argue that whilst Camus intends for his audience to individually think of the absurdity of existence, it is Stein’s philosophy on empathy that is rooted within the individual ‘I’, as we can see in the previous paragraph. Nevertheless, one can surmise that Stein’s ‘I’ and Camus’s philosophy of the absurd intersect to create the individual’s awareness of empathy within the confines of the absurd. What comes next is how we explicate the ways in which Stein and Camus’s philosophies come together. Stein believes that empathy ‘does not have the character of outer perception, though it does have something in common with outer perception: In both cases the object itself is present here and now. We have come to recognize outer perception as an act giving primordially. But, though empathy is not outer perception this is not to say that it does not have this “primordiality”’.21 Camus holds that in order to overcome the meaninglessness of life—​the absurdity, if you will—​one must escape death—​that is, prolong death’s arrival—​as long as possible by using ‘logical thought’.22 Taken together, we can examine the primordiality of perception of the givenness of the meaninglessness of life. I see Stein’s concept of empathy as a way to bridge inner and outer perception; for example, if we follow Camus’s postulation, then individuals use logical thought to demonstrate the primordiality of outer perception which allows the individual to come closer to inner perception. It is the individual’s inner perception that brings about the world through the perceptions, and it is through empathy that the individual can understand and recognize those moments that are outside of the inner perception—​that is to say, outer perceptions. If an individual has climbed a mountain, say Mt Everest, for example, the mountain climber will be able to use empathy as a way to connect his inner

21 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, p. 7. 22 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 9.

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perceptions of thoughts, feelings, and emotions connected to a fellow climber who has summited the peak five minutes later, five years prior, or five years into the future. It is the individual climber’s inner perception that helps afford the individual the opportunity to be empathetic towards the connection with the other’s inner and outer perceptions. And while Stein would argue that the two climbers could not have possibly had an empathetic experience because of their individuality as being unique to their own existences, Camus would counter-​argue that ‘For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it’.23 Thus if my understanding of Camus’s quote is on point, then, for Camus it is not the empathetic experiences that bring the individuals together, but it is their consciousnesses joined together in the moment of empathy and, I would argue further, that it can also be seen in a sympathetic connection as well. (Whilst I will not digress into the sympathetic connection, I will continue to elucidate on the consciousness of empathy and its place in the thinking of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd.) Another point to be raised is, ‘Does the aforementioned apply to Heidegger’s concept of “anxiety”’?, because one could argue that it does—​that anxiety fills the void left by the imbalance between empathy and sympathy. 2.2 Absurd Walls I would argue that existential loneliness, existential isolation and existential anxiety of being-​towards-​death would be found within the confines of Camus’s absurd walls. The anxiety-​ridden individual is metaphorically trapped by one’s being-​towards-​death that is coupled with the notion of absurdity that life is meaningless because of death. If the beginning of ‘everything’ that Camus holds, then one need only looks at consciousness and through conscious individuals come to empathy. Yes, consciousness of the absurd can lead to the anxiety of existence, but I would postulate that it is the consciousness of the absurd from the uniquely Camusian point of view that eclipses anxiety by providing individuals with their ‘starting point’ to overcoming the absurdity of the existence of life. Consciousness is then the starting point for the individual to overcome anxiety and the Camusian absurd walls. Empathy, therefore, becomes a way for individuals to connect with one another in any given situation. For example, let us briefly look at three of Camus’s most well-​known protagonists: Meursault from The Stranger, Rieux from The Plague and Jean-​ Baptiste Clamence from The Fall.

23 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 13.

40 Francev With Meursault and Clamence, it is probably difficult for the reader to empathize (or even sympathize, for that matter) their situations: Meursault does not cry at his mother’s funeral; he is indifferent towards his partner Marie’s advances and declarations of love; he shoots and Arab dead, seemingly in cold blood with calculated indifference; and he is dispassionate when it comes to his interrogation, trial and sentencing. Ironically, he only seems to demonstrate any kind of emotion at the very end of his life when he assaults the prison chaplain brought in to give him his last rites (even though he refuses the chaplain three times). In Clamence’s case, he supposedly defends widows and orphans whilst practicing law in Paris; he appears to be callous in his treatment and commentary of those around him—​either on the streets or within the confines of the Amsterdam bar Mexico City. The major incident that seems to separate Clamence from others is his casual indifference towards the young woman’s suicide on the Pont des Arts. The egregiousness with which Clamence matter-​of-​factly states that he does nothing irks most readers into thinking that Clamence and his absurdian forerunner Meursault are some kinds of deviant sociopaths of society. Of the aforementioned characters, only Rieux the doctor demonstrates any kind of empathetic qualities and is the one person who readers empathize with, especially when Rieux must care for the prefect’s dying son, Jacques Othon. George Heffernan holds that ‘For is part, despite his refreshing skepticism in regard to traditional academic philosophy, Camus singled out Husserl’s phenomenology for what was by his standards a sustained critique in The Myth of Sisyphus’.24 Whilst attacking Husserl’s phenomenology, Camus sets up the argument that it is consciousness that makes us aware of world and our surroundings. It is through consciousness that Camus is able to ‘by-​pass’ Husserlian phenomenology and demonstrate an affinity for Stein and empathy, and this is something that we can see in the majority of Camus’s fictional works. If the world, through Heideggerian anxiety or not, is the centerpiece for the individual to be confronted with the absurd, then I would argue that it is through one’s own consciousness, perceptions and acceptance that life is absurd would afford the individual to overcome the absurdity of one’s existence vis-​á-​vis through individuation and, as a result, be more open to empathy and the empathetic understanding of the Other. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus holds that ‘This world is not reasonable …. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing 24

George Heffernan, ‘Absurdity, Creativity and Constitution: Critical Observations on Camus’s Critique of Husserl’s Phenomenology in The Myth of Sisyphus’ in The Journal of Camus Studies (Raleigh: Lulu, 2013), p. 73.

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for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together’.25 It is through empathy that the absurd world, absurd universe and/​or the absurd existence is understood; and through this understanding, the individual can come to terms with his or her own placement in such an environment, before embarking upon the basis from which to understand, sympathize and eventually empathize with the Other. In fact, I would argue that it is empathy that, in Heffernan’s words, ‘aims to enumerate what it cannot transcend,’26 not to mention ‘From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all’.27 Working backwards from the previous quotes, I think that what we have before us is the most foundational element of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd in that once the individual recognizes the absurdity of life, there is a kind of emptiness, an anxiety, a panic that grips in the individual in such a way that if not addressed quickly, it can lead to paralysis that can be quite difficult to overcome. (As I have previously elucidated, this will be seen in the ‘Absurd Walls’ section of The Myth.) Heffernan’s understanding of Husserlian phenomenology, if my comprehension is spot on holds that, broadly speaking, phenomenology has the ability to explain that which cannot transcend. And whilst I agree with both Camus and Heffernan’s points, I would contend that if we bring Stein’s empathy into the equation, then it is the variable needed to help the absurd individual connect, transcend and understand the Other. In fact, I would argue that empathy is needed in order to exist in an absurd universe with Others.28 2.3 Philosophical Suicide In Philosophical Suicide, individuals have overcome the trappings of the absurd walls and are now looking for a way to find meaning in the meaningless universe. They have come to accept the meaningless; however, that does not prevent the individual from continuing their search for meaning. Camus believes that ‘a man is always a prey to his truths. […] he cannot free himself

25 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 21. 26 Heffernan, ‘Absurdity, Creativity and Constitution: Critical Observations on Camus’s Critique of Husserl’s Phenomenology in The Myth of Sisyphus’, p. 80. 27 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 22. 28 By way of a slight digression, one could argue that if my understanding is indeed correct that Husserl’s epoché, or ‘bracketing’, is exactly what is needed in order for the individual to transcend the absurd.

42 Francev from them. A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it’.29 What Camus means here is that once the individual recognizes the absurdity of existence, then there is no proverbial escape in the sense that the epistemological truth of the absurd is inescapable and to try and deny that truth would be to commit bad faith. Nevertheless, Camus wants individuals to see the absurd but also to embrace it, because through their coming to terms with the absurd, they are able to fight against the meaninglessness and are standing in the midst of philosophical suicide. Camus states that, ‘And carrying this absurd logic to its conclusion, I must admit that that struggle implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest). Everything that destroys, conjures away, or exorcises these requirements (and, to begin with, consent which overthrows divorce) ruins the absurd and devaluates the attitude that may then be proposed’.30 When the individual overcomes absurd walls and enters the philosophical suicide phase of absurdity, he is faced with the duality of the existence of his situation: either reject his fate and confront the ‘one truly serious philosophical problem’—​ suicide—​or accept his fate and find meaning within the meaninglessness of the universe vis-​á-​vis the act of rebellion. Rebellion gives life meaning. It is the tension of rebellion against meaninglessness that also affords the individual to closely examine life, so that meaning is ultimately found but also that the individual can see the how meaning figures into one’s existence. Of course, we should note that it is possible for the individual to undergo an existential crisis and face the existential dread of living, thus the question ‘Is life worth living?’ remains as does the possibility of one committing suicide as an escape. The primary focal point of philosophical suicide is consciousness, and it is through consciousness that the individual can come to an empathetic understanding of the Other; however, before we can expound upon that line of thinking, we must look to how Camus arrives to that conclusion. Camus remarks ‘that inability to understand becomes the existence that illuminates everything’.31 It is through one’s lack of understanding that the clarity of the world comes into focus—​through Husserl’s use of epoché. With the epoché, the individual is afforded the opportunity to suspend all judgment. So, for the individual, when judgement is suspended choices and decisions and logical 29 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 31. 30 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 31. 31 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 33.

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qualifications are not levelled by the individual. Therefore, it is entirely possible that when the individual is ‘trapped’ by the tension created in philosophical suicide—​that is, knowing that one must find meaning otherwise the individual will lose meaning and thus be confronted with the question of whether or not life is worth living. Husserl’s use of epoché affords a suspension so that the individual can take time to understand the situation-​at-​hand. Here, it is Camus’s theory of consciousness that illuminates the reader’s coming to terms with empathy and the absurd: ‘Consciousness illuminates it by paying attention to it. Consciousness does not form the object of its understanding, it merely focuses, it is the act of attention …. […] Consciousness suspends in experience the objects of its attention’.32 With consciousness’s illumination, it affords the individual the opportunity stop and assess the situation at hand. Where empathy comes into play is when the individual becomes conscious of his being-​in-​the-​world, he will first be able to utilize epoché in order to ground himself in this logically inconsistent universe. Once that happens, the individual will be able to ‘survive’ philosophical suicide and, as such, before the individual moves towards absurd freedom, he will have a unique perspective about his existence in the absurd universe which will afford him the ability to remain both sympathetic and, more importantly, empathetic towards the existential crises of his fellow human beings. We know that if the individual understands and embraces philosophical suicide, then he or she comes to absurd freedom. 2.4 Absurd Freedom Absurd freedom is the final section in the Absurd Reasoning section of The Myth and it marks the end of what I call the ‘philosophical’ or ‘theoretical’ element of the absurd, whereas Absurd Man and Absurd Creation constitute the ‘practical’ elements of the absurd. In Absurd Reasoning, Camus offers his criticisms of several existentialist philosophers denoting how, why, and in what ways his philosophy of the absurd is a critique against his predecessors. Then, he launches into his exposition on the practically of the absurd’s application in three outstanding categories of living: Don Juanism, Conquest and Drama.33 However, before I can proceed, I will look more closely at absurd freedom. Absurd freedom is the freedom that the individual finds himself accepting the fact that life is temporary, fleeting and illogically absurd due to the lack of meaning in the universe. Camus remarks that it is within absurd freedom that 32 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 43. 33 I will examine each of the three subsections to Absurd Man in the following section of my paper.

44 Francev individuals come to ‘accepting it fully’.34 It is through the full acceptance of the absurd that the individual is able to move forward, face the absurd head on and embrace life by finding a personal meaning to the meaningless universe.35 As far as Camus is concerned, ‘To abolish conscious revolt is to elude the problem. […] Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it’.36 Here, Camus informs his readership that ignoring the questioning of the meaning of life is, basically, to succumb to the vortex of meaninglessness and as such, the individual’s life is thus negated due to a lack of meaning that drives the individual forward into the abyss of life. No, Camus does not advocate this despondent outlook that makes an already difficult life even more challenging. Camus wants his readers to choose conscious revolt in order to rebel against the meaninglessness of life. By consciously rejecting the meaninglessness of an absurd universe and absurd life, the individual can rebel against the meaninglessness, find meaning and embrace that meaning. This is precisely the conscious revolt that Camus speaks of. So, the question ‘What does absurd freedom have to do with empathy?’ is raised. Camus contends that ‘the absurd […] escapes suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death’.37 This duality helps shape the individual’s reception to the recognition that the absurd is tricky in the sense that is really the most fundamental question of philosophy, as Camus posits, or is it really the ‘second truth’ of philosophy as Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray argues in her excellent historical essay ‘Absurdism: The Second Truth of Philosophy’.38 I will not engage in a Cartesian-​Camusian debate on which came first—​the cogito or absurdism. I will, however, try to elucidate on the notion that it is through the individual’s recognition of the seriousness of a lack of meaning in life, with which he is presented, can be seen in negative terms where the individual must choose to either exist in a meaningless world or commit suicide. Whilst Camus does not judge individuals who opt to commit suicide, noting that it is their personal choice, he does, in fact, advocate for their choosing of life and the search for meaning. It is evident that if the individual commits suicide, then there is no way that he will be able to find 34 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 53. 35 Of course, as we will see in the next section of this paper, Camus is vehemently opposed to freedom that comes at the expense of another individual’s freedom. 36 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 53–​54. 37 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 54. 38 See Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray, ‘Absurdism: The Second Truth of Philosophy’ in The Journal of Camus Studies (Raleigh: Lulu, 2013), pp. 3–​15. In her essay, Baltzer-​Jaray argues that absurdism is, contrary to Camus’s claim, the ‘second truth’ of philosophy after Rene Descartes’s ‘cogito ergo sum’.

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meaning, reject the absurdity of the universe, or come to terms with his own existential crisis. Camus then goes on to say, ‘That revolt gives life its value’.39 And it is this revolt, the revolt of finding meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe that presents the individual with the option to at least have a choice in determining as to whether or not there should be, or can be, meaning to life. Of course, Camus says that it is up to the individual to find his own meaning which is unique to his own lived experience and that one’s meaning of life is as different as the next person’s. Yes, revolt gives life its value as Camus mentions; but what we have regarding the absurd and empathy is that once the revolt against the meaninglessness occurs, the individual must decide what the meaning entails. For example, I am well-​aware that life and the universe are meaningless because of death and death’s ability to negate life, yet I do not see suicide as an option for rebelling against the meaninglessness. I am not a nihilist, as Camus would put it, with the only option of suicide as a way to overcome, rebel and prove that life is meaningless. Instead, I adhere to Camus’s philosophy in so much as I rebel against meaningless; I revolt by acknowledging that life is indeed meaningless no thanks to death, but nevertheless I choose to rebel; I choose to revolt; and by doing so, I am a rebel, a revolutionary against the meaninglessness of life, and I seek my own personal meaning. Since I have not committed suicide and I choose to consciously rebel every day against the meaninglessness, I have found meaning. And, to further expound upon that meaning, if I can wake up and face my day knowing that it is entirely possible that I can die today but know that I am going to live this day and each future day to its fullest, then I have succeeded in my rebellion, my revolution and my ability to find meaning. I will, when I am in the lecture hall, try to instill as much knowledge in my students as possible; I will, when I am home, try to be the best father I can be for my children; I will also strive to be the best partner that I can be, so that my partner, my children and my students can look back on my life, at the end of my life, and honestly admit to themselves that I was the best partner, father and professor that I could have been and that if, given the opportunity to live it all over again, they would not want a different partner, father, or professor. My meaning, as I suspect of Camus, too, entails empathy. I cannot imagine living my life without being empathetic towards my fellow human being. I believe that even though Camus does not explicitly state that absurd allows for empathetic understanding, it is there. Certainly, there are Camusian 39 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 55.

46 Francev characters like: Meursault, Caligula and Clamence who seem to spurn empathy, but I believe that it is because Camus did not, for whatever reasons, develop the characters as empathetic in order to differentiate and exclude them from the rest of society. This is not to say that Camus’s characters are totally devoid of empathy; quite the contrary. To find empathetic characters, one only needs to look at The Plague where Bernard Rieux, Jean Tarrou, Raymond Rambert and Joseph Grand are all empathic in their own unique ways. (And this is to say nothing of Camus’s journalistic writings, namely those focusing on Algeria.) Nevertheless, it is important that we keep an open mind as we move towards the individuals who represent the Absurd Man—​the Don Juan character, the conqueror and the actor—​as each of these individuals will, in their own ways, come to exemplify the absurd and its relationship with empathy. 3

‘Absurd Man’

Now that I have explained how Camus’s philosophy of the absurd is situated with regards to empathy, at least in theoretical terms, I will now examine its application to the practicality of Camus’s three types of absurd man. Unlike like universal statements embedded with absurd reasoning, that could be applied to all individuals, the three categories of absurd men that Camus describes in this section are unique in that [absurd men] ‘he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what we has; the second informs him of his limits’.40 Following along this line of reasoning, Camus then goes on to say that ‘the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify’.41 Thus, from reasoning comes the absurd man’s justification of his actions which, thereby, afford him a clear conscience in order to live his life as he deems necessary. I contend that there is nothing to justify because as we all know, life is meaningless; yet, there must be some kind of meaning to be found within the parameters of a meaningless universe, otherwise individuals would only be left with the option of suicide. Since the absurd man has inherently rejected the notion of suicide as a means to escape life, he must now look at what I call ‘Ivan Karamazov’s ethics’ with Ivan’s (in)famous statement that ‘Everything is permitted’. One could argue that Karamazov’s ethics are anarchistic or, at the very least, are atheistic.

40 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 66. 41 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 67.

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Nevertheless, Camus asserts that ‘The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. “Everything is permitted” does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions’.42 The individual, whether he is an absurd man or not, is as Sartre famously noted ‘Condemned to be free’. It is through the individual’s freedom to choose, the freedom to exist within the realms of absurdity, that the individual must realize that no matter what, he is bound to the responsibility of his choices; hence, he is condemned to be free—​to choose and to maintain his responsibility—​and we shall see how this affects the absurd man’s individuality whilst still trying to maintain an element of empathy towards his fellow human beings. 3.1 Don Juanism Don Juanism is named after the legendary Spanish lover-​aristocrat whose main purpose in life is to seduce and sleep with as many women as possible, because it is through the continued sexual conquest of women that the Don Juan character can assert his individuality as well as conquer and, therefore, objectify the women of his desire. Conquering leads to loss of individuality, which is a form of anti-​empathy, because of the Don Juan character was truly empathetic, then there would not be the objective conquering that dehumanizes the individual and causes her loss of individuality and sense of self. The Don Juan character has the illusion that it is through his sexual conquest that affords him the opportunity to justify his actions, justify his individuality and find meaning in a meaningless universe. Simply put, he is wrong. Camus states that for the Don Juan ‘It is ridiculous to represent him as a mystic in the quest to total love. But it is indeed because he loves them with the same passion and each time with his whole self that he must repeat his gift and his profound quest’.43 I would argue that Camus is slightly wrong in this quote, because can we argue that the Don Juan character truly loves the women of his conquests? If his ultimate goal is to seduce a different woman each day in order to get her into bed that night, so that through his sexual appetite he is able to ‘feel’ alive, justified and an individual apart from others, then we must argue that the Don Juan’s logic is faulty and erroneous. For Camus and, I would argue, Stein, as much as an individual like the Don Juan wants to find his life’s meaning in the abject objectification of the Other, it is not possible because it comes at the expense of the Other’s individuality and subjectivity; thus, the

42 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 67. 43 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 69.

48 Francev Don Juan uses the Other as an object whose individuality and subjectivity have been stripped away. Clearly, this is not empathetic. 3.2 Drama The category of absurd man that Camus alludes to in the drama section of absurd man is an actor or actress.44 Camus believes that, for the actor, ‘The absurd man begins where that one leaves off, where, ceasing to admire the play, the mind wants to enter in. Entering into all these lives, experiencing them in their diversity, amounts to acting them out. […] The actor’s realm is that of the fleeting’.45 The actor craves the chance, the ability to live multiple lives through the creation of the fictional character. The stage become the actor’s character’s world, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, and one in which where the actor can create the life of the fictitious individual as he sees fit. The actor enters this new life, albeit temporarily, to escape the present moment and the fleetingness of the temporality of life, which also adds to the actor’s ability to live an absurd life through the new character, the new life. The temporality and fleetingness of life affords the actor a way in which he can enter the new life and fight the feeling of its fleetingness by thrusting himself onto the stage for the limited time. The role that the individual creates, be it Hamlet, Manfred, or any of the countless characters created by artists for the stage and screen, becomes a temporary and secondary life for the actor. The actor is no longer his pre-​acting individual, but rather he is this new character that he must breathe life into in the moment. As Camus points out, ‘Within three hours he must experience and express a whole exceptional life. That is called losing oneself to find oneself’.46 When the actor loses himself within the role, there is the complete shedding of his individuality as he assumes this new role and this new life. He can play the role, give life to the character, as he sees fit, so that the acted life is his creation and that is entirely unique to his acting and his perception of how the fictional character is set to exist. From the actor’s point of view, Camus believes that ‘I should never really understand Iago unless I played his part. It is not enough to hear him, for I grasp him only at the moment when I see him’.47 This quote has a dual function: on the one hand, it demonstrates the ability for the actor to not understand the 44

Camus does not differentiate between the genders of actors being male and actresses being female. For this and all subsequent sections, I will follow Camus’s lead and refer to both male and female actors and actresses as actors. 45 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 77. 46 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 80. 47 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 81.

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character that he is mean to portray, until he assumes the role and then steps out on to the stage. On the other hand, it shows how the actor is becomes immersed into the role which seems to absorb him and his individuality until he is not the actor but the character. When this occurs, the actor fully becomes the fictional character and can metaphorically conquer the audience through the believability of his acting skills. The believability is the moment when the audience does not recognize the actor, but instead sees the character as a real, living human being; thus, the audience comes to sympathize and, dare I say, empathize with the character’s life as it is presented before them. The actor becomes a duality of absurdity through his giving life to the fictional character, as well as through his conquering of the audience’s believability that the character is a real human being. 3.3 Conquest In the Conquest section of Absurd Man, Camus’s central thesis is that Every man has felt himself to be the equal of a god at certain moments. At least, this is the way it is expressed. But this comes from the fact that in a flash he felt the amazing grandeur of the human mind. The conquerors are merely those among men who are conscious enough of their strength to be sure of living constantly on those heights and fully aware of that grandeur. […] But they are capable of no more than man himself when he wants. This is why they never leave the human crucible, plunging into the seething soul of revolutions.48 There is a lot of unpack in this quote so if we take it a clause at a time, we should be able to get to Camus’s meaning and then apply Stein’s empathy to its analysis. In the first clause, the individual likens himself to a god-​like entity, but it is the ambiguity in the second clause that is concerning. Camus’s lack of explanation leaves a lot to be desired, as well as the reader guessing what he means. Luckily, in the next clause readers are given a ‘peak’ into what Camus is thinking: through their reasoning abilities, humans have adept skills at being able to set themselves apart from the rest of the animal kingdom—​and each other. The elevated thoughts, not entirely narcissistic, shifts the individual into a modus operandi where he is able to see himself in a position of power. In the next clause, Camus names these individuals as conquerors, who are A) conscious of their strength; B) living up to those said strengths; and I would also 48 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 88.

50 Francev argue C) use their consciousnesses in order to manipulate the ways in which they are able to dominate of the conquered. We see this in the Don Juan character and in the actor. For the Don Juan, it is all about conquering through the deception and manipulation of seduction; for the actor and actress, it is the multiplicity of lives lived as well as the ability to conquer the audience through one’s performance and that performance’s believability of the existence of the fictional character. 4

Absurd Creation

In what is arguably the least studied section of The Myth of Sisyphus, readers find some of Camus’s most profound thoughts and ideas on absurdity and empathy, even if it is thinly veiled. In one of Camus’s most quoted sentences, ‘For the absurd man it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference’.49 The beauty of this statement is that Camus leaves the meaning open-​ended. For example, Camus could be thinking of artists who are on the verge of and amid creating their works of art; and, in doing so, the artists do not explain or solve anything but, rather, look upon experience(ing) and description(ing), which is all rooted in ‘lucid indifference’. Or, Camus could be thinking of the absurd individual who does not try to explain or solve his (absurdist) condition in the world, but content with ‘experiencing and describing’ their placement and view of the universe—​all with lucid indifference. This is precisely why Meursault is vilified by the questioning magistrate prior to his trial and by the prosecutor during the trail. The individuals who are not Meursault’s acquaintances or friends but come to represent the various strata of society do not understand Meursault’s lucid indifference, which is why he is thoroughly demonized.50 Almost immediately following Camus’s lucid indifference quote is one that resonates with the scholar of empathy, ‘The heart learns thus that the emotion delighting us when we see the world’s aspects comes to us not from its depth but from their diversity. Explanation is useless, but the sensation

49 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 94. 50 Arguably, Camus shifts the focus away from the individual and towards society as a collective in The Plague. With Jean-​Baptiste Clamence, in The Fall, no judgement is made by society per se, but judgement is left to the reader who also happens to be the unnamed bar patron sitting next to Clamence at ‘Mexico City’. (And as we shall see in my chapter on Clamence, this is exactly what Clamence wants the unnamed bar patron to do-​to pass judgement on himself so he is alleviated of his guilt.)

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remains and, with it, the constant attractions of a universe inexhaustible in quantity’.51 I contend that this quote could be seen as a Camusian interpretation of Steinian empathy, by holding that it is in the heart that emotion is delighted. I am reminded of a quote by Blaise Pascal that, paraphrased, holds that the heart has its reasons for which the mind will not know. Undoubtedly, Stein does an incredible job maneuvering through Husserl’s ideas in Ideas ii, because she is able to navigate her own ideas, more or less, with the help of Lipps. Nevertheless, scholars and students of phenomenology and existentialism can easily see an overlapping of philosophies, especially when it comes to empathy, and there is no doubt that Camus, too, had this in mind—​both with his philosophy of the absurd and his literary characters. 4.1 Absurd Art and Empathy Even though Camus’s does not explicitly examine empathy and art, he has two passages that relate to the indifference that comes with the absurd. He holds that ‘In the time of absurd reasoning, creation follows indifference and discovery. It marks the point from which absurd passions spring and where the reasoning stops’.52 and ‘The absurd work illustrates thought’s renunciation of its prestige and its resignation to being no more that the intelligence that works up appearances and covers with images what has no reason’.53 I would contend that the artist, like the non-​artist, is able to see the world through the lucid indifference, and through that ability to look beyond, if you will, then the individual is able to free himself from the stresses and confines of experience and description. By doing so, the individual, being an absurdist, I would argue is better suited to face the world—​not with conscious and malevolent indifference—​but with sympathy and empathy for the Other. 5

Conclusion

In the conclusion to his essay ‘Absurdity, Creativity and Constitution: Critical Observations on Camus’s Critique of Husserl’s Phenomenology in The Myth of Sisyphus’, George Heffernan states that In the end, the purpose of any genuine philosophy, whether it be phenomenology, existentialism, philosophy of existence, philosophy of the 51 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 95. 52 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 95. 53 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 98.

52 Francev absurd, or any other contemplative way of thinking or reflective way of living, is neither to tell people what the meaning of life is nor to tell them that life has no meaning. It is, rather, to help each and every person to live a meaningful life individually and people together to live meaningful lives collectively. Properly understood, then, both Camus’s philosophy of existence and Husserl’s philosophy of phenomena show that the search for the meaning of life can be a major obstacle to living a meaningful life.54 I think, without even realizing it, Heffernan strike the nail on the head in that the philosophy of existence, broadly speaking, is one in which empathy must be an integral part of, so that the individuals engaged in such thought, discuss, debate and modus operandi will be able to use empathy as a way to connect with and better understand the Other. Finally, I would argue that I think that this is precisely what both Stein and Camus would have wanted when individuals studied their philosophical and literary works, because it is that philosophy—​the philosophy of empathy—​that would allow for individuals to become better versions of themselves. 54

Heffernan, ‘Absurdity, Creativity and Constitution: Critical Observations on Camus’s Critique of Husserl’s Phenomenology in The Myth of Sisyphus’, p. 107.

­c hapter 3

Benjamin Fondane and Albert Camus: Reason and the Absurd Bruce Baugh 1

Brief Encounter

In June 1943, Albert Camus paid a visit to the Romanian expatriate Benjamin Fondane at Fondane’s apartment, 6 rue Rollin, Paris.1 The young Camus had recently attracted the literary world’s attention with two books published the previous year: The Stranger2 and his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus.3 Fondane, for his part, was by then a well-​known poet and exponent of the existential philosophy that forms the background to Camus’s essay, most notably in his 1936 book, The Unhappy Consciousness.4 The two men would have had a lot to talk about, not least the philosophy of Lev Shestov, sharply criticized by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, and vigorously defended throughout Fondane’s philosophical works. Fondane must have enjoyed their discussion. In September, he wrote Camus to invite him to pay him a return visit. Fondane told Camus that an anonymous

1 My account of the meeting between Fondane and Camus draws on the following sources: Olivier Salazar-​Ferrer, ‘Fondane et Camus’, in Monique Jutrin, ed., Rencontres autour de Benjamin Fondane (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2002), 29–​47; Salazar-​Ferrer, Benjamin Fondane (Paris: Oxus, 2004); Salazar-​Ferrer, Benjamin Fondane et la révolte existentielle (Paris: Éditions de Corlevour, 2008); Salazar-​Ferrer, ‘Benjamin Fondane’, in Jean-​Yves Guérin, ed., Dictionnaire Albert Camus (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2009), 327–​29; Salazar-​Ferrer, “Histoire d’un testament philosophique”, Cahiers Benjamin Fondane 2 (Autumn 1998): 69–​77; Monique Jutrin, Avec Benjamin Fondane au-​delà de l’histoire (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2011). 2 Albert Camus, L’Étranger (Paris: Gallimard, 1942). 3 Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Paris: Gallimard, 1942); further references are to The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien with a foreword by James Wood (London: Penguin 2000) and to Le Mythe de Sisyphe in Camus, Essais, ed. Roger Quillot (Paris: Éditions de la Pléiade/​Gallimard, 1965), 89–​211, indicated by the abbreviation ms, with the first page number referring to the translation and the second to the French. 4 Benjamin Fondane, La Conscience malheureuse (Paris: Denoël et Steele, 1936); revised and annotated edition, ed. Olivier Salazar-​Ferrer (Paris: Verdier/​Non Lieu, 2013). Unless otherwise indicated, references are to the latter.

© Bruce Baugh, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_005

54 Baugh donor had sent him copies of Camus’s two books.5 Since its publication in 1942, Fondane had been trying to get a hold of The Myth of Sisyphus, but had not been able to obtain a copy in occupied Paris. In November of that year, he wrote to Jean Ballard, editor of the Cahiers du Sud in Marseilles, for which Fondane had been contributing a ‘Chronical of Living Philosophy’ since the early 1930s, asking if Ballard could send it to him.6 We do not know who sent the book to Fondane, but by September 1943, having finally read it, Fondane was keen to discuss it with Camus. He told Camus how much he admired its literary qualities, but it was the philosophical content that most interested Fondane. ‘I took a lot of notes’, wrote Fondane; he wanted to write an article about Camus’s philosophy of the absurd. Before doing so, however, he wanted to talk with Camus in person. It would be, said Fondane, a full and frank encounter—​a corps-​à-​ corps that would allow them to hash out their differences regarding existential philosophy. There were too many questions to raise in a letter, Fondane said; it would take a book to deal with them properly. Despite their philosophical disagreements, Fondane told Camus that ‘your thought struck a chord in me’. He declared himself Camus’s friend. The return visit never happened and Fondane’s book was never written. His brief remarks on Camus’s thought in ‘Existential Monday and the Sunday of History’, written in early 1944 and published in 1945 in a volume (L’Existence) edited by Jean Grenier do not begin to cover the resonances and correspondences of their thought. Fondane’s essay was the first chapter of Grenier’s collection; Camus’s ‘Remarque sur la révolte’,7 a draft of what would become the first chapter of The Rebel,8 was the second. It was thanks to Grenier that the 5 Benjamin Fondane, letter to Albert Camus, September 1943, Fonds Albert Camus, I. M. E. C. (Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine), Paris; cited in Jutrin, Avec Benjamin Fondane, 138; Salazar-​Ferrer, Benjamin Fondane, 217; Salazar-​Ferrer, Benjamin Fondane et la révolte existentielle, 113; Salazar-​Ferrer, ‘Fondane et Camus’, 30. 6 Benjamin Fondane et les Cahiers du Sud. Correspondance, ed. Monique Jutrin, Gheorghe Has and Ion Pop (Bucharest: Éditions de la Fondation Culturelle Roumaine, 1998), 210; letter of 29 November 1942. 7 Benjamin Fondane, “Le lundi existentiel et le dimanche de l’histoire”, in Jean Grenier, L’Existence (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), pp. 25–​33; reprinted in Le lundi existentiel et le dimanche de l’histoire, ed. Michel Carassou (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1990), pp. 11–​68; trans. Bruce Baugh as ‘Existential Monday and the Sunday of History’ in Benjamin Fondane, Existential Monday. Philosophical Essays (New York: nyrb Classics, 2016), pp. 2–​32. All references are to my translation, hereafter indicated by the abbreviation em. For Camus’s ‘Remarque sur la révolte’, see Essais, pp. 1682–​97. 8 Albert Camus, L’Homme révolté (Paris: Gallimard, 1951); in Essais, pp. 407–​709; The Rebel, abridged edition, trans. Anthony Bower, preface by Olivier Todd (London: Penguin, 2000); hereafter referred to by the abbreviation R, with the first reference to the translation and the second to Essais.

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work of these two thinkers appeared side by side in the same volume, and it may well have been at Grenier’s instigation that Camus visited Fondane in 1943. Camus dedicated The Rebel to Grenier, who was a key influence on Camus’s intellectual development; Grenier had known Fondane’s work since 1938, when he wrote to Fondane to thank him for sending a copy of Fondane’s Faux traité d’esthétique, or ‘Pseudo-​treatise of aesthetics’,9 the central idea of which—​that poetry and feeling give a deeper grasp of reality than the intellect and theory—​Grenier says he found ‘both just and remarkably new’.10 But Grenier was not the only hinge connecting Camus and Fondane, who frequented the same literary and artistic circles and had many other friends in common: Ballard (whose Cahiers du Sud was the first review from Metropolitan France to publish one of Camus’s essays),11 Jean Paulhan (the editor up until the German Occupation of La Nouvelle Revue Française, France’s leading literary-​ philosophical periodical, and Fondane’s neighbour), and the writer and poet Gabriel Audisio, among others. It is even possible that Camus was one of the two anonymous donors who contributed to a fund organized by Ballard to cover the costs of Fondane’s naturalization as a French citizen in 1938.12 Nor was Grenier’s book the first to bring together Camus’s and Fondane’s work; an early draft of a chapter of The Plague and a chapter from Fondane’s posthumously published book on Baudelaire, Baudelaire et l’expérience du gouffre (1947),13 were contained in a volume edited by Jean Lescure and published in Geneva in 1943.14 On both a personal and professional level, then, there were

9 10 11 12

13 14

Benjamin Fondane, Faux traité d’esthétique (Paris: Denoël et Steele, 1938); hereafter referred to by the abbreviation ft. Jean Grenier to Benjamin Fondane, letter of 18 November 1938; in Olivier Salazar-​ Ferrer, “Histoire d’un testament philosophique”, Cahiers Benjamin Fondane 2 (Autumn 1998): pp. 69–​77; at p. 75. Albert Camus, ‘Portrait d’un élu. Essai sur le Portrait de Monsieur Pouget, de Jean Guitton’, Cahiers du Sud no. 255 (1943): 306–​11; see Salazar-​Ferrer, ‘Fondane et Camus’, p. 32. This possibility was suggested to me in conversation by Michel Carassou, Fondane’s literary executor. For the details concerning Fondane’s naturalization and the fund organized by Ballard, see Benjamin Fondane et les Cahiers du Sud, pp. 128–​42. The list of contributors to the fund includes Shestov, the philosophers Jean Wahl and Rachel Bespaloff, the anthropologist Lucien Lévy-​Bruhl, and the Romanian sculptor Brancusi. Benjamin Fondane, Baudelaire et l’expérience du gouffre (Paris: Seghers, 1947); new expanded edition with a preface by Patrice Beray (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1994). All references are to the latter, hereafter referred to by the abbreviation beg. Albert Camus, “Les exilés dans la peste” and Benjamin Fondane, “Importance de Baudelaire”, in Domaine Française, ed. Jean Lescure (Geneva: Éditions des Trois Collines, 1943), pp. 37–​47 and pp. 321–​31, respectively.

56 Baugh multiple links between the Camus and Fondane. The groundwork was laid for a fruitful philosophical dialogue. Unfortunately, that dialogue between Fondane and Camus never took place. Neither had seen the other’s contribution to Grenier’s book, and the two contributions pass each other by like ships in the night. Fondane’s essay was a vigorous defence of the philosophy of what he took to be the original existential thinkers—​Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Shestov—​and a critique of the latter-​day “existentialists”—​Heidegger, Jaspers, Camus, Sartre; Camus’s contribution was his first attempt to leave behind the individualist philosophy of the absurd for a conception of a collective revolt against injustice that would be based on human solidarity. But even though Camus’s philosophical orientation had changed, the reason that the conversation of the summer of 1943 never had a proper follow-​up was more brutal: in October 1944, Fondane, a Jew, perished in a gas chamber at Auschwitz-​Birkenau. We can only imagine what Fondane was hoping for when he invited Camus to visit him a second time, but they shared plenty of common ground. Both Fondane and Camus were preoccupied with the problem of human mortality and the search for meaning; both were fascinated by the idea of ‘the absurd’ developed by Shestov, Franz Kafka, and Søren Kierkegaard; both were gripped by the conflict between the demands of reason and the apparent irrationality of existence; both were émigrés who dealt with themes of exile and alienation, Camus as a French Algerian in exile in Paris, Fondane as a Romanian and a Jew drawn to Paris as the literary and artistic capital of Europe—​both ‘outsiders’. When they met in 1943, they were both living semi-​clandestine lives, Camus as a member of the Resistance, Fondane as Jew, both having to take precautions to avoid attracting the unwanted attention of the German occupiers and their French collaborators. Both felt more than a little cut off from the world around them and ill at ease with their situation, circumstances favourable to the feeling that human existence is absurd. Here is Camus: ‘A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But … in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels himself a stranger. This exile is without remedy because he is deprived of the memory of a lost homeland or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life is properly the feeling of absurdity’ (ms 13/​ 101). Much of Fondane’s poetry and philosophy likewise deals with this theme of exile, both literal and metaphysical. His Ulysses never returns to Ithaca; no Penelope awaits him there, says Fondane, who identifies with emigrants who are always voyaging toward new and unknown lands, driven from their native land by religious and racial persecution or poverty: ‘Emigrants, diamonds of

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the earth, wild salt, I am of your race.’15 As for Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, he declares himself to be ‘a stranger’—​or foreigner (étranger)—​‘to myself and to the world’ (ms 25/​112). As two dislocated exiles, Fondane and Camus would have recognized a spiritual kinship in each other. 2

The Revolt against Death

For both Fondane and Camus, exile is more a metaphysical than a political problem. We feel ourselves strangers in this world because of the inevitability and inexorability of death, the fate that binds us all to nothingness and turns the world into mere stage scenery: ‘There is no seriousness in mortality’, says Shakespeare’s Macbeth (a line Fondane was fond of quoting), or better: ‘[Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (em 20)’.16 This ‘nothing’ is the great theme of the existential thought that came to prominence in the 1930s and 1940s: in Heidegger, about whom Fondane wrote one of the first important studies to appear in French,17 and later in Sartre.18 For Heidegger, ‘the nothing’ is manifested in anxiety in the face of death, when the world and everything in it fall away into insignificance.19 Fondane and Camus both agree with Heidegger that most people evade thinking about their mortality through work, through habit, or through what we aptly call ‘diversions’. In this, all three are heirs to Pascal. But although he saluted Heidegger’s emphasis on gaining a lucid awareness of one’s own mortality, Fondane rejected Heidegger’s notion that we should become ‘free for death’ by resolutely anticipating it and embracing this ‘possibility of impossibility’ as what individuates us and separates us from the anonymous, public world

15 16 17 18 19

Benjamin Fondane, Ulysse, in Le mal des fantômes, ed. Patrice Beray and Michel Carassou, with the assistance of Monique Jutrin (Paris: Verdier, 2006), p. 35. See also Benjamin Fondane, “Man Before History, or the Sound and the Fury”, in Existential Monday, 47–​61; 49, 51, 60–​61. Benjamin Fondane, “Martin Heidegger sur les routes de Dostoyevski”, Cahiers du Sud vol. 8, no. 141 (June 1932): pp. 378–​92; reworked considerably as a chapter in La Conscience malheureuse, pp. 195–​222, “Martin Heidegger sur les routes de Kierkegaard et de Dostoïevski.” Jean-​Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943); Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (London: Routledge, 2020). Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik? (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen Verlag, 1929); “Qu’est-​ce que la métaphysique”, trans. Henri Corbin, Bifur no. 8 (June 1931): pp. 5–​27. Fondane’s knowledge of Heidegger was based on the Bifur translation and Georges Gurvitch, Tendances actuelles de la philosophie allemande (Paris: Vrin, 1930); the latter was also an important source for Camus.

58 Baugh of the ‘anyone’ (das Man).20 For Fondane, this supposed ‘freedom for death’ is really the obligation to die, the duty to ‘submit to the inevitable, to necessity, to death’—​and submission is the very opposite of freedom (cm 220). Camus is of the same opinion. Unlike Heidegger (or Pascal), and like Fondane, Camus calls on us to revolt against death. In Camus’s words, ‘Feeling one’s life, one’s revolt, one’s freedom, and as much as possible, is living, and as much as possible’ (ms 61/​144). The revolt against death, that ‘supreme abuse’ that ‘exalts injustice’ (ms 84/​168), is the opposite of renunciation, resignation (ms 54/​138) or being ‘reconciled’ to one’s fate (ms 58n/​142n). In Camus’ words: ‘It is a matter of dying unreconciled and without one’s consent’ (ms 55/​139). Revolt against death ‘is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it’ (ms 54/​138), and this revolt, says Camus, gives life its value and its grandeur (ms 54/​139). The refusal to evade the awareness of one’s inevitable death, together with the refusal to accept or embrace that inevitability, constitutes existential revolt. On that, Fondane and Camus agree. Fondane had been making a similar argument long before Camus. His neologism for simultaneously recognizing our mortal condition and yet rebelling against it is ‘irresignation […] even should this irresignation be, or appear to be, absurdity and madness’ (cm 25/​e m 39; see cm 88).21 Like Dostoyevsky’s underground man, who knows that he cannot overcome logical necessity (“2 +​2=​4”) but refuses to resign himself to it,22 Fondane writes, ‘We are doubtless obliged to die, but nothing in the world can oblige you to accept this death …. Whether or not one accepts it, death will come just the same: one more reason not to accept it, one more reason to revolt against it’.23 We have to live the contradiction of both recognizing the inevitability of death and of rebelling against it: ‘passion is contradiction’, writes Fondane (cm 234)—​taking a page from Kierkegaard—​and ‘it is not a matter of justifying one’s contradictions, of resolving them … but on the contrary, of not resolving them at all, of 20 21 22

23

Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 15th edition (Tübingen: Max Niemayer, 1979). On Fondane’s concept of “irresignation”, see Monique Jutrin, “Poésie et philosophie: l’irrésignation de Benjamin Fondane”, Cahiers Benjamin Fondane 2 (Autumn 1998): pp. 27–​32. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, trans. Jane Kentish (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999), p. 15: “Impossibility—​is that the stone wall? What stone wall? Well, the laws of nature, of course, the conclusions of the natural sciences and mathematics. […] God Almighty, what do I care about the laws of nature and about arithmetic when for some reason I don’t like these laws or ‘twice two is four’? Of course, I won’t knock this wall down with my head […] but I won’t submit to it simply because I’m up against a stone wall and haven’t got sufficient strength.” Benjamin Fondane, Rimbaud le voyou (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), 164–​5; hereafter referred to by the abbreviation rv.

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emphasizing the impossibility of any reconciliation’ (rv 210). We may not be able to knock down the wall of the laws of nature that make death inevitable, but we can refuse to resign or reconcile ourselves to our fate. Like Camus, Fondane counsels us to rebel against death, rather than accepting or loving it in the manner of Nietzche’s amor fati (‘love of fate’), which for Fondane is a lamentable lapse of the philosopher of ‘will to power’ back into a traditional philosophy of ‘resignation and edification’ (cm 44, 48, 88, 89).24 For Fondane, as for Camus, revolt is the opposite of renunciation and acceptance (ms 55/​139). 3

Limits, Reason, and the Irrational

Given all these commonalities of thought and sensibility between Fondane and Camus, what is the source of their disagreement regarding what they both call ‘existential philosophy’? In brief, where they differ concerns to what extent the revolt against death is also a revolt against reason, what place reason is to be accorded within a philosophy of revolt, and especially whether there can be a balance between reason and the irrational. For Camus, the revolt against death involves an affirmation of what lies within the limits of human experience and the concomitant values of measure, proportion, and balance. ‘I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that for the time being it is impossible for me to know it. What significance could a significance outside of my condition have for me?’ (ms 51/​156). Life itself is finite and mortal; the human understanding has its limits; the quest to make sense of these two irreducible givens of experience runs up against these limits and is confronted with a mystery. Both the human need to understand existence, using reason and the intellect, and the human passion that demands the impossible must be given their due. For Camus, ‘what is absurd is the confrontation of the irrational [world] with the implacable desire for clarity’ (ms 26/​113), ‘the confrontation of the

24

Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati. […] Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it […] but love it;’ Ecce Homo, ‘Why I am So Clever’, §20, in Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1969), p. 258. On Fondane’s criticisms of Nietzsche’s amor fati, see my ‘Amor Fati in Nietzsche, Shestov, Fondane, and Deleuze’, in Minor Ethics. Deleuzian Variations, ed. Casey Ford, Suzanne M. McCullagh, and Karen L. F. Houle (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-​Queen’s University Press, 2021), pp. 150–​74.

60 Baugh human demand [for understanding] and the unreasonable silence of the world’ (ms 31–​32/​117–​18), the irreconcilable conflict between ‘my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the irreducibility of this world to a rational and reasonable principle’ (ms 51/​136): ‘The absurd […] lies in neither of the elements being compared. It is born of their confrontation’ (ms 33/​120), ‘the encounter between a limited but efficacious reason and the continually reborn irrational’ (ms 38/​124), ‘the divorce between the mind that desires [to understand] and the world that disappoints’ (ms 50/​134–​35). For that reason, Camus maintains that to conjure away either of the terms (reason/​irrational) is to destroy the absurd (ms 34, 50, 53/​120–​21, 135, 138). It is a question of maintaining a lucid awareness of the contradiction between our demands for rational intelligibility and the irrationality of the world (ms 50/​135), holding both terms in tension in order to ‘make the absurd live’ (ms 52–​53/​136–​38). In Camus’s view, Fondane’s mentor Shestov is consequently right against the rationalist philosophers, who try to eliminate the irrational altogether, when he shows that ‘the tightest system, the most universal rationalism’—​ such as Husserl’s phenomenology—​‘always ends up running up against the irrational of human thought’ (ms 29–​30/​115–​16). The irrational and the absurd in human existence establish the limits of reason (ms 49/​134). The problem is that Shestov’s thought commits the equal and opposite offence of ‘negating reason absolutely’: ‘everything is sacrificed to the irrational, and the demand for clarity being conjured away, the absurd disappears’ (ms 38–​39/​124–​25). Both reason and the irreducible irrationality of existence are required in order for the disproportion or disharmony between them to become apparent (ms 33/​120). There is, as Camus says, a relation, a rapport, between reason and the irrationality of the world that must be maintained in order to ‘live in the state of the absurd’ (ms 40, 42/​126, 128). ‘If I recognize reason’s limits, I do not for all that negate it, recognizing its relative powers’ (ms 42/​127; see ms 39/​125). Reason, to a certain degree and within the limits revealed by experience itself (ms 49/​134, 64/​149), must be accorded its place. This is but a specific instance of a general rule for Camus, which is that one-​ sidedness and disproportion—​la démesure—​can never justify anything (ms 41/​127). The task facing ‘the absurd mind’ is to establish the limits of both reason and the irrational (ms 42, 49, 64/​127, 134, 149) and achieve a just balance between them. Rather than leaping into either of the two extremes—​Husserl’s total rationalisation and idealisation of the real or Shestov’s irrationalism—​ intellectual integrity (honnêteté) requires that we walk along the dizzying mountain ridge (arête) between the two alternatives (ms 50/​135). In The Myth of Sisyphus, just as in The Rebel, Camus sides with proportion (mesure) and balance and against excess and disproportion (démesure) (R 258–​61/​697–​700).

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In fact, measure and proportion, which Camus associates with the world of the Mediterranean and Classical Greece, forms a kind of guiding thread in Camus’s thought. Limits, proportion, beauty and even justice are all of a piece; overstepping eternal limits is both madness and injustice, an act of hubris that will call forth the Erinyes and Nemesis to restore order (‘Helen’s Exile’, ms 167–​71/​ 853–​57). ‘Reality is neither entirely rational nor is the rational entirely real. […] The irrational limits the rational, which in turn gives it proportion (mesure)’ (R 259/​698–​99). Fondane’s thought belongs to a different climate than this Greco-​ Mediterranean ideal of le Midi, the meridional midpoint, and its proportion, balance, and limits. He quotes Shestov: ‘The temperate zones (zones moyennes) of human life in no way resemble the polar and equatorial zones. The difference is so great that if one infers what exists in the extreme zones based on what one sees in the temperate zones, not only does one not get closer to the truth—​one turns one’s back on it’ (cm 294; see cm 262).25 It may be, as Fondane and Shestov’s Marxist critic, Henri Lefebvre remarked (in tones that would now be condemned as colonialist), that ‘the polar and equatorial zones are hardly fit for habitation, and all civilization has developed in the temperate zones’,26 but that is precisely Shestov’s point: from the standpoint of average, middling existence, les zones moyennes, life in the extreme zones must seem incomprehensible, wild, savage. But what if, says Shestov, the mode of existence of the extreme zones not only differs from that of the temperate zones, but calls into question the middling way of life and its middling truths? What if the historically constituted forms of reason in Western philosophy and civilization were but one way among many of understanding the world, and not necessarily the best one—​that is, the one most responsive to varying circumstances, including those in which human beings find themselves in extreme emotional states such as anxiety and despair? For the temperate, middling zones of human existence, the zone inhabited by the average person—​whom Dostoyevsky calls ‘the omnitude’ and Heidegger calls ‘the Anyone’ (das Man, l’On)—​reason’s ‘clear and distinct ideas’, its rational self-​evidence, intellectual intuition and dialectical mediation between opposites, its universal ethical norms, are perfectly suitable, 25 Léon Chestov, Le Pouvoir des clefs. Potestas Clavium, trans. Boris de Schloezer (Paris: J. Schiffrin, 1928), p. 382; Lev Shestov, Potestas Clavium, trans. Bernard Martin (Athens, oh: Ohio University Press, 1968), p. 384. 26 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: The One-​Volume Edition, trans. Michel Trebitsch (London: Verso, 2014), p. 144; cited in Matthew Beaumont, Lev Shestov. Philosopher of the Sleepless Night (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), p. 180 n. 1.

62 Baugh says Fondane (cm 262). But ‘when some prodigious event, some trauma, causes the ground you thought you were standing on to fall away’, when ‘all human certainty and probability are lacking’, when you feel ‘sick, crazy, lost, hunted down’, then you are suddenly plunged willy-​nilly into the polar and equatorial zones in which the rational structures and laws governing the world, together with rational norms of justice, goodness and logical necessity, are of no avail (cm 294–​95). When ‘all is lost’ and the individual finds herself stripped absolutely bare and left with nothing, then the individual is compelled by a necessity that is purely personal to exit reason’s domain of universal rules and values, such as ‘moderation’ and ‘proportion’, and enter a realm of freedom in which the individual becomes an individual (cm 227, 263–​65, 298). In the extremes of the human condition in which the individual is driven to the limits of what she is able to endure, she is moved to confront the limits of reason and of the limits reason imposes through its ethical and cognitive commandments. Because universal norms and concepts are incapable of grasping the singular and the individual, to the extent that the individual tries to conform to universal rules, she necessarily sacrifices the most individual and intimate part of her being (em 41; cm 16), the part that is ‘lived in the fullness of her self, as a singular and absurd force’ (em 38; cm 23). Reason and philosophy might try to persuade us that the way things are is the way they have to be—​ that ultimately, the real is rational and the rational is necessary—​but faced with death, powerlessness, and despair, that most individual and intimate part of the self revolts against her wretched and finite condition and seeks a way out (une issue). For Fondane, the revolt against death affirms what is most individual in the individual and revolts against both human finitude and the logical-​ metaphysical necessity that underpins it. ‘Metaphysics cannot be the thought of someone who is afraid of blows, but the thought of someone indignant at reality, wounded by necessity, and filled with anger and revolt by human finitude’ (cm 266). But to revolt against finitude is to revolt against the limits of human existence. Fondane invokes Kierkegaard: ‘a limit is precisely passion’s torture and its spur’ (em 19), taking passion here to mean the “existential passion” that wants to rupture the “closure” of reason’s metaphysics of necessity in order to enter into a domain of freedom (em 28–​29, cm 227). Camus begins The Myth of Sisyphus by invoking Pindar’s third Pythian ode: ‘Oh my soul, do not aspire towards immortal life, but exhaust the field of the possible’ (ms iii/​95). For Fondane, by contrast, ‘the possible’ that he and Kierkegaard demand, and without which they would suffocate, is the logically impossible: the domain of

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the miraculous, of faith in a God for whom all things are possible,27 including overturning the causal necessity that makes death inevitable (em 20; cm 77, 253, 258, 261). Rather than affirming limits, as Camus does, Fondane wants to break through them into a realm that is unknown, infinite … and free. Of course, from a rational or common-​sense standpoint, the attempt to escape or subvert rational necessity—​and along with it, science, the laws of nature and ethical norms—​is extravagant, mad, senseless. It is certainly the opposite of moderation, order, balance and proportion. But, Fondane asks, who made these rational-​ethical norms binding for all people at all times? Why are madness, folly, démesure, the very worst things that can befall someone? Fondane argues that for an ‘exception’, for an individual in extremis who cannot resign herself to fate or find solace in the average and the general, it might be necessary ‘to go mad on purpose’ and aspire to the impossible, despite the condemnation and ridicule she would be threatened with by thinkers from Aristotle to Freud (cm 44, 85, 266). ‘We have to admit’, he says, ‘that there is something in man stronger than a logical objection’ (cm 52). It is not a matter, then, of playing reason’s game by offering arguments and justifications, but of pitting concrete individual existence against reason, of living in a way that defies reason, as Kierkegaard did: Just as Kierkegaard, at the beginning of his Repetition, talks about Diogenes demonstrating to the Eleatics that motion exists by walking,28 it is by living that Kierkegaard demonstrates that he is alive. He is a ‘living refutation’ of most of the ideas of his century. […] To Hegel’s synthesis, mediation, reconciliation and identity, Kierkegaard does not oppose contradiction, despair, paradox and sin [in general], but his contradiction, his despair, his paradox, his sin. cm 233–​34

Existential philosophy is not an intellectual enterprise or a rational argument, but ‘the very act by which the existent posits his own existence, the very 27

28

See Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 38; Fondane’s source is the French translation, Traité du désespoir, trans. Knud Ferlov and Jean-​Jacques Gateau (Paris: Gallimard, 1932), p. 103. Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition: ‘When the Eleatics denied motion, Diogenes, as everyone knows, stepped forward as an opponent. He literally did step forward, because he remained silent, but merely paced back and forth a few times, thereby assuming that he had sufficiently refuted them’; in Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 131.

64 Baugh act of the living being, seeking within and outside of himself, with or against self-​ evident truths, the very possibility of living’ (em 35/​ cm 20). Whatever the logical objections, the first and primary necessity is to live (em 34–​35/​ cm 20), and as Fondane quotes Kafka’s The Trial, ‘Logic may well be unshakeable. It cannot resist a man who wants to live’ (em 27). Still, that does not fully explain why Fondane wants to wage war against philosophical reason in its entirety. It is not just that ‘reality exceeds reason and surpasses reason’s proofs and justifications’ (cm 227) or that what is most singular and individual cannot be captured by universal rules and concepts; if it were only that, then Camus’s position that the irrational and the rational mutually limit each other would be tenable. It is rather that the struggle against reason is rather, quite simply, a matter of life and death (see cm 287–​88). Insofar as truth is conceived of according to rational norms of universality and logical consistency, ‘truth =​reality principle =​principle of non-​contradiction =​rational self-​evidence =​necessity =​renunciation =​obedience to death =​nothingness’ (cm 67). In that case, it follows—​logically, rationally—​that in this struggle, in the revolt against death and finitude, the existing individual can give no quarter. Even the best things—​moderation, balance, limits—​have limits (em 24). It might seem both just and reasonable, from the standpoint of reason, for reason to be accorded a limited domain, but if reason is allowed the slightest foothold in existence, then by its very nature—​its demand for universality and necessity, for invariable and eternal laws that exhaust the whole of reality—​it will dominate existence without limit. By its very nature, reason—​at least as it is conceived of in Western philosophy—​is totalitarian.29 From Fondane’s standpoint, by demanding balance, order and proportion, then, Camus has not achieved a just balance of reason and unreason but has rather conceded total victory to reason and reason’s values. In that sense, Camus could be said to be less the Greek tragedian he imagines himself to be than an Aristotelian rationalist. For, as Fondane says, for Aristotle, ‘the infinite is excess, as opposed to the just mean [la juste moyenne], proportion, completeness; it represents the two extremes between which balance is found’ (beg 12). Balance, order, and proportion, the refusal of all démesure and the affirmation of finitude, are just what reason demands, and if the conflict between reason 29

Fondane in fact distinguishes (cm 62) between two kinds of reason: the reason of so-​ called ‘primitive societies’, a problem-​solving faculty that is ‘in solidarity with the categories of life’ and uses sensory experience and the capacity for grasping relations in order to serve practical ends; and the supposedly ‘autonomous’ reason of so-​called ‘civilized’ societies that sets up categories and rules that transcend life and attempts to force life into the categories of logical thought. It is the latter that Fondane rejects.

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and the irrational is be fought out this way, then it’s a conflict regulated entirely by reason’s own rules—​a one-​sidedness that reason itself, according to its own criteria, would find unjust. Fondane would have to place Camus in that long line of thinkers whose attempts to reconcile reason with the irrational amount to a justification of things as they are—​all the ‘horrors of existence’, the senseless suffering, the resistance to any rational explanation or justification of so many aspects of human life that philosophy, from Plato to Leibniz to Hegel, has tried to explain away as morally necessary or metaphysically inevitable (em 53–​54). For Fondane, the question is whether the limits imposed by rational necessity and ethical duty are inescapable. Even Heidegger’s existential philosophy tells us that ‘More primordial than man is the finitude of human existence’ (cm 217).30 And in his poetry, Fondane sometimes succumbs to the pessimism of inexorable finitude: ‘No way out, no way out! They must conquer or die, those who have no way out!’31 But in his philosophy, Fondane rejects the ‘measure’ and ‘limits’ extolled by Camus. Fondane’s was a metaphysical revolt without limits, and if that revolt requires going against reason to the point of madness, then who is to say that madness might not sometimes be right against reason (avoir raison contre la raison) (em 39; cm 25, 287–​88, 296)? 4

The Needs of Existence

When it comes to deciding to what the proper share of reason and of the irrational should be, part of the problem is determining: who judges and by what criteria? ‘One must decide which way to go: Do we really want to know what Knowledge thinks of the existent? Or, for once, what the existent thinks of Knowledge? Is it existence, as always, or Knowledge, at last, that must be rendered problematic?’ (em 8). When reason tells us to be reasonable, to seek the golden mean and respect limits, what it really preaches is the necessary limits of human existence: finitude, powerlessness, death. But if ‘the absurd needs of existence’ are incommensurable with the demands of logic (ft 37, 108 n7),

30 31

Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Gesammtausgabe edition (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998), 229: ‘Ursprünglicher als der Mensch ist die Endlichkeit des Dasein in ihm’. Benjamin Fondane, Le mal des fantômes, 18. Fondane is translating John Gay’s 1729 opera, Polly: ‘No retreat! No retreat! They must conquer or die who’ve no retreat’. See Jutrin, Avec Benjamin Fondane, p. 140.

66 Baugh then the only question is which set of criteria will prevail, those of reason or of existence. In Fondane’s view, the choice is clear: better to be wrong before God, like Job, than right before reason (cm 261); better the impossible than the necessary. We have to break free of rational necessity by affirming the absurd (rv 108), namely, by opening ourselves to possibilities that are impossible and contradictory from the point of view of logic (cm 20, 37, 269, 274). Anything less would be resignation to death (cm 29–​30, 220–​21, 276–​77). In short, the revolt against death that Fondane shares with Camus must also be, in Fondane’s words, an ‘inexorable’ struggle against reason and against limits (cm 67; em 19, 28), for the possible (=​impossible) and against the supremacy of the rationally intelligible (em 23). In Fondane’s eyes, any effort to seek a balance between irrational existence and reason is doomed to fail because there is simply no common measure between rational thought and the concrete realities of individual human experience: ‘We come into contact with the concrete through sympathy, love, anger, anxiety fear—​and not through images, symbols, concepts and principles’ (cm 68). Consequently, ‘although there can be a contradiction between one argument and another, between a general idea and a general idea, between one external experience and another external experience, there cannot be a contradiction between the internal living experience of Pascal, of Saint John of the Cross, of Dostoyevsky or of Rimbaud, and the logical demonstrations […] of Plato, Leibniz or Hegel’ (cm 52). The inner, living core of individual existence is something other than a logical argument and stands quite outside logic’s rules governing consistency, non-​contradiction, identity and difference. Attempts to reconcile the irrational elements of human existence with reason cannot avoid translating concrete individual existence into something it is not: universal ideas, concepts, principles. ‘There are more things in a contingent experience than in a necessary thought, more things in the individual than in the universal’ (beg 174). For existential thought, ‘the singular is more important than the “general”, the contingent is truer than the immutable and the eternal, the unintelligible is richer than the intelligible’ (ft 60). Whereas philosophy finds its reality in the structures, laws and essences of things, existential thinkers find reality in the things themselves, ‘in colours, in scents, in transitory and contingent life’ (ft 108), ‘a Real as yet without form or structure’ (em 17) in that it is a process of becoming for which the future remains open. It is in the domain of the transitory and contingent, of open possibility, that the existing individual lives, acts, and hopes. The individual existing being is precisely what refuses to let itself be turned into an abstraction forming part of a philosophical system, that is, into an intelligible universal subject to logical

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laws (cm 23; em 37). In other words, any reconciliation between reason and existence that is carried out speculatively, in rational thought, necessarily reduces and betrays existence to the benefit of reason and attempts to force life into the Procrustean bed of logical categories (cm 62, 71, 77, 84). Fondane is particularly aggrieved to find this reduction of concrete individual existence to universal categories at work in the newer phenomenological philosophies that take up the ‘existential’ mantle of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky—​and Shestov—​only to betray everything genuinely existential by forcing it into the framework of traditional, academic Western philosophy. Heidegger, for example, tries to place the content of Kierkegaard’s philosophy—​anxiety, Nothing, paradox, despair, guilt—​within the framework and methods of Husserlian phenomenology in order to force ‘existence’ into a system—​a deluded attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable (cm 196–​97) that in Fondane’s view results in a bizarre ‘theology without God’ (cm 217). Worse, whereas genuine existential thought seeks a way out (issue) from the terrors of human existence (cm 84, 204; em 16–​17), Heidegger’s doctrine that anxiety before the Nothing makes one ‘free for death’—​that is, provides the impetus to make death one’s own (Eigentlich) possibility—​merely prolongates traditional ethics’ ‘joyous resignation to the irrevocable human condition’ and reconciles us to our ‘right to slavery’ (cm 220–​21, 252), leaving us more trapped and less free than ever. Fondane is just as unforgiving towards Max Scheler for trying to combine reason and feeling in a more comprehensive synthesis. In The Nature and Forms of Sympathy, Scheler writes that ‘love and hate carry within themselves their own self-​evidence (évidences), incommensurable with the self-​evidence of Reason’ but having equal validity with it, making it the task of metaphysics ‘to unite the two in a more comprehensive synthesis’ (cm 198n1).32 Since Fondane himself often argues for the self-​evidence of emotional states, his rejection of Scheler’s attempt to promote emotional states as carrying equal truth to rational intuition seems surprising. But Fondane’s point is that the two forms of thought, rational-​intellectual and affective-​existential, are radically incompatible; no reconciliation of the two is possible. Rather, one must choose: ‘Entweder-​Oder!33 There is no intermediary position between Hegel 32

33

Fondane refers to the French translation of Scheler’s book, Nature et forms de la sympathie. Contribution à l’étude des lois de la vie affective, trans. M. Lefebvre (Paris: Payot, 1928), p. 180; for the English translation, see Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy (New York: Routledge, 2008). ‘Either-​Or!’ Fondane is alluding to the title of Kierkegaard’s first significant philosophical-​ literary work, Either/​Or, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); in German, Entweder-​Oder. Kierkegaard rejects Hegel’s doctrine of

68 Baugh and Kierkegaard’ (em 14), between rationalism and existential thought; it is not possible to say that each is right ‘to a certain degree’, as Camus maintains. In fact, Fondane, like Kierkegaard, mocks the ‘to a certain degree’ of philosophers like Hegel: ‘”To a certain degree” means understanding; but going all the way in the world of passion, of fear and trembling, of anxiety and hope, is existing. Henceforth, it is not a matter of reconciling but of living oppositions’ (cm 234); ‘Kierkegaard insists on the moment of separation, of unhappiness, and Hegel insists on the moment of reconciliation and of Aufhebung’ (cm 76). Rather than speculative-​philosophical reconciliation, what the living individual seeks is ‘a way out’—​une issue—​‘that is, the qualitative leap into the absurd—​into the impossible’ (cm 84), a leap effected not through logical mediation but ‘in virtue of the absurd’, outside the universal, ethics, morality and history, a leap made by and for the individual that transports the individual into a realm in which she is no longer finds herself constrained by logical or ethical necessity but is at last fully free and in possession of herself (cm 77). 5

Struggle and the Leap

It is just this leap that bears the brunt of Camus’s harshest criticism in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus refers to ‘a commentator’—​very likely Fondane34—​who ‘reports one of Shestov’s remarks that is worthy of note: “The only genuine way out [issue] is precisely where according to human judgement there is no way out. We turn to God to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice’” (ms 36–​37/​123). For Camus, there is a sort of sleight-​of-​hand involved in making the despair (désespoir) of the individual in extremis into the springboard for the outsized hope (espoir démesuré) of ‘the existentials’ (ms 121/​208–​9). For the existentials, God and the absurd are equivalent: both are ‘a way out’ from necessity, death and the human condition, a way out that depends on the total negation of human reason (ms 43/​128–​29). They have deified the absurd (ms 40/​126, 119/​207) and made the irrationality of existence the basis for a belief in

34

the mediation and reconciliation of opposites, insisting that some choices involve mutually exclusive alternatives. Olivier Salazar-​Ferrer in two places identifies the ‘commentator’ as probably being Fondane (‘Benjamin Fondane’ in the Dictionnaire Albert Camus, p. 327; Benjamin Fondane, p. 218) but in another (Benjamin Fondane et la révolte existentielle, 113), he says that it is probably Rachel Bespaloff, a dissident one-​time follower of Shestov. The quotation from Shestov is a paraphrase of a passage in Shestov, Le pouvoir des clefs; see Camus, Essais, 1436, n.1 to page 123. Whoever the ‘commentator’ may be, the quotation perfectly expresses one of Fondane’s key ideas.

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an irrational God for whom all things are possible (ms 43/​128–​29). For Camus, this amounts to an evasion: the existentials ‘find a reason to hope in what strips away everything from them’ (ms 35/​122)—​namely, the senselessness and injustice of existence—​and thereby ‘elude the struggle’ that consists in maintaining reason and the irrational in tension and equilibrium (ms 38/​124). In plain terms, Camus accuses of the existential philosophers of an escapism that refuses ‘the heartrending (déchirant) and marvelous wager of the absurd’ (ms 52/​137; see ms 27/​113). Camus fully understands the longing to escape finitude: ‘Within the limits of the human condition, what greater hope [can there be] than the hope that allows us to escape that condition?’ (ms 121/​ 209). But he refuses to make the absurd ‘a springboard to eternity’ (ms 38/​124) or ‘to found anything on the incomprehensible’: ‘I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone’ (ms 42/​127). He remains faithful to the limits of the human condition and to the struggle between the mind’s desire to understand and the irrational elements of human existence that resist being understood. For Camus, this struggle is everything. He concludes his essay: ‘The struggle itself towards the summit is enough to fill a man’s heart. We must imagine Sisyphus happy’ (ms 111/​198). It is a conclusion Fondane rejects unequivocally. As he writes in a January 1944 letter to Boris de Schloezer, who translated Shestov’s works into French, ‘“We must imagine Sisyphus happy”—​I ask for nothing better, but I don’t have enough imagination!’ Fondane goes on to say that Camus ‘has understood nothing of the existential, not Shestov, not Kierkegaard’.35 In ‘Existential Monday and the Sunday of History’, written around the same time, he elaborates: ‘We must imagine Sisyphus happy’. But that’s the whole problem! And it is from this very problem that existential thought is born. That Sisyphus imagine himself happy is all that Platonic, Stoic, or Hegelian thought could ask for […], all that noûs, Spirit or universal reason […] asks of him. […] Every form of acceptance, every form of fidelity [to the human condition] or of resignation drives the absurd out of reality or impregnates the absurd with intelligibility. em 15–​16

Fondane admits that ‘Camus does not go that far’: he does not ask that Sisyphus imagine himself happy, but that we imagine Sisyphus happy (em 16). But his

35

Fondane, letter of January 1944 to Boris de Schloezer. My thanks to Monique Jutrin for sharing a photocopy of the letter with me. See Jutrin, Avec Benjamin Fondane, p. 138.

70 Baugh point remains that Camus’s approach places the demands of a Sisyphus within the ethical norms that counsel us to resign ourselves to our fate rather than rebelling against it. For Fondane, it is not ‘the struggle itself’ that will make us happy, but the possibility of escaping the limits of what reason allows as possible or decrees as being necessary. In other words, human happiness depends on an Absurd that ‘is not beneath but is rather beyond reason’ (em 15). One must choose: either the Absurd (which for Fondane is ‘the possible’ that is the logically impossible) or reason. One cannot have both. ‘It is impossible to posit the Absurd with universal reason’s assent’ (em 15). It is here that the debate between Fondane and Camus reaches its critical point. Fondane rejects Camus’s contention that Shestov and Kierkegaard have sacrificed the intellect or fled from the very absurd that they revealed by rejecting reason (em 14–​15, 24). Rather than negating or denying reason, says Fondane, the existentials struggle against it (em 15). Camus writes that ‘To Chestov, reason is useless but there is something beyond reason’, which is what Camus denies (ms 38/​124), and that existential philosophers use reasoning to negate reason: ‘Negation is their God’ (ms 43/​128–​29). But Fondane argues that, on the contrary, it is rationalist thought that negates transitory and contingent reality by positing ‘a universe governed solely by necessity’ (em 24). Existential thought, by contrast, seeks to restore the part of reality involving chance, contingency, discontinuity, rupture, ‘a world in which Being itself is temporal duration, life, mobility, act—​even if such a world might prove philosophically absurd and unthinkable’ (ft 14; see ft 91, 97, 99, 108–​109, 118–​19, 126 n. 27). When rationalist thought turns its back on the greater part of reality and sacrifices both the intellect and the living individual, it, and not existential thought, evades reality. On the contrary, existential thought seeks ‘a genuine knowledge’ that does justice to existence and is in solidarity with it (em 24; see em 35, 41/​cm 20, 26). For Fondane, there is a form of thinking, “a philosophy—​ of freedom, of the possible, of the absurd” (em 37), that is more comprehensive than rational thought; for Camus, the existentials’ pointing to the limits and weaknesses of reason forms a pretext for negating reason entirely (ms 49/​134). Each accuses the other of evading reality and of a lack of intellectual integrity (ms 15, 35, 59/​102–​3, 122, 143; em 14–​15, 23–​24). Who’s right? Qui a raison? Can one, as Fondane says, be right against reason (avoir raison contre la raison), or is that, as Camus says, mere nonsense, déraison? Must one recognize the rights of reason within the limits of its domain, or must one wage war against a reason that by its very nature seeks to dominate the whole of reality? Fondane’s thought rules out some sort of compromise according to which both Camus and Fondane would be right ‘to a certain degree’ (cm 234).

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Entweder-​Oder! One must choose (em 14). On the other hand, Camus’s thought, with the primacy it places on balance and limits, allows for both sides being right ‘to a certain degree’; the thought of each would be limited by the thought of the other. So, can both be right to a certain degree, within limits? On this point, Fondane would insist: you cannot have it both ways. You cannot both affirm limits and balance and negate them, affirm universal reason and affirm the impossible. Even Fondane has to affirm the value of a certain consistency; denying reason’s supremacy does not mean ‘anything goes’ any more than Nietzsche’s ‘beyond good and evil’ means ‘everything is permitted’. You have to choose: limits, balance and lucidity, on the one hand, or infinite possibility and irrationality on the other. For Fondane, the choice must be made in a fever of passion: one must be ‘passionately for [or] passionately against’ (cm 234, 237). At this point, the reader might be feeling perplexed as to which way to turn. I think that Camus and Fondane both would not have it any other way. Faced with paradoxes and insoluble dilemmas, the reader is thrown back on herself and her own will and desires. It is one of those questions in which the questioner herself is placed in question (see em 17). Ultimately, it comes down to a question of temperament, or perhaps of temperature. Some are born to temperate Mediterranean spiritual climates; some find themselves, often for reasons inexplicable to them, in the extremities of the polar and equatorial zones. Which alternative you choose largely depends on which of those ‘categories of life’ (cm 231) best fits you, and that is a function of what most individual and intimate in your being. As with Kierkegaard’s knight of faith, you are faced with a choice that you are unable to explain to anyone else, placing you in a realm beyond any rational explanation of justification, beyond the universal, beyond ethics, beyond reason.

­c hapter 4

Revolt, Absurdity, and the Artist as Sisyphus Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray One of the most profound and emblematic statements made by Albert Camus’s in The Myth of Sisyphus is that revolt gives life its value.1 (ms, 55)2 For Camus, the day-​to-​day revolt produces one truth –​defiance. This is usually taken up in discussions about the life of the everyday person –​thrown into this world and living the tension of an absurd universe where no predetermined meanings or a god exist –​who for the most part trudges onward inauthentically. But one figure often overlooked in this dialogue is the artist; the third section of Myth is devoted to ‘Absurd Creation’ and, while there is some brief mention of the artist, the focus is primarily on the notion of absurd art. It is with his lecture ‘Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist’, presented in 1957 at Uppsala University (and originally published under the title ‘The Artist and His Time’), just a few days after accepting his Nobel Prize for Literature, that we see the spotlight turned toward the artist: their role and their boulder of responsibility that they must push while they freely create. Camus’s understanding of the artist is undervalued and rarely discussed, something I wish to change in this essay owing to its relevance for contemporary discussions of art’s role in matters of social justice. In this essay, I argue that the necessary groundwork for ‘Create Dangerously’ was crafted in the pages of Myth –​specifically, in the three consequences drawn from the absurd: revolt, freedom, and passion. To demonstrate this, I will connect these two works thematically; after a brief discussion of the 1 I wish to dedicate this chapter to Leslie Barany (1947–​2021), my dear friend, mentor, and creative collaborator. The topic which I explore here is one that I would have loved to have discussed with him, and I had every intention of doing so, but sadly covid lockdowns and then cancer didn’t give us the chance. I am pretty sure he had strong opinions about the responsibility of the artist and their role in social justice as he was immersed in the New York art scene, an agent himself for many brilliant fine artists (Dennis Larkins, Roy Schatt, Andre Lassen, and most famously H. R. Giger), and a big fan of tattoo, graffiti and outsider art. The hours we talked about art and artists are ones I really treasure, and fondly reflected on when writing this piece. Les you are sadly missed and your absence is felt, but you will never ever be forgotten. 2 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955 [1991]), p. 55; Henceforth cited as ms.

© Kimberly Baltzer-​J aray, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_006

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absurd, I will explore absurd art and the absurd artist –​the one who is supposed to take risks, envision better alternatives, and thereby thrust society forward by unsettling the status quo. For Camus, the artist must be truthful, and truth is always dangerous, ‘To create today means to create dangerously. Every publication is a deliberate act, and that act makes us vulnerable to the passions of a century that forgives nothing’. (cd, 6)3 The artist must draw attention to the social issues that crush and divide us, and this means she or he must be immersed in the reality of their time, to wrestle from it something timeless that can be understood by the audience as universal, and as beacon for change. The greatest hope lies in artists’ obligation to their own freedom, which is also bound to that of others –​present and future. The artist, much like Sisyphus, is an absurd hero but unlike the Greek tragic figure, the artist lives and struggles amongst us, and brings us along with each push forward. 1

The Absurd

The absurd arises from the simultaneous existence of the contradictory natures of the human being and the universe; it lies in their confrontational union. We encounter the absurd every day and feel its tension ever present; this feeling of absurdity lays the foundations for understanding it and its truth. We find ourselves in a universe that clearly is not oriented toward our concerns or endeavors. Absurdity resides in our actions, which constantly seek value and meaning in that silent, indifferent universe: it is we who create the meaning of our lives; it is not handed to us ready-​made. The universe does not appear to be rational, and we human beings certainly are not: twists of fate, chaotic patterns of behavior or decisions that we struggle to comprehend, and moments of intense and inexplicable sense-​experiences, are also forms of evidence for the absurd. We want and expect order in the natural world, but what we all too often encounter is contrariwise –​the irrational and disorderly. In short, the absurd destabilizes us because it evades our understanding, and undermines our attempts to feel safe and accustomed to a predictable life in this world. We constantly live this often-​crushing tension, and essentially what we find here is the necessity of confrontation and unceasing struggle: ‘The theme of permanent revolution is thus carried into individual experience. Living is

3 Albert Camus, Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist, trans. Sandra Smith, (New York: Vintage Books, 2019), 4; Henceforth cited as cd.

74 Baltzer-Jaray keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it’ (ms, 54). Hence, for Camus, revolt gives life its value, and it is in the daily revolt that we obtain proof of the only truth we know –​defiance (ms, 55). This is the first consequence of the absurd. It should come as no surprise that death plays a significant role in absurdity. We are aware that we will die; we do not know when, but it could be any day, and we do not know how, but there are almost countless ways. Yet, every single day we create meaning and set new goals, despite the possibility that it can all be extinguished at any moment. Death makes our lives absurd, and it also brings the absurd to an end for us. Hence, death gives rise to the second consequence of the absurd: freedom. While the absurd clearly instructs us that all experiences are inconsequential, death ever-​looming urges us to experience more and more. To be clear, this is not some grand sense of metaphysical freedom, or a kind of eternal freedom granted by a deity, but rather an inner, experiential freedom –​one that we live through in our actions and thoughts while we confront the absurd. Turning towards death, acknowledging it and accepting it as the only reality we have with absolute certainty and without a future, brings forth the realization there is no reason to hope. It is at moments when we become aware of the absence of hope in a future, that the stark presence and availabilities that life offers dawns on us, and the freedom we possess becomes illuminated: we can act; we can be by doing. Camus writes, ‘The divine availability of the condemned man before whom the prison doors open in a certain early dawn, that unbelievable disinterestedness with regard to everything except for the pure flame of life –​it is clear that death and the absurd are here the principles of the only reasonable freedom …’ (ms, 59–​60). My freedom only has meaning in relation to death, that which sets the limits of my fate, and so I must live what time I have in passionate revolt. This third consequence of the absurd, passion, entails being consciously aware of my ongoing revolt and my limited freedom, and translating that into living to the maximum: to understand that the quantity and diversity of experiences I can have is not limited by circumstances of life, but rather only by my disposition toward life, and ultimately by resignation and failure to act. Awareness is key here –​lucidity matters for living most –​as my eye must always be on the absurd and my consciousness towards death. These provide fuel for the fire that ignites passionate revolt and free actions, and importantly –​courage. For Camus, this is how one lives without appeal.

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Absurd Artist and Art

In The Myth, Camus describes artistic creation as ‘the absurd joy par excellence’, and –​in this connection –​the artist is said to be the most absurd character (ms, 92–​93). He writes: ‘But the constant tension that keeps man face to face with the world, the ordered delirium that urges him to be receptive to everything leave him another fever. In this universe the work of art is then the sole chance of keeping his consciousness and of fixing its adventures. Creating is living doubly’ (ms, 94). An artist, like any human being, actively creates meaning in the face of death and annihilation, but their absurdity reaches new depths through their art because within their revolt they also have a deep sense of fidelity –​the artist must be faithful to what they rebel against in order to represent it accurately. In this way, the artist actively preserves and intensifies their confrontation with absurdity and consciousness of their unceasing struggle with it: they push against the absurd in revolt against impending death and, at the same time, pull it closer to apprehend and create with loyalty to accuracy. The artist does this over and over with each creation, and without investing any piece they forge with a hope for its destiny. They must create today knowing tomorrow the world could end and all their efforts and energies would amount to nothing –​a realization of extinction that also fuels the urgency and necessity to create. On this point, Camus says: To work and create ‘for nothing’, to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries –​this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors. ms, 114

Further layers of absurdity occur when we analyze the created art object, something that has temporal constraints but carries expectations of lasting for eternity. Great masterpieces are typically considered ones that remain with us –​and in significant ways –​for decades, or better yet, centuries. The art world actively conserves these pieces in archives, museums, and books that comprise the canon of art history so as to increase their chances of achieving permanence. Art works are preserved, stored, cleaned, and repaired, so they can be experienced for generations to come even though our future is completely uncertain and unknown.

76 Baltzer-Jaray Moreover, when the artist creates an aesthetic object, the creation must be relevant and meaningful for people of that time –​it must reflect the zeitgeist of that period –​but also achieve timelessness in its meaning so as to reach future generations. One of David Bowie’s most iconic and powerful songs, the 1977 hit Heroes, is a piece that very much captures the landscape and vibe of Berlin in the 1970s, with its large, heavily fortified wall that violently imposed a divide between the people in the east and west. The lyrics speak of two lovers kissing in the shadow of the notorious Berlin Wall, later revealed to be producer Tony Visconti and his girlfriend, while shots ring out overhead, and these words invoke an empowering us-​against-​the-​world feeling. Some poetic lines of the song came about via the cut-​up method, used by the Dadaists and made popular in the 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, which entailed taking random text from a book or magazine and reshuffling it. This song has been used in numerous television ads and films since its original release, most recently appearing in the final scene of Jojo Rabbit (2019), reaching fresh audiences with each decade who find new meaning in the song, and often without much awareness or understanding of its origins. The lyrics that had a literal meaning to a 1970s audience, and as such symbolized the rebellious against-​all-​odds and against-​the-​status-​quo attitude, were framed in the lived experiences of their times,4 now take on a highly metaphorical significance for a young audience unfamiliar with the politics of Cold War Era Germany (or the influence of the Beatnik writers, for that matter), and that metaphorical significance provides the inspiration that can be generalized to any number of difficult struggles that anyone of us must overcome. The power of Bowie’s artistic, absurd genius has generated a song that is both very much of its time, and yet utterly timeless; it is music that can frame a specific moment and still perdure in our ethos 4 While the song did not hit the top of the charts upon release, it increased in meaningfulness and power within a decade of its release. Its most memorable moment occurred in 1987, two years before the fall of the Wall, when Bowie performed it live at the Platz der Republik Festival, which was very near to the studio where the song was originally conceived. Of this performance, Bowie said: “I’ll never forget that, it was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears. They’d backed up the stage to the Wall itself so that it was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert, where the Wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life. And I guess I never will again. When we did Heroes it really felt anthemic, almost like a prayer, I’ve never felt it like that again.” Bill DeMain, (4 February 2019), “The story behind the song: Heroes by David Bowie” on Louder. https://​www.loud​erso​ und.com/​featu​res/​the-​story-​beh​ind-​the-​song-​her​oes-​by-​david-​bowie.

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for eternity, retaining power and significance while its symbolism constantly evolves with each new generation of listeners. It becomes evident through these conversations about the artist, that while a given artist may not have hope for a future, there always seems to be a type of hope present in them that humanity will experience a moment of connection with their work. Bowie and other creative minds reveal that the artist must live contemporaneously with being a prophet. Jacques Attali, in his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music, describes this absurdity when speaking about the musician: ‘… music runs parallel to human society, is structured like it, and changes when it does’,5 and, while at the same time ‘Music is prophecy. Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code’.6 Attali further adds, ‘Musician, priest, officiant were in fact a single function among ancient peoples. Poet laureate of power, herald of freedom –​ the musician is at the same time within society, which protects purchases, and finances him, and outside it, when he threatens it with his visions’.7 The artist must integrated into the culture they are trying to depict and reach with the messages of their art, while also being sufficiently outside the culture to speak from a more objective standpoint, all the while confronting absurdity in their own lives through revolt and without hope in any future. Creating certainly appears to be, as Camus said, living doubly. But what about an absurd work of art? Is it possible? Camus’s answer is: yes, it is possible but he stipulates some conditions. First, absurd art does not explain experience but rather describes it: ‘The heart learns thus that the emotion delighting us when we see the world’s aspects comes to us not from its depth but from their diversity. Explanation is useless, but the sensation remains and, with it, the constant attractions of a universe inexhaustible in quantity. The place of the work of art can be understood at this point’. (ms, 95) In this act of describing, an absurd work of art presents a certain worldview that deals with particular matters, and refrains from universalizing them. It is up to the witnessed of art to find in it their shared ground of meaning with other witnesses. Second, absurd art must meet the same criteria of absurd thought: ‘Thus, I ask of absurd creation what I required from thought –​revolt, freedom, and diversity’. (ms, 117) Revolt and freedom remain the same as earlier: living the 5 Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi, (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), p. 10. 6 Attali, p. 11. 7 Attali, p. 11 (my emphasis).

78 Baltzer-Jaray tension with the absurd and in defiance of death, and creating meaning as one sees fit within the time one has. The third characteristic listed above is an elaboration on passion, the idea of living most through a rich variety of experiences, and when this pertains to art it entails, ‘Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity. And diversity is the home of art’ (ms, 116). Here, I interpret diversity to be linked not just with a plethora of experiences but additionally with a sense of spontaneity, exemplified in creating in ways that would be considered not harmonious or integrated –​art that has moments of the non-​rational, contradictory, that fails to conform completely to a label or genre, and possibly goes against the codes set down by the gatekeepers for belonging to art world. The greatest examples we have of absurd art and absurd artists that meet Camus’s demands would be the Dadaists of the early 20th century, many graffiti artists, and/​or any creator who falls under the label of Anti-​Art. Dadaists, as an art collective, were anti-​capitalism, anti-​authority, anti-​convention, anti-​war, anti-​nationalism, anti-​bourgeois, anti-​reason, anti-​establishment, and anti-​art.8 Artists creating anti-​art already frames the degree of absurdity this group engaged in. ‘Anti-​art’, coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913, was a descriptive label for creations that challenged conventional and institutional definitions of what art is, and were to be a breaking free from traditional forms and views of what was and was not art, and this reactionary movement was meant to expand people’s minds concerning the possibilities of what art could be –​such as Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ urinal and his other Ready-​Mades. This form of art was rebelling against both high art and the art market. Anti-​Art also captured the idea of the absence of art. For example, Robert Rauschenberg, a Neo-​Dadaist who, in 1953, was considered an up-​and-​ coming artist when he asked established abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning for a drawing that he could use in an unusual project. After procuring the drawing, Rauschenberg spent months carefully erasing all traces of the original drawing (which was composed of pencil, charcoal, and crayon) and then re-​titled the work ‘Erased de Kooning Drawing’. This Rauschenberg is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art, which only seems to add to the absurdity. Many Dada creators destroyed their works as part of the artistic act or enacted spoken word performances entirely improvised on the spot and not repeatable (and sometimes filled with distortion that rendered them

8 For more on this, see Preminda Jacob, (October 19, 2018), ‘Banksy and the tradition of destroying art’, The Conversation: https://​thec​onve​rsat​ion.com/​ban​ksy-​and-​the-​tradit​ion-​of-​des​troy​ ing-​art-​104​810.

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beyond recognition).9 In 1920, Francis Picabia, for example, unveiled a chalk drawing titled ‘Riz au Nez’ (‘Rice on the Nose’) at the Palais des Fêtes for a Parisian audience. His friend and fellow artist collaborator, Andre Breton, then erased it before their eyes –​the artwork was present in the world for a matter of hours before being completely lost. Pop and graffiti street artist Keith Haring made his mark in chalk on the blank advertising spaces found all over the New York City subway stations, making over five thousand chalk drawings from 1980 to 1985.10 Even when he graduated to spray paint, Haring created his murals (roughly fifty across the globe) with a welcoming acceptance of both their impermanence and vulnerability.11 As a young college student, in 1978, he wrote in his diary, ‘If it is not regarded as “sacred” and “valuable”, then I can paint without inhibition, and experience the interaction of lines and shapes. I can paint spontaneously without worrying if it looks “good”; and I can let my movement and my instant reaction/​response control the piece, control my energy (if there is any control at all) … It is temporary and its permanency is unimportant. Its existence is already established. It can be made permanent by the camera’.12 In 1986, Haring painted a 330m long section of the Berlin Wall with human figures that were interlinked at their hands and feet, symbolizing unity, and the piece was done in the colours of the East and West German flags (yellow, black, and red). The mural Haring spent four to six hours painting became largely covered by other graffiti and street art within a day or two, and after the fall of the wall in November 1989 it ceased to exist altogether. Only a handful of his murals exist in their original locations, and about eleven are in the USA; most were never intended to still be here today. We should also include the work of the best-​known graffiti artist on the planet –​Banksy. They resist being known or 9

10 11

12

Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto of 1918 –​an anti-​manifesto manifesto –​has been referred to as an absurdist creed. Absurdism was a fundamental idea and creative force for Dada art. See Tristan Tzara, Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries, trans. Barbara Wright, (Richmond: Alma Books, 2014). Dr. Amy Raffel, ‘Keith Haring, Subway Drawings’: https://​smart​hist​ory.org/​keith-​har​ing -​sub​way-​drawi​ngs/​. Karen Chernick, (1 September 2017), “Why This 30-​Year-​Old Keith Haring Mural Was Never Meant to Last”, Artsy. https://​www.artsy.net/​arti​cle/​artsy-​editor​ial-​30-​year-​old -​keith-​har​ing-​mural-​meant Of his temporary public art, Haring said: ‘I realized, of course, that when you put something in public that it is in a certain way a gift’, Haring said in an interview about his Houston Street mural in New York. ‘It’s vulnerable to whatever is going to happen to it from the outside world’. Keith Haring. Journals. Foreword by Shepard Fairey. (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), p. 22. See also: Jennifer Mundy. ‘Lost Art: Keith Haring’. Tate: The Gallery of Lost Art. https://​www.tate.org.uk/​art/​art-​terms/​g/​graff​iti-​art/​lost-​art-​keith-​har​ing.

80 Baltzer-Jaray named, and create in secret and pick locations rather randomly. Their creations being executed in public spaces makes preservation pretty much impossible and susceptible to forms of vandalism and defacement by other street graffiti artists, or to being painted over by the local government, as well as stolen –​or destroyed by natural events. This risk for Banksy, as for Haring, seems integral to his mode of expression, apart from showing disdain for art critics, dealers, galleries, museum curators, capitalist companies who print shirts and bags, and those who are guardians the institutional theory of art. Banksy and Haring both strongly believe that art should be as accessible as possible –​an artist for the people. In the 2014 documentary film Banksy Does New York, they are said to assert that ‘outside is where art should live, amongst us, where it can act as a public service, provoke debate, voice concerns, forge identities. Don’t we want to live in a world made of art, not just decorated by it?’13 Many of us are familiar with the 2018 story of the Banksy print ‘Girl with Balloon’ that sold at a Sotheby auction for US$1.4 millions, and then was half-​shredded right after the hammer went down. Any artist who creates with the intention of destroying their own art, or accepts a high risk of its destruction, or devises in a moment of improvisation with the intent that it can never be replicated (or even understood by the audience) is, by Camus’s standards, an absurd creator bringing forth absurd art. These artists and their works overflow with revolt, freedom, and diversity. Banksy and the Dada artists have not only displayed absurdity but also a sense of responsibility for social justice: The former draws attention to the grave ills of our capitalist and individualist Western culture; the latter blasted the hyper-​rational and scientific mentality that governed the operations of wwi, resulting in millions of senseless deaths, and destruction unprecedented proportions. But how to reconcile the ideas of absurd art and artist with social responsibility? 3

Create Dangerously and with Responsibility?!

Fifteen years after Myth was published Camus presented his lecture ‘Create Dangerously’. Its tone is remarkably different from that of Myth, and there is no mention of the absurd; instead, we see a call-​to-​arms for artists to use their talents for causes of social justice. However, I maintain, these two texts can be understood as strongly connected. Just before launching a spirited discussion 13

Banksy Does New York, directed by Chris Moukarbei, (2014: hbo Documentary Films).

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of Camus’s lecture and its links to Myth, I need to delve into a bit of context: both historical and pertaining to the art world. When we look at what happened in the world from 1942 to 1957, the years between Myth and ‘Create Dangerously’, we see a series of events that likely served as a catalyst for this lecture: the end of wwii and the defeat of Nazism; the Cold War and its ever-​escalating arms and space race between the USA and the Soviet Union (nuclear warfare is a pervasive fear); the rise in popularity and prestige of the French Communist Party and the concomitant exposure of Stalin’s crimes; Civil Rights struggles in the USA; the Cuban Revolution; the Hungarian Revolution; the Suez Crisis; and the Algerian War for independence. Let’s also not forget that by 1957 Camus and Sartre were no longer friends.14 These conflicts included a heavy war of propaganda, where art was actively used to imprint political ideology and/​or economic and social agendas onto the citizens. Art became in this way an important tool for these two superpowers and their plans for conquering the developing world, which was undergoing the process of decolonization. The Soviet Union utilized its revolutionary propaganda to shape Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia as well as swaths of Africa –​largely by targeting the working class. The art they created through painting, writing, photography and film was called Social Realism, where the goal was to draw attention to the real socio-​political conditions of the working class so as to engage in critique of the structures of power that sustained these conditions. The USA and its Western Bloc allies used print and advertising to communicate the benefits of free market capitalism.15 Abstract Art became caught up in this conflict between East and West: the Soviet Union interpreted non-​representative forms of art as nonsense and incomprehensible to the workers (given that it did not even speak to their situation), whereas the United States government funded it through the cia –​believing that it showcased the liberating and progressive character of the capitalist society. It has been argued that a line of separation could be drawn between the powers of East and West based exclusively on attitudes toward abstract art.16 14

Clearly, in ‘Create Dangerously’ Camus targets Sartre’s idea of ‘committed literature’ –​ that art must serve the ends of political justice and at the cost of the artist’s freedom. 15 For further details, see “The Story of 1950s Art”, Widewalls Magazine. https://​www.widewa​ lls.ch/​magaz​ine/​1950s-​art. 16 The cia actually helped promote and fund American Abstract Art. See the book by Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War –​The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, (New York: The New Press, 1999). Mark Vallen’s Art for Change blog has a great summary of the story: ‘The Central Intelligence Agency financed, organized, and assured the success of the American abstract expressionist movement, using artists like Jackson

82 Baltzer-Jaray The political tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union influenced the art scene for decades. Camus would have been a witness to the art propaganda being spread in the 1950s, but completely unaware of cia involvement with abstract art; that story did not begin to leak out until the late 1960s and Camus was already dead. That being said, these events of the 1950s, while technologically different, were not anything new, after all, art has been bound up with politics and power for centuries. Camus was well aware of this fact too. Many of the great French masters on display at the Louvre –​such as Delacroix, David, Géricault –​were painting nationalist propaganda. Many sculptors, painters, and architects have produced powerful propaganda for religious institutions, churches, and the Pope. Artists, in the hands of powerful, can produce works that move whole communities into action or submission, and build mountains of wealth for their patrons. This imposes a clear purpose on the artist and their art –​to benefit those in power. Pollock, Sam Francis, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko, as weapons in the struggle against the Soviet Union …. Saunders informs us that during the height of the Cold War in the 1950’s, the cia secretly promoted abstract expressionism as a means of discrediting the socialist realism of the Soviet Union. The Agency’s scheme was really two-​fold, to shift the center of the art world away from Europe to the United States, and to create a national art that would extol unfettered liberty (without challenging the political status quo in the US of course.) The cia noted a group of little-​known upstart American artists and thought them perfect to help execute the strategy. The abstract expressionists were attacking convention with their “action painting”, an avant-​garde aesthetic that pronounced the act of painting to be more important than the results. These artists were the embodiment of an iconoclastic and fiery individualism, but their artworks contained a total absence of recognizable subject matter –​not to mention overt politics. They abandoned the concept of paintings offering narratives and instead favored a headlong rush into the mystical where agitated fields of color were the only message. Viewers could, and did, read virtually anything into such works … The spy agency created and staffed an international institution they named the Congress for Cultural Freedom (ccf,) and from 1950 to 1967 (when the front group was at last exposed as a cia operation), the spook endowment had secretly bankrolled the abstract expressionist movement with untold millions of dollars. The ccf organized international gallery and museum exhibits and ccf operatives worked to persuade collectors, curators, and critics that Pollock, Rothko, Motherwell, et al, were the peerless artists of the age. The cia orchestrated the publication of a major article on Jackson Pollock in life Magazine declaring him “the shining new phenomenon of American art”, and the “greatest living artist”….The cia applied considerable muscle in its endeavor to support and advance the abstract expressionist movement, and in large part they were successful. Realism became passé as art critics focused on singing the praises of action painting. Galleries, museums, and private collectors spent appreciable fortunes on collecting abstract expressionist works while realist painters languished in obscurity. It is a travesty the art world has not fully recovered from, and to this day elite opinion favors nonrepresentational over realistic artworks’. http://​art-​for-​a-​cha​nge.com/​blog/​2005/​12/​abstr​act-​art-​cultu​ral-​cold-​war.html.

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But should art be shaped by political direction rather than creative design? Is the artist just a civil servant, a visual illustrator for ruling ideology and morality? Some artists have put forth the position that art should be free to be itself and the artist should be guided by their own creativity, neither should be a tool of the state, moral institutions, academic establishments, or wealthy patrons: let there be ‘Art for Art’s Sake’! Most notably, this movement and sentiment from the 19th century –​‘l’art pour l’art’ –​is said to have begun in France, and the slogan itself originated with the writer Théophile Gautier. Artists who supported this idea (including Edgar Allan Poe, Victor Cousin, James Whistler, and Stefan George, to name a few) argued that art had an inherent value independently of its subject-​matter, and of its ethical, social-​political significance. True or ‘real’ art is something divorced from moral, political, institutional, or utilitarian functions. Art is valuable as art in itself; artistic pursuits are their own justifications –​art needed no other justification and was intended to be morally neutral or even subversive. Art should be judged purely in terms of its beauty, and its ability to induce empathy and/​or ecstasy in the viewer through its formal qualities. This understanding of art was a reaction against what was considered the stifling moralism of the academic art world and greater society, a position not without its opponents. Friedrich Nietzsche famously railed against art for art’s sake in his Twilight of the Idols –​at the notion that art could be meaningless or purposeless: The struggle against purpose in art is always a struggle against the moralizing tendency in art, against the subordination of art to morality. L’art pour l’art means: ‘the devil take morality!’ –​But this very hostility betrays that moral prejudice is still dominant. When one has excluded from art the purpose of moral preaching and human improvement, it by no means follows that art is completely purposeless, goalless, meaningless, in short l’art pour l’art –​a snake biting its own tail.17 Nietzsche’s main reason, however, for rejecting art for art’s sake is that the artist expresses their being –​what he calls their instinct –​through art whether they recognize it or not, and that means art is never absolutely divorced from meaning or purpose:

17

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Expeditions of an Untimely Man #24”, Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-​Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 92.

84 Baltzer-Jaray Something in which the instinct of the artist has no part whatever? Or is it not rather the prerequisite for the artist’s being an artist at all … Is his basic instinct directed towards art, or is it not rather directed towards the meaning of art, which is life? towards a desideratum of life? –​Art is the great stimulus to life: how could it be thought purposeless, aimless, l’art pour l’art? … What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Does he not display precisely the condition of fearlessness in the face of the fearsome and questionable? … He communicates it, he has to communicate it if he is an artist, a genius of communication.18 This debate over the purpose of art continued into the early 20th century, most notably as a hot topic within the Harlem Renaissance between Alain Locke and W.E.B. Du Bois. Specifically, these two men brought the argument about art for art’s sake to the creative domain of African American life: should art be created and used in the service of the fight for equity and civil rights, as social justice propaganda? In his essay, ‘Art or Propaganda?’, Locke writes: Art in the best sense is rooted in self-​expression and whether naive or sophisticated is self-​contained. In our spiritual growth genius and talent must more and more choose the role of group expression, or even at times the role of free individualistic expression, –​in a word must choose art and put aside propaganda … Our espousal of art thus becomes no mere idle acceptance of ‘art for art’s sake’, or cultivation of the last decadences of the over-​civilized, but rather a deep realization of the fundamental purpose of art and of its function as a tap root of vigorous, flourishing living.19 Locke insisted that the value of art lay in its expression of the individuality of an artist. Though he hoped that the art produced by African Americans would repudiate racist beliefs, he did not view this to be its primary function: art should reflect the unique perspective of the artist and, in doing so, touch on some fundamental aspect of the human experience. Art could help the cause of racial equality only when it was free to establish intellectual frameworks that were entirely independent of the demands of the majority. Locke calls us to move past art having a social role, and into the realm of creative expression

18 19

Nietzsche, p. 93. Alain Locke, ‘Art or Propaganda?’, Harlem, Vol. 1, No. 1. November 1928. http://​natio​nalh​ uman​itie​scen​ter.org/​pds/​maai3/​prot​est/​tex​t10/​locke​arto​rpro​paga​nda.pdf.

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that white Western art culture has been able to enjoy for centuries: art should be part of the project of black self-​realization. Du Bois retorted that it was a role and responsibility of the African American artist to offer a representation of the African American and black experience, one that might help in the quest for social justice and upliftment. By exercising her freedom, by creating beautiful works of art that promote the ends of sympathy and universal understanding, the artist may undertake to broaden the ethical and cognitive horizons of her intended audience, and thus expand its capacity for judgment. Artists also rely on beauty to communicate truth and goodness (in all its aspects of justice, honor, and right) to promote those same ends. Du Bois writes, ‘The apostle of Beauty thus becomes the apostle of truth and right not by choice but by inner and outer compulsion. Free he is, but his freedom is ever bounded by Truth and Justice’.20 Rather than insisting on a specific moral viewpoint, the successful artist should attend to ethical principles –​in the sense that the work must necessarily orient itself to the dominant ethical standards in the society. Du Bois adds, ‘Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent’.21 Paul Christopher Taylor interprets Du Bois’s position on all art being propaganda along the lines of the dialectical nature of subject formation, since this sets the conditions for how we aspire to and understand freedom, including artistic freedom. Taylor writes, ‘I take this to mean that artists, like everyone else, are dialectically enmeshed in wider webs of meaning concerning the true and the just, and must create themselves as individuals by working out their orientation to these networks’.22 Art, then, is quite naturally propaganda, Because of this condition, we cannot think of freedom as an abstract possession, as absolute willfulness and complete detachment from ethical or political imperatives. We must think of it as self‐legislation in the face of, and in recognition of, the wider resources for seeking the truth and 20 21 22

W.E.B. Du Bois, October 1926, ‘Criteria of Negro Art’, The Crisis. (Speech given at 1926 Conference of the naacp in Chicago), paragraph 28 http://​www.webdub​ois.org/​dbC​rite​ riaN​Art.html. Du Bois, paragraph 29. Paul Christopher Taylor, Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics, (Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), p. 96.

86 Baltzer-Jaray pursuing the good. Slavery, or unfreedom, then, consists not in recognizing one’s inevitable rootedness in pre-​existing discourses of truth and right, but in being prevented –​as it might be, by a ban on political art –​ from working out one’s relationship to these discourses.23 Locke and Du Bois shared a common goal: to combat perceptions of Black inferiority among both African Americans and Caucasian people. They both saw art as an essential tool for the realization of this goal. But how art could do so, they approached from opposite ends. Camus’s lecture occupies an important and contemporary position in this debate about the purpose of art and the role of the artist. Locke, Du Bois, and Camus are all men of colour (Camus also had the additional experience of being a colonized person), and these racial identities provide unique perspectives to understanding the potential role of art in society and the structures of power it participates in (being predominantly white, Western, Eurocentric and colonial). Du Bois and Locke, however, argued this issue in the 1920s, prior to wwii and advancements made by the Civil Rights Movement, whereas Camus, more than a decade after the end of the war, is addressing a politically and ideologically divided global community that had survived the domination of Fascism, witnessed the Holocaust and countless human rights atrocities, and where decolonization was actively occurring across the developing world, and issues of civil rights were finally gaining traction and legal momentum in the US. Needless to reiterate, the stakes were very different for Camus’s world, hence the urgency for art to be part of social justice was all the more fervent. He writes, ‘Today, everything has changed: silence itself has taken on formidable meaning. The moment that remaining detached was considered a choice, and punished or praised as such, artists, whether they liked it or not, became involved. And in this, the word involved seems to me much more accurate than committed. In fact, it is not merely a matter of the artist’s voluntary commitment, but rather of obligatory military service’ (cd, 4). He situates art for art’s sake in the manufactured art of the European bourgeoise, and not only does he call out their irresponsibility, but refuses to call them artists. Camus writes: ‘Art for art’s sake, which was merely a pleasant distraction for the solitary artist, was precisely the contrived art of abstract, artificial society. Its logical conclusion was art of the “salons” (drawing rooms), or the purely formulaic art that is nourished by affections and abstractions, and that finally results in the destruction of all reality’ (cd, 15). Art for art’s sake divorces itself too much 23

Taylor, p. 97.

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from reality and from life itself, which are its living roots. These lines alone make it abundantly evident that Camus was no proponent of ‘l’art pour l’art’ –​ in fact, a quite passionate adversary of it. Let me add one more bit of context before discussing how this lecture connects with The Myth. The philosophical inspiration for Camus’s lecture came from Simone Weil. He first became acquainted with Weil’s work in 1948. In his role as editor for Gallimard he prepared and published seven of her books, working closely with her mother to complete the task. The meeting of these two great minds –​in printed word alone (since Weil died in 1943) –​would profoundly change both their intellectual lives and legacies. Weil had been recognized in the 1940s as a religious thinker, but not known or understood as a political thinker and philosopher. The world was introduced to this side of her in the 1950s, largely due to Camus’s efforts. What he found in Weil was ‘something new and strange in her writings, but because he found something old and shared. Not only was the public’s understanding of Weil forever changed, but so too was Camus’s understanding of himself. It was not that he changed. Instead, he became more fully Camus’.24 In Weil, he felt a deep connection to a kindred spirit who also had great admiration (bordering on obsession) for the ancient Greeks and a writer who vividly enhanced his knowledge and lived experience of suffering, in particular, of the wretched and dehumanized lives of industrial workers. The first work of Weil’s that Camus published was L’Enracinement (The Need for Roots), the piece that had the biggest impact on ‘Create Dangerously’ –​specifically, in her discussion of rights and obligations, Weil argues that obligations are more fundamental than rights since a right only has realizable meaning if others meet their obligations to respect it. In The Need for Roots she elaborates on this point: The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.25 24 25

Robert Zaretsky. (7 March 2020). The Logic of the Rebel: On Simone Weil and Albert Camus. https://​lare​view​ofbo​oks.org/​arti​cle/​logic-​rebel-​sim​one-​weil-​alb​ert-​camus/​. Simone Weil, The Need for Roots. Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind, trans. Arthur Wills, (New York: Routledge, 1952), p. 2. She continues her point about

88 Baltzer-Jaray The idea of rights being secondary to and dependent on obligations is a logical reversal of the enlightenment understanding that places personal rights above responsibilities, which results in individualism and often dehumanization of others. Weil’s understanding frames the social-​political situation in the understanding of our interconnectedness and precariousness. When responsibility is taken to be the priority over rights, we must first think about what we owe one another before we think about what to claim for ourselves. Camus picks up Weil’s deep sense of obligation that we have to others and makes demands of the artist –​be it to promote freedom or raise awareness of suffering: For 150 years, the writers of consumer society, with very few exceptions, believed they could live in blissful irresponsibility. They did live, in fact, and then died alone, just as they had lived. But we, the writers of the twentieth century, will no longer ever be alone. Quite the contrary: we must know that we cannot hide away from communal misery, and that our sole justification, if one exists, is to speak out, as best we can, for those who cannot. And we must do this for everyone who is suffering at this very moment, despite the past or future greatness of the states or political parties that are oppressing them: to artists, there are no privileged torturers. That is why beauty, even today, especially today, can serve no political party; it only serves, in the long or short term, the pain or freedom of humankind. cd, 36–​3726

The artist’s responsibility is to unsettle and disrupt our situation, to imagine superior alternatives to the status quo, the system, the present reality. This is not necessarily to hope for a future, which for Camus is tantamount to escapism and a failure to confront the absurd, but rather the idea is to inspire through art in the moment so as to create a wave of change that flows forward

26

obligations being primary to rights, saying: ‘It makes nonsense to say that men have, on the one hand, rights, and on the other hand, obligations. Such words only express differences in point of view. The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. Other men, seen from his point of view, only have rights. He, in his turn, has rights, when seen from the point of view of other men, who recognize that they have obligations towards him. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations’ (p. 2). We also see Weil’s sense of rootedness invoked in Camus’s lecture: ‘In the end, art created outside of society cuts itself off from its living roots’ (cd, p. 15).

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into a future, if that future should come: ‘Artists take from history what they can see or suffer themselves, directly or indirectly, that is to say, current events (in the strictest sense of those words) as well as what is happening to people alive today, and not the relationship between current events and a future that is unknowable to the living artist’. (cd, 35) The artist must find ways to present truth through understanding, to unveil something universal and timeless that each of us knows or can come to know through our lived experience. Truth, however, always comes with danger and risk, but with risk comes the possibility of artistic freedom and, moreover, greatness: ‘Danger leads to becoming exemplary, and every type of greatness, in the end, has its roots in taking risks’ (cd, 43). So, the artist must take risks and create dangerously because ‘if art is not a dangerous adventure, then what is it, and what is its justification?’ (cd, 39). Camus states that we must run every risk and work to create freedom, because freedom not only helps us accomplish justice and beauty, but with it we can overcome isolation and division –​art unites where tyranny divides. (cd, 40–​41) Without freedom we accomplish nothing and lose everything. Thus, Camus says: ‘The days of irresponsible artists are over’ (cd, 43). Several themes and ideas established in Myth are brought to life again in ‘Create Dangerously’. While the term ‘absurd’ is not mentioned, much of his descriptions concerning art and the artist in the lecture is a match for the qualities he offered in the The Myth about absurd art and artist. The theme of existing in constant tension and living contradictions that he evoked throughout The Myth, when referring to human life as well as to the creative absurd artist, returns in this lecture in the discussion about the nature of art: ‘In the end, perhaps we are here touching upon the greatness of art, in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, human love and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent’ (cd, 38). Art, he tells us, develops between the two chasms of frivolity and propaganda, where every step forward is a dangerous one: ‘Yet it is within that risk, and only there, that true artistic freedom lies’ (cd, 38). He warns against both frivolity in art, which speaks directly to ‘art for art’s sake’, and propaganda, or what he calls ‘lies of the realists’ (cd, 38). Frivolous art implies a superficial or safe art, a type that is in the service of ‘simple entertainment’ or ‘pleasant distraction’ –​the kind of art that avoids issues of social justice. Creating in frivolity is a distraction for the solitary, detached artist. Similar to the ‘Everyday Person’ Camus describes in The Myth, the one who avoids living the tension with the absurd consciously, the frivolous artist avoids their obligations to fellow human beings. Propaganda –​here it takes on the meaning of sharing a biased point of view –​ highlights the fact that no artist can be an absolutely true realist. Pure realism is not possible, according to Camus. The critique of realism here is twofold: he

90 Baltzer-Jaray is commenting on the Social Realism art of communist countries, in which the ‘reality’ of workers that artists present is not always faithful, and on the fact that realism in art is never what it should be, because that is impossible. Camus writes, ‘If we are to believe the assertions of the nineteenth-​century naturalists, realism is the exact reproduction of reality …. But what exactly is it reproducing, and what is reality?’ (cd, 21). Any one person’s life as lived is reality, but can we reproduce that reality purely through art? Even photographs fail to capture reality of the subject objectively and truthfully, and with painting or sculpture an artist makes a variety of choices –​which illustrate bias and reflect the artist’s own reality. There is a shared experience to be had; the artist needs to navigate that tension of finding truths in individual experiences that can become timeless and universal for all people, but the artist reproduction of one reality (his own) is not pure, true realism. Individual lives surrounding each and every one of us are also part of our reality, and they are bound up with a more extended reality –​the people in our families and communities, acquaintances and strangers –​all of which is absent if we attempt to replicate a single life as reality. Camus concludes this point, ‘And so, there is only one realistic film possible: the film that is endlessly shown to us by an invisible camera on the screen of the world. The only realistic artist would be God, if he exists. The other artists are, of necessity, unfaithful to reality’ (cd, 22–​23). For the artist to believe they can be a pure realist is a type of self-​delusion, one that avoids the tension of their own limits and absurdity –​that of existing in a world they cannot represent with absolute accuracy or objectivity while they live through it. The absurd artist, though, faces this unbearable tension with a deep commitment to describe reality faithfully. They are the creative Sisyphus figure. The artist, once again, must find a way to create between the chasms of frivolity and propaganda, almost as if walking on a tightrope, to avoid falling on either side: ‘Two aesthetics have clashed with each other for a very long time: one that recommends a total rejection of real life and the other that claims to reject everything that is not real life. Neither, however, describes reality, and both result in the same lie and the suppression of art’ (cd, 29). Just as in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus emphasizes here that art seeks to understand –​ to describe and to speak to experience, not to explain or to judge. If anything, artists act as justifiers rather than judges since they are perpetual defenders of living creatures, simply because those creatures are alive (cd, 36). In navigating these pitfalls, there is more absurdity to confront, and with that so much tension. Art cannot do completely without reality, but it also cannot become completely subservient to it. Said another way, art can never completely accept or reject what is. The artist must create in and live through the tension between

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these extremes, the total affirmation of life (realism) and the total negation of it (abstract styles), so as to not negate either term entirely. Art, in all its absurdity, ‘is both rejection and acceptance, at one and the same time, and that is why it can be continually and perpetually torn apart … To paint a still life, a painter and an apple must confront and adjust to one another’ (cd, 32). Each artist, through their work, must find the balance between the heaviness of reality and the lightness of creative freedom –​the right measure of reality and then free rebellion of that very reality. This entails that artists must confront and face the times they live in; they cannot turn away from them or become lost in them. The artist must join the community and share in its struggle with the world. Through this, the artist lives in a paradox they cannot escape: ‘… it is at the very moment when artists choose to share the fate of everyone that they affirm their own individuality’ (cd, p. 35). The responsibility of the artist includes keeping the absurd battle alive, living the constant tension and struggle of absurdity and paradoxes, and that fight must include dangerous and truthful creating. The story of the absurd artist and their absurd creations found in Myth echoes again strongly in ‘Create Dangerously’, demonstrating the strong thematic connection between them: I have argued here that the groundwork for the latter was crafted in the former. The artist must seize their freedom and through revolt create dangerously, and with fiery passion endure the constant and repeated struggle and risk. The artist is a rebel who must face the world they live in head on, experience it in the richest ways so as to communicate the depths of truth in absurdity. The artist is a Sisyphus-​type figure, and just like the absurdly tragic Greek hero they must own their boulder –​they must seize their obligations to social justice, and take on the danger involved with activism on its behalf. But what a beautiful boulder it is! Absurd creation is made possible not only by the paradoxes and contradictions the artist constantly lives through and is inspired by, but as a product of these situations that is intended for the human species, which lives in confrontation with absurdity and ever-​looming death. But no matter the absurdity of the artist and art, there must be responsibility. In this respect, one glaring difference does exist between the discussion of art in The Myth and ‘Create Dangerously’: in the latter, the artist has a purpose, or better yet, a requisite that is inextricably bound to their freedom as a creative genius. While the artist, like everyone else, must accept that there is no pre-​determined meaning for us in the universe and hence by necessity we need to make our own, the artist has the additional stipulation solely because they are an artist –​to realize true artistic freedom there must be the accompanying responsibility for social justice. The artist is a rebel with a cause. In The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, there is a passage that aptly describes the absurd artist as rebel:

92 Baltzer-Jaray It is then possible to say that rebellion, when it develops into destruction, is illogical. Claiming the unity of the human condition, it is a force of life, not of death. Its most profound logic is not the logic of destruction; it is the logic of creation. Its movement, in order to remain authentic, must never abandon any of the terms of the contradiction that sustains it. It must be faithful to the yes that it contains as well as to the no that nihilistic interpretations isolate in rebellion. The logic of the rebel is to want to serve justice so as not to add to the injustice of the human condition, to insist on plain language so as not to increase the universal falsehood, and to wager, in spite of human misery, for happiness. R, 14127

The one question left to ask is if we must imagine the artist, as Sisyphus, to be happy. Yes, of course, absurdly so. 27

Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, a revised and complete translation by Anthony Bower, with a Foreword by Sir Herbert Read (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1954), 285; cited as R.

­c hapter 5

The Metaphorical Language of the Absurd Sophie Bastien 1

Metaphorical Language in Service of Theoretical Demonstration

Since the time of Ancient Rome, the term ‘absurd’ has developed to have many meanings. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus dissected the philosophical meaning and formulated his own concept of the absurd, which accounted for his understanding of existence. Since he generally described himself as an artist rather than a philosopher,1 a fundamental part of his process was to ‘give a shape’ to his thought, as he explained in his essay2 and repeated elsewhere3: this expression reveals a creative approach. He used imagery in his language to ‘give a shape’ to the absurd. In the first, and by far the largest, part of The Myth of Sisyphus, entitled ‘An Absurd Reasoning’, he established three main extended metaphors: the theatre, the desert and the walls. Each of these metaphors goes beyond simple rhetoric or stylistic device. They serve a cognitive purpose and, therefore, have a pedagogical function. Because the metaphor is perceptible, it clarifies the abstract essence of the absurd and its complexity. More specifically, it allows us to visualize the Camusian view of the world. It makes noticeable the effects of the absurd, and highlights these effects. 1.1 First Metaphor: The Theatre The theatre is the first metaphor set out in The Myth of Sisyphus, emerging immediately after the three introductory pages—​well before the sub-​chapter entitled ‘Drama’. It is also the most prevalent metaphor and is found in a large

1 ‘Why am I an artist and not a philosopher?’, he wrote in 1945 in his Notebooks (nb ii, 113). “All of us, artists unsure of being artists, but certain that we are nothing else”, he said in 1958 in the ‘Preface’ to The Wrong Side and the Right Side (trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy and Justin O’Brien, New York: Vintage, 2020), p. 15. 2 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1983 [1955]), p. 117. The original French wording is ‘donner une forme’ (oc i, 299). Subsequent references to The Myth of Sisyphus will be indicated by the page number, in parentheses, in the body of the text. 3 Among others, in the ‘Avant-​propos’ to Actuelles ii. Chroniques 1948–​1953, published in 1953 (oc iii, 382).

© Sophie Bastien, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_007

94 Bastien number of passages. The theatrical lexicon is not only abundant, but also varied, to the extent that I provide a typology, including non-​exhaustive examples for each category that I identify. One such category is composed of dramatic genres, which I italicize: the ‘characters in the drama’ (28), ‘that elementary yet subtle dance’ (10), ‘his make-​believe’ (11), ‘the great mime’ (94), ‘their meaningless pantomime’ (15), ‘this inhuman show’ (10). Note the negative adjectives that describe the show: ‘meaningless’ and ‘inhuman’. The list may include the related notion of game, which is also used with expressive epithets, one of which is enforced through repetition: ‘this fatal game’ (5), ‘the fatal game of appearances’ (24–​25), ‘the tragic game’ (134). Another lexical category is the figures who embody the theatrical act: the ‘actor’ and the ‘characters’ (too many occurrences to reference them all). The third category pertains to the material components of stagecraft—​such as the mask and its spatial counterpart, the set—​that I italicize again: ‘the mask of the absurd’ (94), ‘that stage scenery masked by habit’ (14), ‘the familiar setting of the eternal’ (49), ‘she prefers the stage setting to truth’ (132), ‘the stage sets collapse’ (12), ‘an experience divested of its setting’ (26). The last category is theatrical text: ‘dialogue’,4 but the original French version is more compelling: ‘l’absurde, l’espoir et la mort échangent leurs répliques’ (oc i, 226). Another way that the importance of the theatre metaphor in The Myth of Sisyphus is emphasized, is that the most significant parts of the book contain references to this metaphor. The very first definition to isolate the absurd is decisive: ‘This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity’ (6). As long as man is not confronted with the absurd, his ‘pantomime’ is blindly inept, explained Camus (15). Through the use of ubiquitous theatre-​related themes, the author suggested that he profoundly feels the theatricality of life itself, and that this theatrical nature is a significant manifestation of the absurd. He perceived reality as deceptive façade, a fiction in which nothing is tangible. He had the acute sense that man only has a hold on ‘appearances,’5 ‘images,’6 ‘phantoms’.7 In addition to repeating these nouns many times, Camus used wording from the same semantic family that conveys the idea of vanity, such as: the hills, the sky and the trees ‘lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise’ (14). 4 ‘Absurdity, hope, and death carry on their dialogue’ (10). 5 Justin O’Brien also translates the French word ‘apparences’ by ‘semblance’ (26) and ‘externals’ (124). 6 O’Brien uses several different translations for the French noun ‘image’. 7 O’Brien also translates the French noun ‘fantômes’ by ‘ghosts’ (76).

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In fact, Camus reintroduced the ancient metaphor of theatrum mundi, which has been used in literature for the past 2500 years,8 becoming a widespread commonplace. This metaphor originated from reflections on the fleeting aspect of things and the powerlessness of man. This realization provokes an impression of theatricality, and makes think the world in terms of theatre, as though humans were actors and spectators watching each other. Throughout its centuries-​long history, the theatrum mundi has revolved around the glory of God or a transcendent principle through which actors would find a guarantor and hope of salvation.9 Camus, however, distanced himself from the underlying spirituality in the canonical texts of western culture, and from the notion that theatrum mundi was connected to a deity. Instead, he used theatrum mundi to challenge religious tradition, positing that the theatre of the world no longer drew its meaning from a Higher Audience or Supreme Observer. From then on, actors are left to fend for themselves, and inauthenticity proved to be fundamental. Behind the mask lies a hollow, a gulf. Creation becomes nothing more than pure illusion. The poetics of the theater-​universe that Camus shaped, stems from a new theology, a conversion to the absurd: ‘All existence for a man turned away from the eternal is but a vast mime under the mask of the absurd’ (94); in this world without a judge, ‘we can achieve nothing that will transcend the fatal game of appearances’ (24–​25). These key phrases may support Marie-​Louise Audin’s assertion that the paradigm of the theatre in The Myth of Sisyphus exposes an incomplete mystical quest.10 What is more certain is that they draw a line between the mortal state and the theatrical essence. A causal connection can be made: in retrospect, because the final term, that is death, is neither justified nor just, it makes the road traveled a theater, a game—​from which God is totally absent. 1.2 Second Metaphor: The Desert The second metaphor that occurs in The Myth of Sisyphus—​the desert—​is also the second most used metaphor. However, before Camus even wrote 8

9 10

It dates back to the Hellenistic period: as soon as theatre became an established art form, in Greece, 5th century bc, the world was compared to a stage, and those living in the world were compared to actors. Lynda G. Christian, Theatrum Mundi: The History of an Idea (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1987), pp. 1–​2. See Sophie Bastien, ‘La métaphore théâtrale pour penser la vie’, in Que peut la métaphore? Histoire, savoir et poétique, ed. Sylvain David, Janusz Przychodzen and François-​Émmanuël Boucher (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), pp. 97–​113. Marie-​Louise Audin, ‘Le paradigme du théâtre dans Le Mythe de Sisyphe’, in Albert Camus et le théâtre, ed. Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi (Paris: Imec, 1992), p. 120.

96 Bastien this book, he adapted Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound for Le Théâtre du Travail in 1937,11 in which the characters were set in a significant place: ‘a dead-​end desert’.12 ‘The Desert’ then became the title of the last of the four short essays in Nuptials. This collection published in 1939 is inspired by the landscapes of Camus’s native Algeria, of which the desert topography is part. In The Myth of Sisyphus, the desert is presented as a birthplace, but metaphysical, as opposed to biological: ‘the experiences called to mind here were born in the desert’ (27); ‘those impulses born of the desert’ (22) [my italics]. The starting point of an existential awakening is necessarily located in a hostile and sparse setting that brings about thirst and dehydration: ‘those waterless deserts’ (9); ‘the arid, dried-​up path’ (52). Another negative attribute of the desert is that it is drab and bland: ‘in the middle of that colorless desert’ (25). However, ‘thought has […] entered those deserts’ and is suffering. So Camus was wondering whether thought can ‘live’ there (22), and was accurately assessing ‘the difficulty of the absurd ascesis’ (Camus’s italics, 113). For him who ruled out the religious palliative, it is ‘the desert of divine grace’ which imposes itself (133): ‘The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane’ (122). At least, since Camus believed in the faculties of humans, ‘the intelligence […] lights up this desert’ that remains saturnine otherwise (89). It is interesting to note how much Camus was attached to the desert metaphor and remained committed to it over time. In 1955, the following words ended his short preface for the English translation of his book: The Myth of Sisyphus ‘sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert’.13 According to Laurent Mailhot in his landmark monograph with a judicious title, Albert Camus ou l’imagination du désert, the description of the desert in The Myth of Sisyphus is that of the zero point.14 The human solitude joins the mineral world, and the desert emerges victorious.15 The spirit reaches its outer limits and receives no response to its call, except absolute silence. In short, the desert metaphor spatializes the uncomfortable void when one is seeking an essence and finds nothingness. This is why it also manifests as the pronoun ‘nothing’, which carries a lot of weight in The Myth of Sisyphus: To answer sincerely ‘“nothing” when asked what one is thinking about’ conveys the awakening

11 12 13 14 15

Camus directed two consecutive companies in Algiers: Le Théâtre du Travail, from 1936 to 1937, and then Le Théâtre de l’Équipe, from 1937 to 1939. My translation of ‘un désert sans issue’ (oc i, 1096). Albert Camus, ‘Preface’, in The Myth of Sisyphus, unnumbered opening page. Laurent Mailhot, Albert Camus ou l’imagination du désert (Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1973), p. 56. Mailhot, p. 53.

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of consciousness. This ‘void becomes eloquent, [it is] the first sign of absurdity’ (12). It refers to the fact that we work, create and do everything ‘for nothing’ (114); that ‘nothing […] will transcend the fatal game’ (24); and that there is a ‘bottomless void that nothing can fill’ (41) [my italics]. 1.3 Third Metaphor: The Walls Using an architectural imagery that traces the structure of a framework, Camus expressed that the ‘state of the absurd’ is founded on ‘this mind and this world [arc-​boutés]16 against each other without being able to embrace each other’ (40). In the same metaphorical field and with the same explanatory aim, the second sub-​chapter of his book is entitled ‘Absurd Walls’ (10)—​as the absurd builds walls. Indeed, ‘man has […] his definite knowledge of the walls surrounding him’ and that lie between him and the world, between his need for transparency and what he is trying to understand (27). These impenetrable walls exert an action, or at least produce the effect that man is placed between ‘walls enclosing him’ (22). Walls represent an opposing force: ‘the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults’ (20). They take on a cosmic dimension when man must live ‘under that stifling sky’ (29); here, they are imagined on a horizontal plane, like a ceiling. Emmanuel Mounier nevertheless pointed out that, in Camus, they are so oppressive that they are against the forehead of everyone.17 They give a material form to man’s weakness, to the limits he encounters and that restrict his freedom. Jerry L. Curtis spoke with relevance about ‘the prison-​like absurdity of the human condition’.18 Camus never wrote ‘wall’ in the singular, always the plural. This grammatical decision confirms that things are happening ‘in a closed universe’ (32). The notion of imprisonment is even more evident when Camus used the related hyperbole ‘chaining that soul’ (80), which once again invokes the Aeschylus play that he adapted and produced, called Prométhée enchaîné (the French title is stronger than the English translation Prometheus Bound). The Myth of Sisyphus clearly states that mind’s ‘profound truth […] is to be enchained’ (21). The author detailed his idea further: ‘my nostalgia for unity, this fragmented universe and the contradiction that [enchaîne]19 them together’ (50).

16

oc i, 247. O’Brien translates ‘arc-​boutés’ by ‘straining’, which leaves out the architectural imagery. 17 Emmanuel Mounier, Malraux, Camus, Sartre, Bernanos. L’Espoir des désespérés (Paris: Seuil, 1970 [1953]), p. 95. 18 Jerry L. Curtis, The Imprisoned Hero in Camus, Beckett, and Desvignes (Knoxville: New Paradigm Press, 1994), p. 91. 19 oc i, 253. O’Brien translates ‘enchaîne’ with the weaker verb ‘binds’.

98 Bastien Similarly, he talked about ‘a world without issue’ (130), which is universal: ‘the blind path that all have entered upon’ (95), and permanent: ‘the dead-​ end path that the man […] takes a lifetime to cover’ (80) [my italics]. At the end, Camus clarified this concept by framing it from a spiritual perspective, as we have seen with the theatre and desert metaphors: ‘If the course of this life leads to God, there is an outcome after all’ (135).20 In his later works, he often put the existential impasse into the same words: ‘il n’y a pas d’issue’ /​there is no way out. I will examine this fundamental axiom in the works of fiction of his cycle of the absurd, but it is also found in other texts.21 His expression and point of view will serve as a reference for critics; for instance, Anne Larue highlights ‘the dead-​end position of man […] abandoned by grace’.22 1.4 Three Metaphors for Three Absurd Men The three metaphors I have just analyzed are also found in the three lifestyles that are consistent with the awareness of the absurd and that are described in the second part of The Myth of Sisyphus: don juanism, drama and conquest. The sub-​chapter ‘Drama’ is obviously connected to the theatre metaphor. However, Camus once again is original: he inverts the comparison. He had compared life to the theatre, he now compares theatre to life, and the actor to man. On the one hand, the actor illustrates the precariousness of man. Because his ‘realm is that of the fleeting’ (77), he best exemplifies ‘the fact that everything is to die someday’ (78): he demonstrates the absurd. On the other hand, because he ‘trains and perfects himself only in appearances’ (80), he proves that ‘there is no frontier between being and appearing’ (117). In regard to this being/​appearing dialectic, André Abbou notes that the actor stands out as a ‘prototype’ of man.23 The latter too is performing. The acting is in

20 21

22 23

O’Brien translates the French word ‘issue’ and its negative ‘sans issue’ four different ways: ‘a world without issue’, ‘the blind path’, ‘the dead-​end path’, ‘an outcome’. Even the Christian in The Plague debates ‘toutes issues fermées’ (oc ii, 190): ‘with all other outlets closed off’ (Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Robin Buss, New York: Penguin, 2001), p. 262. In State of Siege, the secretary says that ‘il n’y a pas d’issue’(oc ii, 329): ‘It’s sort of deadlock’ (cop, 180). And Clamence, in The Fall, notices that ‘les issues sont fermées’, that there is ‘aucune issue’ (oc iii, 733, 757): ‘there is no escape’, ‘no escape’ (Albert Camus, The Fall, trans. Justin O’Brien, New York: Vintage, 1984 [1956]), pp. 80, 131. The wording is even found in the Notebooks: ‘il n’y a pas d’issue’ (oc ii, 1009) /​‘there is no way out’ (nb ii, 88). My translation of ‘la position sans issue de l’homme […] abandonné par la grâce’. Anne Larue, ‘Le théâtre du monde: du jeu de l’acteur aux lieux du cosmos’, L’Information littéraire 46: 1 (1994), p. 20. André Abbou, ‘Le théâtre de la démesure’, in Albert Camus et le théâtre, p. 173.

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himself, and can be viewed as an inability to be, an insufficiency of being. Camus was therefore ascribing ethical depth, in addition to the aesthetic meaning, to the word ‘theatrical’ (80). True to form, he also emphasized it with antireligious commentary: the “triumph of Proteus [is] the negation of everything” the Church stands for (82). Don Juan too is connected to the theatre metaphor, as well as the related game metaphor. By the very nature of being an insatiable seducer, he is an actor. He knowingly and generously ‘accepted all the rules of the game’ (74) and, with his ‘love of the theater’, ‘he gambles […] life against heaven itself’ (70). Ultimately, he winds up in a sort of desert, based on Camus’s description of his denouement: he ‘lives out the comedy […] kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth’ (76). The pathos conveyed in this scene through body language and soul-​searching suggests a contemplation of the desert, emphasized by supplication. Although the conqueror’s portrait mentions the desert twice (89), it is primarily conveying the walls metaphor. The conqueror’s walls are not tangible so much as metaphysical: ‘Our fate stands before us and we provoke him’, wrote Camus (90). ‘Before what crushes him’ (88), the conqueror engages in the battle and the reasoning behind it, all the while knowing ‘that action is in itself useless’ (87). He is aware of his ‘limitations’, ‘obligations’ (89), and ‘ineffectual condition’ (90). This once again connects to Prometheus Bound, which Camus considered to be ‘the first of modern conquerors’ (87). 2

Metaphors of the Absurd as a Literary Device in Fiction

Camus presented the philosophical theory of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, but he expressed the feeling of the absurd through the poetic medium of fiction in the novel The Outsider and in the plays Caligula and The Misunderstanding. These works of fiction put into practice the three aforementioned metaphors—​ the theatre, the desert, the walls—​and thus make them more concrete. By successively addressing the works in chronological order by the publication date, I will now examine which form Camus gave to his dear metaphors. 2.1 In The Outsider Walls are present in a literal sense throughout the second half of The Outsider. The narrator is walled inside a very cramped and dark cell for a year. At most, he has some outings in the prison yard and makes trips back and forth to the visiting room. When he is taken to the courthouse, the police van serves as a

100 Bastien ‘moving prison’.24 For Meursault, walls fulfill their function of spatial boundary by increasingly exerting physical and psychological pressure, that crushes his dreams of freedom and that exacerbates his imprisonment: ‘it struck me how much the walls of my prison had closed in on me’, he says, as he conjures images of the beach and waves (69). Once his trial is over, he knows that he will be sent to the guillotine. In light of this unavoidable, absolute certain fate, the significance of the walls intensifies and encroaches on the meaning of the death sentence. The protagonist experiences that encroachment in his flesh: the death sentence feels ‘as certain, as real, as the solid wall of my cell against which I pressed my body’ (99). However, the chaplain explains that, with or without a guillotine, we are ‘all condemned to death’ (106), which spurs Meursault to link that expression to the word ‘guilty’ (110). As he has learned, he is guilty and he must pay, so he is sentenced. That causal relationship extends to mankind, and Meursault’s personal tragedy illustrates a universal fact. According to him, everyone is deemed both ‘guilty’ and ‘condemned’, as though the words were interchangeable.25 As a result, it can be concluded that everyone is in a sort of prison, awaiting death. The meaning of captivity expands and ultimately becomes a hyperbolic representation of the pitfalls of the human condition. Walls are already present, in another form, in the first half of the novel, represented by the glaring, burning cosmic force of the sun, which overwhelm Meursault, pushing him to commit murder. When the concept of ‘no way out’, which was so important in The Myth of Sisyphus, appears in The Outsider for the first time, it is about the heat of the sun. The nurse of the care home says the following about the funeral procession: ‘If you walk too slowly, […] you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too quickly, you’re sweating’ (16). Meursault adds: ‘She was right. There was no escaping it’ (‘Il n’y avait pas d’issue’ –​oc i, 150). However, the nurse is talking about the pace of the procession toward the burial, a destination that emphasizes the notion of mortality. This connection between the difficulty of the route and its destination draws attention to Meursault’s terse conclusion. The literal meaning—​no exit, no opening—​can

24 Albert Camus, The Outsider, trans. Sandra Smith (London: Penguin, 2012), p. 87. Subsequent references to this book will be indicated by the page number, in parentheses, in the body of the text. 25 ‘All those others, they too would one day be condemned to death. He as well, he too would be condemned to death. […] The little robotic lady was just as guilty as the Parisian woman Masson had married, just as guilty as Marie, who wanted me to marry her. […] Couldn’t this condemned man understand’ (109–​10). ‘Everyone is always a little guilty’, noticed already Meursault at the beginning of the novel (18).

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also be interpreted on the ontological level as a connotation of unrelenting finiteness. In addition, Meursault’s statement serves as a harbinger of his future: the prison to which he will be sent, and his own death. Further on, when Meursault is tormented by imprisonment, he remembers that polysemous truth: ‘I recalled […] what the nurse had said at Mama’s funeral. No, there was no way out’ (73) /​‘il n’y avait pas d’issue’ (oc i, 188). There is no way out of the prison and no way to escape the mental anguish it causes. The notion of ‘a way out’ comes up again after the death penalty sentence. Meursault would have liked to ‘escape the inevitable’ (98) /​que ‘l’inévitable [puisse] avoir une issue’ (oc i, 204), but ‘no one had a chance, none whatsoever’ (100). Under the circumstances, imminent death acts like walls, a fate the hero cannot escape. In a figurative sense, the walls between Meursault and the social game make him an ‘outsider’. They thus lead to the metaphor of theatre. This metaphor underlies manifestations of mourning and the ceremonial of funeral rites, in which Meursault is the unwitting main actor. He must wear a costume (he borrows an armband and a black tie), and the onlookers expect him to perform and act in a particular way (which he fails to do). The theatricality re-​emerges during the performances of the judicial world, in which Meursault is most often a spectator. At the interrogation stage, regarding the interventions from his lawyer and judge, Meursault finds that ‘everything was […] seriously played out’ (64). During the trial, however, some exuberance is needed considering the protocol of the court and the prosecutor’s grandiloquent plea. In the end, Meursault has an actor status when he wishes that ‘there would be many, many spectators’ at his execution (111). As for the desert, the novel lets us guess it in a poetic way, through Meursault’s draconian solitude in prison. When he realizes that he has been soliloquizing for months, he expresses melancholy about nighttime: ‘no one can imagine what the nights are like in prison’ (73). The desert is also evoked through terminology, with the word ‘nothing’, as pointed out in The Myth of Sisyphus. In The Outsider, although it may appear trivial, it comes up so frequently that it becomes very important. There are 80 occurrences26 of the word “nothing” in this short novel, until Meursault ultimately cries out: ‘Nothing, nothing mattered’ because we are all condemned (109).

26

That is the number of times that the word “rien” appears in the original French version, according to the artfl-​f rantext database, https://​artfl-​proj​ect.uchic​ago.edu/​cont​ent/​ artfl-​frant​ext (accessed July 14, 2021).

102 Bastien 2.2 In Caligula Caligula and The Misunderstanding (May 1944)27 were published not long after The Myth of Sisyphus (October 1942)28. I will now study how these two plays give flesh to the three metaphors that capture the absurd. Throughout Caligula, the theatre metaphor is ongoing and takes many forms. The most obvious form is through the structure of the play-​within-​the-​play. Caligula features three mini performances, incorporating a fictional audience on the stage.29 The first mini performance opens the play’s third act. Percussion instruments sound, and two characters, not unlike ringmasters, spruik from a podium. Then, wearing a bizarre disguise and using a contrived voice, Caligula imitates the goddess Venus, surrounded by patricians who repeat prayers over and over. These prayers seem to be a version of ‘Our Father’ that lacks the faith and solace it might provide; they are celebrating agnostic disillusionment. The whole scene, with its caricatures and tawdry stage setting, is reminiscent of a black mass that parodies the liturgical ritual and the Christian mystery of Incarnation. However, where Scipion sees ‘blasphemy’,30 Caligula sees ‘dramatic art’ in its true sense (44), because he believes not in deities but in the theatrical nature of life: after the use of stage-​specific language, this passage textually states his vision of things. Another line—​that one to justify the murder of Cæsonia—​has a similar effect: ‘you have seen out a most unusual drama. It’s time the curtain fell’ (71). The second internal performance comes in the fourth and last act. Caligula, dressed as a ballerina, appears behind a translucent curtain and, to the sounds of ‘queer music’, performs an ephemeral dance, gesticulating ridiculously, and then disappears. This brief pantomime of a silhouette ‘in shadow play’ depicts the fleeting nature of life while also denigrating it (59). The third internal performance is a poetry contest on the topic of death. Caligula, playing the role of the judge, interrupts and discredits the poets who recite clichés about death. The only poet he takes the time to listen to is the one who mentions his passion for life that is mangled by his awareness of the absurd. In short, the three mini performances are all rooted in nihilism. Furthermore, their groundwork is laid,

27 28 29 30

Camus modified these works until the final versions were published in 1958. Because of censorship, there was no ‘Appendix’ on Kafka at that time; it was included only after the war, in the 1945 edition. According to Georges Forestier, at least one internal spectator is needed to achieve the theatre within the theatre (Le Théâtre dans le théâtre sur la scène française du xviie siècle, Genève: Droz, 1981), p. 11. cop, 42–​44. Subsequent references to this text will be indicated by the page number, in parentheses, in the body of the text.

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and they are followed by the reactions of the internal audience: the theatre within the theatre plays out, and these meta-​discourses make Caligula’s two-​ faced game more evident. However, the protagonist’s theatrical functions are not limited to the actor, the dancer and the critic portrayed respectively in the three internal performances. He also serves as a wardrobe master (23), prompter, storyteller (25), joker (42) and pretender (60–​61). This theatrical practitioner interacts with the other characters much like a masterful director directing his actors—​or, rather, playing them like puppets. He keeps the action moving continuously, forcing the characters to participate in his cynical game. When he is alone, which happens on three occasions, he stands in front of a mirror, and his presence becomes twofold: he watches his reflection, having become his own audience, while staying in character and acting for his own audience in the mirror. One would expect a character to be authentic when alone onstage, yet Caligula portrays the ontological problem of (in)authenticity. His madness reveals more diffuse theatrics. The stage directions have him rotating through a wide range of registers; he makes sudden changes to his behaviour, voice and tone. He is a frightening tyrant barking out orders, then he is a sentimental and disarming poet, then he alternates between a sophist and a puckish child, and then he is full of pathos. The psychic complexity of this character, as demented as versatile, is elusive. Because he has lines that dissociate himself from his madness (8, 13, 16), there is ongoing confusion over the presumed true madness and the feigned one, for those around him, for the real audience in the room and for the critic. He is a master, not a victim, of his madness, and the mise en abyme makes that madness itself the object of an (internal) theatrical game. This becomes even more evident as there is a shift in his reactions, language and suffering that comes across as theatrical. Such subtle theatricality gives rise to tyranny. Visually, he transforms into a temperamental megalomaniac who flouts the established order and maliciously abuses his subjects, when in fact, he is playing a demiurge. He takes a critical look at his tyranny on a number of occasions (43–​44, 62, 69, 71–​72), so as to show that the tyranny, as well, is fallacious. He governs in such a way that he subverts power, aware of its illusory nature: it is stripped of its political content and its meaninglessness is emphasized by the detachment of the theatre. The emperor shrugs off economic, social and moral questions with a dark humour to expose the futility of all ideological value. He even plays with human lives, which makes them even more precarious. He thus reminds his subjects that death is arbitrary, thereby reminding them of their own precariousness. He goes so far as to stage his own death.

104 Bastien His metatheatrical personality sometimes becomes more superficial. For example, his obsession with artifice translates into an obsession with painting his nails red (44–​46). Another example is how he views the poetry contest as entertainment: ‘there are prizes [and] penalties’ that ‘won’t be so very terrible’ (64). He is both mocking and deceptive as he clowns around with his ‘playful virtuosity’.31 He nevertheless has a profound purpose, since many of his lines make use of the polysemic notion of ‘play’ (13, 37, 53, 61)32 and, in doing so, show a reflexiveness that proves that his histrionism is intentional. By always speaking and acting figuratively, he embodies the consciousness of the theatrical game, which represents the game that is played on the stage of life—​a game of necessity, a staple of the human condition. Because transcendence has been withheld, he knows that he is hopelessly condemned to ridiculous antics, so he makes it clear that existence is no more tangible than a game. Ben F. Stoltzfus looks at the cognitive effect on the audience in the room: ‘If the notion of play enables us to distance ourselves from both the victims and the executioner, then we are ready to receive Caligula’s urgent communication’.33 This is reflected in Nina Sjursen’s assessment that the interweaving of the game is a strategy to convey the absurd.34 Caligula’s role in each of his scenes is so theatrical as though the theatricality were its raison d’être. Caligula heralds the metaphysical theory onto the stage, and his words and actions allow the audience to truly feel that man evolves through masks, scenery and furtive shadows. At a crucial moment in the play, he announces ‘the most gorgeous of shows, a sight for gods to gloat on, a whole world called to judgment. […] I must have my public’: for this event, he is demanding ‘spectators’, whom he indiscriminately calls ‘criminals [because] they all are criminals’, and ‘condemned’ because they are ‘all sentenced to death without a hearing’ (17). He appears to have assimilated the theatrical aspect of Meursault’s trial and the connection that Meursault makes between inherent guilt and mortality. Caligula goes further, however: in his line, he says that the world is a performative trial and humans are spectators/​culprits/​condemned.

31 32 33 34

My translation of ‘virtuosité ludique’. Raymond Gay-​Crosier, ‘Caligula ou le paradoxe du comédien absurde’, in Albert Camus et le théâtre, p. 19. In the last of the four occurrences, however, Stuart Gilbert translates ‘joué’ (oc i, 378) by ‘gambled’ (61). Ben F. Stoltzfus, ‘Violence as Tragic Farce in Camus’s Caligula’, in Violence in Drama, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge UP, 1991), p. 195. Nina Sjursen, ‘La puissance et l’impuissance. Dialogue entre Caligula et En attendant Godot’, in Albert Camus et le théâtre, p. 84.

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As in The Outsider, the desert metaphor in Caligula appears through the use of the word ‘nothing’. The very first line in the play’s original French version is quite telling: the statement ‘Toujours rien’ opens an eternal void (oc i, 327). From the very beginning, the dialogue is marked by the word ‘rien’, which appears six times in the first five lines alone. It is used two other times in the same scene, and another two times in the following scene. The word appears seven times in the remainder of the act. It makes a powerful return several more times later on,35 its inherent dryness spreading across the entire play. This veritable hammering is symbolic: Caligula’s every action and gesture are informed by the acute certitude of ‘nothing’. Furthermore, in an early version of the play (dated 1941), Caligula explicitly says: ‘I am nothing’.36 He establishes a desert with his nihilistic credo and takes on the emptiness of man. Again, as in The Outsider, the desert metaphor in Caligula is also suggested through solitude. The hero lyrically speaks of solitude to Scipion (37–​38) and then to Cæsonia (72), and is confronted by solitude in his self-​centred relationship with the mirror. His simulacrum of dialogue in front of the mirror, without any being other than himself, externalizes the vacuity. His solitude evolves until his last monologue in front of the mirror, his final question bordering on dereliction: ‘What human heart, what god, would have for me the depth of a great lake?’ (73). Caligula, having lost his typical arrogance, shows vulnerability as he laments the complete lack of help: ‘Oh, how oppressive is this darkness! […] The air tonight is heavy as the sum of human sorrows’ (73). With respect to the walls metaphor in Caligula, Scipion adopts the much-​ used phrase ‘There’s no way out’ (67) /​‘il n’y a plus d’issue’ (oc i, 383). The emperor rather suggests it by the indirect means of sarcasm. He closes the first act proclaiming that everyone is already ‘sentenced to death’ (17)—​which is true, since everyone is mortal. In the following act, his ‘little monograph on execution’ (29) stipulates that men are mortal because they are guilty of the simple act of living—​which, in a way, is also true. He also introjects an inherent truth about his political status: ‘the one free man in the Roman Empire’ is well aware that, in reality, the most extensive freedom is quite small, not to mention illusory (17). Indeed, even the emperor of Rome is not free to realize the essential aspirations of man. He is only freer than all of his subjects to

35 36

For example: ‘Rien ne va plus […], rien ne veut plus rien dire’ (oc i, 347); ‘I know now that nothing, nothing lasts’ (71); ‘There’s nothing in this world, or in the other, made to my stature. […] I have chosen […] a path that leads to nothing. […] Nothing, nothing yet’ (73). My translation of ‘Je ne suis rien’ (oc i, 441).

106 Bastien scrutinize the walls of his cell, not unlike a wild beast that is allowed to walk about its cage as it wishes.37 2.3 In The Misunderstanding The Misunderstanding brings back the theatre metaphor, through its dialogue and specular structure. Jan acts as an actor in order to put off reconnecting with his family after many years away. He hides his family ties and plays a role for his mother and his sister Martha—​his audience—​posing as a guest at their inn. Reciprocally, the two women are hiding the fact that they are murderers and are playing the part of ordinary inn owners for Jan. So Jan, Martha and the mother are all playing the dual functions of actors and spectators. Observation reigns supreme in this internal two-​way theatre performance. Moreover, an old servant passively watches over the action, starting in the first scene. He adds another dimension to the play-​within-​the-​play, providing another perspective. He experiences the play silently, without interacting with the other characters, and his lack of involvement is so bizarre that he gives the impression of being deaf-​mute. The only exception is at the very end. He appears when Maria, the weeping widow, seeks help from the ‘Heavenly Father’.38 He answers her prayer with a ‘No’ (134). His position as a spectator evokes the God in traditional theatrum mundi, and this explicit refusal, an exemplification of his insensitivity, is reminiscent of Camus’s perception of a God that is indifferent to human suffering. In keeping with The Myth of Sisyphus and Caligula, The Misunderstanding offers a secular and pessimistic version of theatrum mundi. As in Caligula, the play’s structure corresponds to its theme of nonsense, which is also evident in Maria’s metatheatrical words. She demands transparency from Martha: ‘Let’s stop this game’ (128), ‘this play acting’ (129). However, her own word choice conceals a dual meaning, exposing the absurd theatricality that cannot be escaped: we would be nothing more ‘than vague, fleeting faces that came and went in the course of a tragedy which can never end’ (131). Walls appear in The Misunderstanding through the sensation of confinement that the women running the inn have felt for far too long, and this feeling manifests in a number of ways. 1) The play takes place in a cloudy, rainy and

37 See Sophie Bastien, Caligula et Camus. Interférences transhistoriques (Amsterdam/​ New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 164–​66. 38 cop, 133. Subsequent references to this text will be indicated by the page number, in parentheses, in the body of the text.

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secluded location: ‘this gloomy, shut-​in country’ (125), says Martha, ‘these narrow horizons’ (99). 2) The action exclusively takes place in a cold and uncomfortable inn, for the entire length of the play. 3) Martha dreams of running far away, but poverty is holding her back. 4) The inn owners repeatedly lament that they have been committing murder after murder for the past several years. 5) All of the characters clash with the opaque language and incommunicability, that are implied in the title of the play. 6) Death awaits the guests of the inn (by murder) and the inn owners themselves (by suicide).39 Like The Outsider and Caligula, The Misunderstanding too connects walls to death, in the form of ‘condemned men’ (as said by Martha, 98). These metaphorical walls inflict a kind of torture that is initially physical and mental, and then becomes existential. That existential torture is the most trying for Martha: ‘one’s gaze is cramped on every side, […] to make one look up in humble supplication. I hate this narrow world in which we are reduced to gazing up at God’ (125). This is reminiscent of some of the dialogue between Meursault and the chaplain.40 Walls create an obstacle that requires the characters to reach deep down within themselves. Lastly, they prove to be unrelated to the criminal penalties that are set out in The Outsider, and to the oppressive situation in The Misunderstanding, since they are intrinsic, as Curtis (7) points out. The desert in The Misunderstanding is conveyed through abandonment, which is something that all active characters in the play experience in their own way. Thus, Jan’s only monologue expresses his existential distress: ‘that vague uneasiness […]. It’s fear, fear of the eternal loneliness, fear that there is no answer’ (107). The enigmatic servant answers him, but with silence, heightening the ominous atmosphere. Maria then paints a desperate mental picture when she cries out: ‘Oh, God, I cannot live in this desert!’ (133).41 The play’s clausula—​the curt ‘No’ from the servant to Maria’s beseeching—​leaves no doubt: the desert is definitive.

39 40 41

For more details, see Sophie Bastien, ‘Formes et fonctions de la prison chez Camus’, in A Writer’s Topography: Space and Place in the Life and Works of Albert Camus, ed. Vincent Grégoire and Jason Herbeck (Leiden/​Boston: Brill/​Rodopi, 2015), pp. 82–​83. As well as between Rieux and Paneloux, or between Rieux and Tarrou, in The Plague. The term “desert” then emerges in The Rebel (trans. Anthony Bower, New York: Vintage, 1991 [1956]), p. 64. In turn, Clamence uses it in The Fall (117).

108 Bastien 3

Samuel Beckett’s Theatre: Radical Application of Camusian Metaphors

The three main metaphors designed by Camus to delineate the absurd appear afterward. This part of my study will look at how they are reclaimed by a great playwright of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’: this is the title given by Martin Esslin, the first critic of this movement, to his pioneering book in 1961. His title implies a reference to Camus and has become an established expression. The book itself serves as a landmark and cites The Myth of Sisyphus as a metaphysical premise.42 All genetic analysis that followed, in France and elsewhere, referred back to that Camus essay, because it built the foundation for the Theatre of the Absurd. However, critics view Camus, the essayist, and his theoretical mind as a forerunner. I am more interested in showing that the images created by Camus, the artist, throughout his cycle of the absurd, inspired the revolutionary theatre that came immediately after his time. Of the various authors of this movement, Samuel Beckett is the closest to Camus.43 He started writing in the early 1930s, but he found his dramatic inspiration after the Camusian cycle of the absurd was published, seemingly emulating those works.44 In many of his plays, he called upon the three metaphors dear to Camus, but with more austerity. He took them further than Camus ever did, and pushed them to their very limit. He adapted them to his theatrical asceticism. 3.1 Wall Metaphors in Beckett’s Plays In his first published play, Waiting for Godot, Beckett established the concept of walls through Vladimir’s words: ‘We’re surrounded! […] There is no way out’.45 In doing so, he used the famous Camusian axiom known for its complex meaning: ‘Il n’y a pas d’issue’—​which is the exact phrase in Beckett’s original French version.46 He then carried that axiom over on a material level; the walls metaphor therefore takes very concrete forms on the stage. In Endgame, 42 43 44 45 46

Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (New York: Vintage, 2004 [1961]), pp. 23, 400–​ 01, 426. See Sophie Bastien, ‘De Camus à Beckett: de l’absurde à l’absolu’, La Revue des lettres modernes, Série Albert Camus 22 (2009), pp. 251–​63. He wrote his first play, Eleutheria, in 1947, but it was not published or produced before his death. He wrote Waiting for Godot the following year and published it in 1952. Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works (London: Faber, 2006), p. 69. All of my English Beckett quotes are taken from this book, and subsequent references will be indicated by the page number, in parentheses, in the body of the text. Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot (Paris: Minuit, 1952), p. 104.

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Beckett presented Nagg and Nell buried in trash cans, and Hamm confined to a wheelchair: these stage props act as walls that surround and physically touch the characters’ bodies. Furthermore, they are depreciating, reducing Nagg and Nell to garbage, and exhibiting Hamm’s immobility, that is emphasized by his blindness. Blindness manifests in the form of dark glasses—​another prop, this time as part of a costume—​that act as a wall for the character. Mr. Rooney, a character in the radio drama All That Fall, is also blind, and the limitations of his disability serve as his own personal walls. As for Mrs. Rooney, she struggles desperately to get into a car, then out of it. Her mobility issues and her age restrict her freedom and represent a form of walls. However, the most striking example of the walls metaphor is, without a doubt, a visual one: in Happy Days, Winnie is buried in act one and sinks even deeper in act two. The image of the three potted characters, in Play, is similarly striking, since they themselves are trapped. All of Beckett’s ‘misfits’, as Jeanyves Guérin calls them,47 demonstrate the inadequacy between man and the world. This inadequacy, which is characteristic of the phenomenon of the absurd, offends and enrages Camusian protagonists Caligula and Martha. On the contrary, it paralyzes, at least physically, Beckett’s characters. The theme of repetition plays into the feeling of confinement in The Misunderstanding. Beckett portrayed this theme aesthetically in Waiting for Godot, through the circular repetition of dialogue, gestures and movements. In Play, when the play appears to be over, it reverts to the beginning, and this repetition accentuates the effect of walls, in this case, the imprisonment in the urns. 3.2 The Desert Metaphor in Beckett’s Plays Beckett’s characters are grounded in the desert that Camus set up. Waiting for Godot substantiates the spiritual meaning of that metaphor. The play easily lends itself to a theological interpretation, in particular, considering the name of the person for whom Vladimir and Estragon are waiting; the fact that he raises sheep, like the shepherd in the Gospels; and the fact that he never arrives, combined with the ongoing waiting. Because this character never appears, the others are left in a sort of desert. Tom Bishop notes that the silence of God enhances the understanding of both Waiting for Godot and The Misunderstanding.48 47 My translation of ‘inadaptés’. Jeanyves Guérin, Art nouveau ou Homme nouveau (Paris: Champion, 2002), p. 288. 48 Tom Bishop, From the Left Bank. Reflections on the Modern French Theater and Novel (New York UP, 1997), pp. 215–​16.

110 Bastien Beckett’s later plays have the same message but take on a very cynical tone. In All That Fall, Mrs. Rooney quotes the verse from the Old Testament from which the play draws its name:49 ‘The Lord upholdeth all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down’. After a silence, Mr. and Mrs. Rooney burst into ‘wild laughter’ (198), which is both surprising and provocative, emblematic of a caustic irony. This violent laughter is antithetical to the verse that was just quoted, and highlights the cruel lack of help for ‘all that fall’, or, in other words, the moral desert of those who are suffering. In Krapp’s Last Tape, during a recording of the younger Krapp, Beckett refered to a ‘yelp to Providence’, between two laughs (218). In addition to the ungodly vocabulary (‘yelp’), he once again uses a sarcastic laugh to debase religion. Furthermore, the context surrounding the recording exposes an emotional desert. Lastly, in Endgame, after some pastiche prayers, Hamm misrepresents and adulterates Christ’s commandment: ‘love one another! Lick your neighbour as yourself!’ (125). In this anti-​evangelical verse, the desert is at the humans and relationships level. Nonetheless, all of these examples devolve into derision. Much like Camus, Beckett used the biblical intertextuality to refute religion, thereby emphasi­ zing the dereliction. For him, however, the absurd is terminal and absolute, summed up by the emptiness it conveys. This emptiness is verbalized in one key word, ‘nothing’, of which Camus made a lapidary summary of the human condition, and of which Sjursen notes the abundance with Beckett.50 The repetition of this word and its desert-​like connotation, as observed in The Myth of Sisyphus, The Outsider and Caligula, reappear in Waiting for Godot, the first line of which starts with ‘Nothing’. In fact, as in Caligula, the very first line sets the tone for the play: ‘Nothing to be done’ (11). Vladimir and Estragon repeat, as a kind of leitmotif, not only that there is nothing to be done (11, 19, 22, 51), but also that there is ‘nothing to show’ (13), ‘nothing to say’ (18), nothing they can do about it (22, 24), that they hear nothing (20, 22) and ‘nothing happens’ (38, 41). Similarly, Krapp bemoans that he has ‘nothing to say’—​paradoxically, while he is recording (222). He also expresses the notion of the desert without using a word: through his apathy, a symptom inherited from Meursault. Beckett is known for neglecting emotions in his works, but The Outsider is prodromal: the relationship between man and the universe is already crumbling. However, with Beckett, as Alain Robbe-​Grillet points out, ‘it is less than nothing […]: as if we 49 50

The title The Fall is part of the same lexical field as All That Fall and is also borrowed from the Old Testament. It is interesting to know that All That Fall was published in 1957, the year after La Chute was published. Sjursen, pp. 83–​85.

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were witnessing a regression beyond nothing’.51 Guérin adds a comment: ‘There are no more meanings, no more values, no more passions even’.52 This is the “the scene of the worst”, a superlative that François Noudelmann uses in the title of his monography.53 More recently, Clémence Verburgh describes Beckett with no less extreme words: ‘the writer of nothingness’.54 Beckett extends the desert to the dynamics of communication. The challenges, or even impediments, to action, that I have already pointed out in relation to the walls metaphor, are connected to difficulties with expression, as Alain Chestier observes in La Littérature du silence.55 The dialogue often serves as interwoven monologues. Furthermore, the periods of silence are highly redundant, and most are not accompanied by any gestures, like the silent scenes in Camus’s plays, but instead are characterized by inertia, to give the full effect of the length of these scenes. Mime plays (such as the one-​man Act Without Words i, and the two-​man Act Without Words ii) are absolutely silent. Solitude is another consequence of the desert, as observed in The Outsider and Caligula. It plays a central role in Krapp, of course, then in the dramaticles towards which Beckett is progressing until the 1980s and that feature characters who live in permanent solitude: for example, Mouth, who monologues in Not i; the silent characters accompanied by a recorded voice in That Time and in the tv drama Eh Joe; Reader and Listener in Ohio Impromptu. All of these themes—​absence, nothing, nothingness, the worst, silence, solitude, etc.—​revolve around the desert. The Myth of Sisyphus asks whether it is possible to live in the desert (22); in retrospect, Camus’s preface to the English edition of his essay appears to agree with this, in that it contains an invitation to ‘create in the very midst of the desert’. By contrast, Beckett categorically objects. Breath, whose succinct, minimalist poetics reaches a paroxysm, emphasizes the effort one would require to breathe in survival mode. A number of other plays have apocalyptic titles—​Endgame, All That Fall, Krapp’s Last Tape, Catastrophe, Ghost Trio—​that reflect a decaying humanity.

51

My translation of ‘c’est moins que rien […]: comme si nous assistions à une régression au-​delà du rien’. Alain Robbe-​Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman (Paris: Minuit, 2002 [1963]): “Samuel Beckett ou la présence sur scène”, p. 99. 52 My translation of “Plus de significations, plus de valeurs, plus de passions même”. Guérin, 288. 53 François Noudelmann, Beckett ou La scène du pire (Paris: Champion, 1998). 54 Clémence Verburgh, Samuel Beckett, l’écrivain du néant (Écrivains, 2015). 55 Alain Chestier, La Littérature du silence. Essai sur Mallarmé, Camus et Beckett (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), pp. 142–​43.

112 Bastien 3.3 The Theatre Metaphor in Beckett’s Plays Although Beckett does not use the theatre metaphor as much as the walls and desert metaphors, the ontology of game is a foundation in his plays. It is linked with the concept of the absurd and was theorized in The Myth of Sisyphus, before its mise en abyme in Caligula and The Misunderstanding. In Beckett’s plays, farcical elements remove the characters’ psychological entities, depersonalize their reactions and reduce them to objects of derision. They fuel the dialogue and stage directions in Waiting for Godot, for example, to bog the characters down in the absurd version of theatrum mundi, as Jean-​Pierre Ryngaert states.56 The metatheatrical lines, which are common in the second act, are all said by Vladimir, the most rational character in the play, which gives them weight. Some of these lines contribute to develop the dramatic text: ‘What was I saying, we could go on from there’ (61). Several are more specifically related to dialogic directions: ‘Curse me!’, ‘Tell me to think’, ‘Say, Think, pig!’, ‘Tell me to dance’; or stage directions: ‘Stronger!’ (68). Other lines allude to the location of the play: ‘nous sommes sur un plateau’57; allude to the audience: ‘We’re surrounded!’ (69); or allude to the actors’ performance: ‘We were beginning to weaken. Now we’re sure to see the evening out’. (72) Lastly, some metatheatrical lines convey a dual philosophical meaning: ‘it is not for nothing I have lived through this long day and I can assure you it is very near the end of its repertory’ (80). Some quite clearly reflect Camus’s thought. ‘In all that what truth will there be?’ (84): the truth is not in fiction, nor is it in real life. ‘This is becoming really insignificant’ (64): the absurd has just as much control over artistic creation than over real life. At one point, Vladimir and Estragon look at the audience and comment on it (15, 16), stepping out of the play and breaking the fourth wall. However, even though Camus inserts structural and discursive dual meanings in Caligula and The Misunderstanding, and even though the audience learns to be skeptical of the satirical Caligula, the illusion is maintained. On the other hand, Krapp’s Last Tape employs a Camusian strategy. Krapp’s relationship with his tape recorder, and the role that this prop then plays, are reminiscent of Caligula and the mirror. In both cases, the overly dramatic portrayal of solitude exposes the separation between the character and the being.

56 Jean-​Pierre Ryngaert, Lire le théâtre contemporain (Paris: Nathan, 2000 [1993]), pp. 79, 151. 57 Beckett, En attendant Godot, 104. This phrase is only found in the French version, no doubt because the play on words would be lost in English. ‘Plateau’ has two meanings: in geography, it refers to an area of flat, high ground; in theatre, it refers to the raised platform where the performance takes place—​the stage.

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113

Conclusion

According to The Myth of Sisyphus, which, in the history of ideas, is considered ‘one of the great, seminal heart-​searchings of our time,’58 man must elucidate the existential enigma relying on his own resources. Camus thereby portrays a consistent world view. But instead of writing it purely abstractly, he uses three extended metaphors, with the corresponding lexical fields. He goes from something metaphysical—​the phenomenon of the absurd—​and compares it each time to something physical: the theatre, the desert, the walls. As though the intellectual operation were not enough, his three-​part process draws on the faculties of the senses and the imagination. It crafts images that can be instantly visualized on the mental screen, like illustrations that help clarify the idea. It becomes a frame of reference to allow the spirit to better understand the human experience. Notwithstanding, Camus did not necessarily invent the three didactic metaphors he uses. With him nevertheless, they demonstrate that not only is life fragile, but it is also nonsensical. The theatre, the desert and walls are all inherent in existence and prove its absurdity; they expose ‘a total absence of hope’ (MS, 31). Each of these metaphors, which Camus sows in The Myth of Sisyphus, will bear fruit. Camus uses them in his works following that essay, to drive his inspiration, to springboard his thought and to catalyze his aesthetics. The subsequent fictions take them out of their argumentative framework, broaden their meanings and elevate them with new significance. The notable metaphors flow from one work to the next, gathering magnitude and depth. The walls metaphor is obvious in The Outsider, but the whole cycle of the absurd shows that man lives between walls: these walls go beyond the periphery of the prison and extend to the entire world. That is why the phrase ‘sans issue’, which has different English translations, is generalized. In The Outsider, the action takes place in a universe that has no way out, but the same is true in The Misunderstanding and in Caligula. The desert covers all works under the umbrella of the absurd, and is combined with terms of negation that reflect a void, such as the word ‘nothing’, which is repeated in The Myth of Sisyphus, The Outsider and Caligula, and the categorical ‘no’ in the servant’s response to the prayer in The Misunderstanding. In theatre, metaphorical language benefit from translinguistic codes to enhance the dialogue and add further meaning to the scene. The theatre metaphor is transposed to the stage and is therefore represented in the physical space. The specular structure appears as an 58

Esslin, p. 23.

114 Bastien aesthetic counterpart of the philosophy of the absurd. This is also true in the irony through which the characters are built. The ethics that Camus has developed and the metaphorical forms he ascribes to it, in his cycle of the absurd, herald the expansion that is characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd. ‘This dramatic work is not […] a fresh start leading to a new theatre, but a resounding conclusion’59: Alfred Schwartz postulates that there is a continuum in an evolutionary process. Beckett, in particular, benefits greatly from Camus’s legacy. For him, the absurd is an even more onerous and sombre reality, that creates a climate of dysphoria. This nuance in the perception of the human condition implies that the metaphors are evolving. The walls metaphor has changed the most. Beckett exploits it by using objects and props to shake up the audience: a wheelchair for Hamm’s physical disability, dark glasses for Hamm and Mr. Rooney’s blindness, degrading garbage cans for Nagg and Nell, a trapping mound for Winnie, and stifling urns for the trio in Play. Vladimir and Estragon roam the stage with no way out, which combines the walls and theatre metaphors. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus implies that the desert is inhabitable, and Maria then contradicts this at the end of The Misunderstanding, whereas Beckett does not even ask that question and instead candidly offers the audience the answer. Humanity’s dreadful misfortunes cannot be more effectively conveyed. The three metaphorical concepts follow a trajectory, taking on different forms from Camus to Beckett. Nevertheless, they complement each other, as they intersect and overlap. Furthermore, the two elements that are compared in each metaphor become interchangeable, like a tautological back and forth: life refers to the theatre, walls and the desert—​which all then refer back to life. According to Jean Molino,60 the metaphor as a device is not ornamental; it is a necessary and invaluable knowledge tool, a way to express meaning that cannot otherwise be expressed. Therefore, the three metaphors studied herein are compelling by means of their evocative power in the subjectivity of imagination. 59 60

Alfred Schwarz, From Büchner to Beckett. Dramatic Theory and the Modes of Tragic Drama (Athens: Ohio UP, 1978), p. xxiii. Jean Molino, ‘Anthropologie et métaphore’, Langages 54 (1979), p. 115.

­c hapter 6

Why Did the Stranger Kill the Arab? A Camusian Study in the Absurdity of Moral Motivation George Heffernan Suppose someone has committed homicide. Why did he do it? […] Would he commit homicide without a reason, merely because he took pleasure in the homicide? Who could believe that? augustine, Confessions 2.5.11

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Introduction: Why, Why, Why, Why, Why Did Meursault Shoot and Kill the Arab?

In Albert Camus’s novel, The Stranger (1942),1 the main character, Meursault, shoots and kills ‘the Arab’, who remains faceless and nameless, in an encounter by the sea. He performs his act under clear circumstances but for unclear reasons. At his interrogation, Meursault, who has fired a total of five shots at and into his victim, tells the examining magistrate that he thinks that his case is pretty simple. The inquisitive magistrate informs Meursault, however, that there is one thing that he cannot understand about his case, namely, why he first fired one shot at the Arab, then paused for a short time, and finally fired the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth shot into the body that was lying motionless on the beach. The magistrate asks Meursault: ‘Why did you pause between the first and the second shot?’ He repeats the question: ‘Why, why did you shoot at a body that was on the ground?’ He reiterates it again and 1 See Albert Camus, L’Étranger, in Oeuvres complètes i, 1931–​1944, ed. Jacqueline Lévi-​ Valensi, Raymond Gay-​Crosier, André Abbou (who establishes, presents, and annotates the text) et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), pp. 141–​213, and The Stranger, trans. Matthew Ward (New York: Vintage International, 1989), pp. 3–​123. The standard edition of the works of Camus is Albert Camus, Oeuvres complètes i–​i v, ed. Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi and Raymond Gay-​Crosier et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2006–​2008).

© George Heffernan, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_008

116 Heffernan again: ‘Why? You must tell me. Why?’ (É 180 /​S 67–​68)2 The five pourquoi’s that the magistrate directs at Meursault echo the five shots that Meursault fired at and into the Arab (É 176 /​S 59). But again and again Meursault has no answer to the magistrate’s question. To the contrary, Meursault almost tells the magistrate that he is wrong to dwell on it because ‘it really does not matter’ (É 181 /​S 69). Yet, as Meursault learns during the investigation of his crime and in the course of his trial, the question concerning his pause really does matter, because it makes all the difference between a simple case of self-​defense and a complex case of premeditated murder. It also possesses profound existential implications as well as legal and moral consequences for him and for others. To every text there is a context. Meursault’s killing of the Arab occurs in the last chapter of the first part of the novel, and his interrogation by the examining magistrate takes place in the first chapter of the second part. The basic plot of the novel can be sketched in two paragraphs, of which each represents one part of the novel, and in which each sentence summarizes one chapter: Meursault’s mother, his ‘Maman’, has died and he attends her wake and funeral in a somnambulant state of emotional detachment, existential indifference, and taciturn reluctance. The next day, Meursault spontaneously decides to go for a swim in the sea, where he bumps into and connects with Marie Cardona, a former secretary from his office, with whom he sees a comic movie, exchanges affections, and spends the night. The next week, Meursault runs into Raymond Sintès, a neighbor who is rumored to be a pimp but claims to be a warehouse guard and whom he helps in a personal affair by writing a letter intended to lure his allegedly unfaithful mistress, an unnamed Arab woman, into a situation in which Raymond can abuse her emotionally, physically, and sexually. The letter has its intended effect, and a few days later Raymond beats the woman until she shrieks, the police are called and detain him, and Meursault testifies on his behalf. A few days after that, Meursault’s boss offers him a chance at a new life in a new place, and Marie asks him to marry her, but he responds negatively in the one case and apathetically in the other. The next weekend, while Meursault, Marie, and Raymond are visiting friends of Raymond at their beach bungalow, the Arab woman’s brother and another Arab man follow them, three altercations between European-​Algerian men and Arab-​Algerian men ensue, and Meursault ends up killing the woman’s brother, ‘the Arab’ (‘l’Arabe’), by first shooting him once, then pausing for a 2 Embedded references to both the original and the translation are provided in parentheses inserted into the text and separated by a slash (/​). Thus É 180 refers to the page of L’Étranger in Camus’s Oeuvres complètes i, and S 67–​68 refers to the pages of The Stranger in Ward’s translation.

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few seconds, and finally firing four more bullets into his body as it lies motionless on the beach. In custody, Meursault faces a persistent examining magistrate who, perplexed by his pause between his first shot and his four subsequent shots, urges him to acknowledge Christ’s sacrifice and to beg God’s forgiveness for his crime, as well as a defense lawyer who is more interested in his reactions at his mother’s funeral than in his actions at the scene of the crime. Marie visits Meursault once in prison, but they can barely communicate with one another and he must get used to the punishments of incarceration, especially enforced celibacy. At trial, the prosecutor rigorously examines the witnesses and vigorously represents their testimony to argue aggressively that the defendant is guilty of premeditated murder and deserving of the death penalty, not only because the circumstantial evidence indicates it, but also because he is morally guilty of matricide and has even legitimized parricide. The impatient defense lawyer is helpless against the relentless prosecutor, who harshly characterizes the hapless Meursault as a remorseless moral monster devoid of a human soul, so that the jury quickly finds him guilty of premeditated murder and the judge swiftly sentences him to death by the guillotine. Agonizing in his cell between an unlikely appeal and a likely execution, Meursault is visited by the prison chaplain, whom he has thrice refused to see, whom he now tells that nothing matters because life is absurd and everyone is condemned to die at some point, and whom he bodily assaults—​until he is restrained by the guards, calms down, and opens up to what he describes as ‘the gentle indifference of the world’ (‘la tendre indifférence du monde’: É 213 /​S 122). Thus, the whole plot of The Stranger is framed by the main character’s three encounters with death. The death of Meursault’s Maman and the death of his Arab serve as the bookends in Part i, and Meursault’s own death looms large as the book’s most likely end in Part ii. Maman had nothing to do with the death of the Arab, and the Arab had nothing to do with the death of Maman, but Meursault had something to do with both deaths. Therefore, the prosecutor is correct to posit ‘a profound, fundamental, and tragic relationship’ (‘une relation profonde, pathétique, essentielle’: É 197 /​S 96) between Meursault’s burying his mother in the way in which he did and his killing the Arab in the way in which he did. A red thread also runs from Meursault’s mother’s death through his victim’s death to his own death. The clarification of this inextricable linkage requires an examination of the several plausible answers to the question of why Meursault not only shot but also killed the Arab. This examination entails an exploration of the respective roles of rationality and absurdity in Meursault’s moral motivation. Throughout, ‘moral motivation’ is understood, in the encompassing sense beyond descriptive and normative, to

118 Heffernan include ‘amoral’ and ‘immoral’ motivation. In the end, it is not only about the apparently meaningless death of a human being, ‘the Arab’, but also about a genuinely meaningful life of the human being, Meursault, who claims to be ‘like everybody else, absolutely like everybody else’ (É 179 /​S 66). 2

The Structure of the Incident in Which Meursault Shoots and Kills the Arab

The key to understanding the precise nature of Meursault’s nuanced act of shooting and killing the Arab is apprehending the exact layout of the entire incident in terms of parts and whole.3 The intricately structured character of the incident is evidenced by Meursault’s original narrative in Part i, Chapter 6, his deposition to the examining magistrate in Part ii, Chapter 1, and the prosecutor’s presentations in Part ii, Chapters 3 and 4. In the encompassing sense, the incident is not discrete but distended insofar as it represents the culmination of a sequence of encounters and exchanges that are creatively crafted and carefully calibrated to a climax by Camus. The sequence unfolds on a Sunday visit by Meursault and Marie, together with Meursault’s pal, Raymond, at the beach bungalow of Raymond’s friends, Masson and his wife. After an early lunch, Meursault, Raymond, and Masson go for a walk on the beach while Marie and Masson’s wife clean up at the house. The subsequent events involve three European-​Algerian men, two Arab-​Algerian men, three trips from the bungalow to the beach, and three encounters on the beach, as well as one killing of an Arab-​Algerian man by a European-​Algerian man. Since there are no other (surviving) eyewitnesses to the actual crime in the precise sense, Meursault’s own statements provide the primary evidence on the basis of which he is eventually convicted. The incident has a horizon (É 156–​160 /​S 28–​33). Raymond, a short, stocky man with a short, explosive fuse, had grown accustomed to slapping his mistress around, and she would scream and he would close the windows when 3 The reading that I advance here is consistent with the approaches that take the central incident of the novel seriously not only literarily but also forensically as well as philo­sophically. See René Girard, ‘Camus’s Stranger Retried’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 79 (1964), pp. 519–​533; English Showalter, ‘The Stranger’: Humanity and the Absurd (Boston: Twayne, 1989); Adele King, ed., Camus’s ‘L’Étranger’: Fifty Years On (London: Macmillan, 1992); Raymond Gay-​Crosier and Jacqueline Lévi-​Valensi, eds., ‘L’Étranger’, cinquante ans après (Paris: Lettres modernes, 1995); Raymond Gay-​Crosier, ‘The Stranger’ (Detroit: Gale Group, 2002); and Alice Kaplan, Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

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this happened. Yet his suspicions about her unfaithfulness had mounted, and so he beat her until she bled. She reported the beating to her brother and he confronted Raymond, but he beat him badly and bloody too. Still not satisfied after weighing other options, Raymond, who wanted to punish the woman but still had sexual feelings for her, planned to write her a letter that would make her sorry for what she had done to him and make her come running back to him, so that he could go to bed with her and, ‘just at the moment of finishing’ (‘juste au moment de finir’: É 159 /​S 32),4 spit in her face and throw her out. Since Raymond did not think that he could write such a letter, he asked Meursault to do it for him. Finding what Raymond had to say interesting, judging his story about his mistress’s alleged unfaithfulness convincing, and learning that the woman’s ethnicity was Arab, Meursault wrote the letter, trying his best to please Raymond because he did not have any reason not to please him (É 159 /​S 32). The letter had its intended effect on the woman. It also had an unintended collateral effect on her brother. When he invited Meursault and Marie to accompany him to his friends’ beach house, Raymond also reported to Meursault that he had been followed by a group of Arabs, one of whom was the brother of his former mistress, and that he should watch out because the Arab might be hanging around the building where they lived (É 164 /​S 40). As Meursault, Marie, and Raymond set out for the beach bungalow of Raymond’s friends, they were observed by a group of Arabs, one of whom was the woman’s brother, ‘the Arab’ who, along with another Arab, followed them to the beach (É 169 /​S 48). According to his narrative, Meursault is aware of this horizon, if only in his own fuzzy way. For example, as they leave for the beach on that fateful Sunday, Meursault, who does not like Sundays (É 152 /​S 21), is not feeling well, and Marie makes fun of him because, as she says, he has on ‘a funeral face’ (É 168 /​S 47). Her ominous observation provides suggestive evidence of the intimate linkage between the death of Maman and the death of the Arab. The three encounters between the men on the beach play out in their own unique ways. During the first encounter between European-​Algerian men and Arab-​ Algerian men, Meursault, Raymond, and Masson are walking along the beach

4 Much has been written about how to translate the first line of the novel. See, e.g., Ryan Bloom, ‘Lost in Translation: What the First Line of The Stranger Should Be’, The New Yorker, May 11, 2012. But the line about the intent of the letter is just as important insofar as it reveals the deep depravity of Raymond’s (and Meursault’s) plan for dealing with his mistress. Gilbert misses the mark widely with ‘just when she was “properly primed up”’. See Albert Camus, The Stranger, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1946), p. 40. This translation was published for British-​English readers as The Outsider (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1946).

120 Heffernan as the sun is shining almost directly overhead onto the sand and the glare on the water is almost unbearable (É 171–​173 /​S 52–​54). Eventually, they notice two Arabs approaching them, one of whom Raymond identifies as the brother of the woman whom he has assaulted and with whom he has previously tangled. As the two groups come closer, Raymond says that, if there is any trouble, he will take care of ‘his man’. He tells Masson to take on the other Arab and Meursault to take on another one if he shows up. Meursault agrees. Raymond goes right up to ‘his man’, says something to him, the man moves as though to butt him, and Raymond strikes the first blow. Masson, who is a big guy, goes for the other Arab and hits him twice, as hard as he can, knocking him facedown into the water. Meanwhile, the face of Raymond’s man is bleeding, and Raymond tells Meursault that he is going ‘to give it to him’ (É 172 /​S 54). At this point, Meursault shouts that Raymond’s man has a knife, but already Raymond’s arm has been cut and his mouth slashed. Masson lunges forward, but the other Arab retreats behind the one with the knife. The European-​Algerians do not move and the Arab-​Algerians back off. Raymond clutches at his arm dripping with blood. At this his first level of involvement, Meursault has not done anything more than agree to intervene if necessary and warn Raymond about the Arab’s knife, but he has witnessed the blows and the blood. During the second encounter, Meursault and Raymond engage in a stand-​off with the two Arabs (É 173–​174 /​S 55–​56). Back at the bungalow after the first encounter, Masson takes Raymond to a local doctor who bandages his wounds. Meursault stays at the bungalow to explain to the women what has happened, but he does not like having to explain it to them, so he shuts up, smokes a cigarette, and looks at the sea. When Raymond and Masson return, Raymond, looking grim, feeling angry, and refusing to listen to Masson and Meursault, starts back down to the beach again. Meursault follows Raymond. They walk on the beach for a long time, and by now the sun is overpowering on the sand and the water. At the far end of the beach, they come to a little spring running through the sand behind a large rock. There they find the two Arabs, lying down and perfectly calm. The one who has attacked Raymond is looking at him without saying anything and the other is playing the flute. Meursault’s and Raymond’s arrival changes nothing. Raymond puts his hand in his hip pocket, revealing for the first time that he has a gun, and he asks Meursault whether he should ‘send [his Arab] down’ (‘Je le descends?’: É 173 /​S 56). Concerned that if he says ‘no’ outright, Raymond might get all worked up and shoot for sure, Meursault tells him that since the Arab has not said anything it would be villainous to shoot him just like that. So Raymond says that he will insult the Arab and shoot him when he answers back. But Meursault tells Raymond that

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he cannot shoot if the Arab does not draw his knife. By now Raymond is getting all worked up, and the Arabs are watching every move that he makes. At this point, Meursault tells Raymond to give him his gun and take his Arab on ‘man to man’ (‘d’homme à homme’: É 174 /​S 56). He also assures Raymond that if the other Arab intervenes, or if he draws his knife, he will shoot him. Raymond now hands his gun to Meursault. Seeing this, the Arabs suddenly back away and slip behind the rock. At this, Raymond and Meursault turn around and return to the bungalow. By the end of this encounter, Meursault has become much more deeply involved in the altercation between Raymond and the Arab. Although he has acted to defuse a volatile situation, Meursault now has taken possession of Raymond’s gun and he has stated that he is ready and willing to use it if he feels that he has to. Also, and crucially, the Arabs have seen Raymond’s gun and they have seen him hand it off to Meursault. During the third encounter, Meursault alone approaches the Arab alone on the beach (É 174–​176 /​S 57–​59). Under the same dazzling glare and pressing heat of the sun, Meursault walks slowly along the beach toward the spring behind the rock. Walking for a long time and trying to overcome the oppressive effects of the sun, which is the same as it was on the day on which he buried Maman, Meursault sees the rock from a distance. As he gets closer, he also sees the Arab lying on the beach with his head in the shade of the rock. As soon as the Arab sees Meursault, he sits up a little and puts his hand in his pocket. Meursault grips Raymond’s revolver inside his jacket. The Arab lies back again but keeps his hand in his pocket. Meursault and the Arab continue to watch each other at a distance of about ten meters. With the whole beach throbbing in the sun and pressing on his back, Meursault takes a few steps toward the spring. The Arab does not move, and he is still pretty far away. Meursault waits, but the sun burns him, and it hurts especially his forehead. The burning becomes unbearable and it makes him take one step forward. Without getting up, the Arab draws his knife and holds it up to Meursault in the sun. The light of the sun shoots off the steel of the knife like a long flashing blade cutting into Meursault’s forehead. At the same time, he is blinded by the salt of sweat and the tears in his eyes. Indistinctly, he feels that the knife has become a spear, slashing and stabbing at his eyes. Then everything begins to reel for him (‘C’est alors que tout a vacillé’: É 176 /​S 59). Meursault’s whole being (‘tout mon être’: É 176 /​S 59) tenses and he squeezes his hand around the revolver (though he does not seem to have drawn it from his jacket). The trigger gives. He shoots the Arab and the Arab does not move. Meursault pauses, shaking off the sweat and the sun, and he realizes that he has shattered the silence of a beach where he has been happy. Then he fires four more times at the motionless body of the Arab, in which the bullets lodge without leaving a trace. With

122 Heffernan that, Meursault has gone from being an accomplice to assault to being a perpetrator of homicide. Thus, according to the evidence of Meursault’s own narrative, he experiences what may be described as three distinctly discernible ‘Hamlet Moments’ in his measured movements between the bungalow and the beach. The hyper-​ reflective Hamlet contemplates the difference between the (actual) sorrows of life and the (possible) comforts of death: ‘To be, or not to be; that is the question: Whether […] to […], Or to […].’5 The hypo-​reflective Meursault, however, weighs other, and, as it turns out, comparably ominous options: ‘To do, or not to do; that is the question: Whether […] to […], Or to […].’ Each one of his moments is pivotal insofar as it involves a choice, a decision, a judgment, on his part. Individually and collectively, these moments are decisive in the determination of his motivation, that is, his intentionality in and responsibility for his act, his deed, his crime. Contingencies have consequences. 1. The first ‘Hamlet Moment’ occurs on Meursault’s second trip to the beach, shortly after he takes Raymond’s gun from him. It is ‘at this moment’, Meursault relates, that he realizes that ‘you could either shoot or not shoot’ (É 174 /​S 56). Thus, ‘to shoot or not to shoot, that is the question’. But Meursault does not have to decide at this point whether to shoot or not to shoot, because the Arabs, seeing the gun and the hand-​off, suddenly back away, and he and Raymond turn around and return to the bungalow. Besides, Meursault has just cautioned Raymond not to shoot without what would amount to a justification, at least in his judgment. 2. The second ‘Hamlet Moment’ occurs after Meursault’s second trip from the bungalow to the beach and back. It is then, Meursault relates, that he vacillates between remaining at the bungalow and returning to the beach for the third time (É 174 /​S 57). Thus, ‘to stay [at the bungalow] or to go [to the beach], that is the question’. Meursault thinks to himself that it amounts to the same thing. Yet, as it turns out, it does not amount to the same thing. A minute later, however, Meursault turns back toward the beach and starts walking, as if it did amount to the same thing. 3. The third ‘Hamlet Moment’ occurs when, on his third trip to the beach, Meursault alone encounters the Arab alone. Meursault relates that, seeing from a distance the rock, thinking of the cool spring behind it, and seeing that ‘Raymond’s man’ has returned and is resting in the shade of the rock, it occurs to him that all he has to do is to turn around and that would be the end of it (É 175 /​S 58). Thus, ‘to turn around or not to 5 See Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1.

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turn around, that is the question’. But Meursault does not turn around. Instead, he advances toward the rock, the spring, and the Arab. Therefore, a reasonable reader should conclude that, according to his own narrative, the only one that the readers have (at least until Harun tells Musa’s side of the story in Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation),6 Meursault is deliberating, deciding, and acting in real time throughout, and his statements about his states of mind on the Sunday afternoon that he spent between the beach and the bungalow represent reflections about the past but not projections back into it.7 That is, on the basis of all that he tells the readers, and even recognizing that his recollection may not be perfect but rather only selective, a reasonable reader should conclude that all the evidence indicates that, the glare and heat of the sun aside, and the accidents, contingencies, and happenstances beyond his control aside, Meursault was in adequate possession of presence of mind while he was going to the beach, returning to the bungalow, and returning to the beach and shooting and killing the Arab. Meursault says, of course, that he was surprised that the Arab too had returned, that as far as he was concerned the whole thing was over and done with, and that he himself had returned without even thinking about it (É 174–​175 /​S 57–​58). What is decisive for the determination of his guilt or innocence, however, is not what Meursault thinks before he sees the Arab again, but what he does after that. The point is that, even if Meursault did not return to the beach with the intention of killing the Arab, his killing him could nonetheless still be presented as a case of premeditated murder given the pause between his first shot and his four subsequent shots. It is no wonder, then, that the examining magistrate insists that Meursault tell him why he fired the first shot at the Arab, then paused, and finally fired the four subsequent shots into the body lying motionless on the beach (É 180 /​S 67–​68). It is also no wonder that given these circumstances the prosecutor argues that Meursault is guilty of premeditated murder, as well as that even Meursault himself thinks that what the prosecutor says in this regard is plausible (É 192, 198–​199 /​S 88, 99–​100). There was, after all, no way for Meursault 6 See Kamel Daoud, Meursault, contre-​enquête (Arles: Actes Sud, 2014 [First, Arabic Edition: Algiers: Barzakh, 2013]), and The Meursault Investigation, trans. John Cullen (New York: Other Press, 2015). Cf. George Heffernan, ‘Beyond Victims and Executioners: Camus and Daoud on Progressive Violence and Genuine Humanism (Or What Harun Learned from Meursault)’, Journal of Camus Studies 7 (2017), pp. 11–​46. 7 See John Cruickshank, ‘Camus’ Technique in L’Étranger’, French Studies 10 (1956), pp. 241–​253; Maurice-​Georges Barrier, L’Art du récit dans ‘L’Étranger’ d’Albert Camus (Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1962); and Brian Fitch, Narrateur et narration dans ‘L’Étranger’ d’Albert Camus: Analyse d’un fait littéraire (2e édition revue et augmentée) (Paris: Minard, 1968).

124 Heffernan to have known that the first shot was fatal, and it may have been possible after that shot yet to save the Arab’s life. In fact, even if the first shot was fatal (and it may well have been since it left the body lying motionless on the beach), the question still remains: Why did Meursault shoot four more times into the dead body? Thus, regardless of whether the first shot was fatal or not, the examining magistrate is right to focus on the problem of why Meursault fired the first shot, then paused, and finally fired four more shots. In the end, there are two possibilities here: Either Meursault wanted callously to make sure that he had killed his man, or he wantonly vandalized the dead man’s body. Neither scenario serves to exculpate him. 3

Possible Text-​Immanent Answers to the Question Concerning Meursault’s Motive

There appear to be many different reasons why Meursault killed the Arab. The key to understanding Meursault’s act, intent, and motive is not to absolutize any one of these reasons to the exclusion of all the others. This requires developing an appropriately inclusive sense of the frequent overdeterminacy, consequent opaqueness, and potential absurdity of moral motivation, whether an act involves doing something good, doing something evil, or doing something indifferent. In the encompassing sense, ‘moral’ motivation includes moral motivation in the normative sense as well as amoral and even immoral motivation in the descriptive sense. As motive, understood as the reason why an agent performs an act, should not be confused with intent, understood as what an agent has in mind in the performance of an act, so motivation, which comes from within an agent (one thinks of final causality in the traditional sense), should also not be conflated with causation, which can come from within as well as from without an agent (one thinks of efficient causality in the usual sense).8

8 On the distinction between motivation and causation, see Edith Stein, Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften (1922), in Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe 6, ed. Beate Beckmann-​Zöller (Freiburg, Basel, and Vienna: Herder, 2010), pp. 5–​109 (Psychische Kausalität) and pp. 110–​262 (Individuum und Gesellschaft), and Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, in The Collected Works of Edith Stein 7, ed. Marianne Sawicki and trans. Mary Catharine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2000), pp. 2–​128 (Sentient Causality) and pp. 129–​313 (Individual and Community).

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With the phenomena of the frequent overdeterminacy, accompanying opaqueness, and potential absurdity of moral motivation in mind, one might consider the following possible and plausible (and perhaps even speculative) reasons as to why Meursault killed the Arab, each one of which is oriented, directly or indirectly, on a character or characters in the novel: 1. The examining magistrate: because Meursault is not a Christian who loves his neighbor but rather a ‘Monsieur Antichrist’ who contemns his neighbor (É 179–​182 /​S 66–​71). 2. The defense attorney: because Meursault is insensitive to others and indifferent to the preservation of human life, especially the life of others, and even that of his own Maman (É 178–​179 /​S 64–​66). 3. The director and the caretaker at the old folks’ home: because Meursault did not properly mourn the death of his Maman (É 192–​194 /​S 89–​91). 4. The nurse in the funeral procession for Maman: because, from the beginning to the end, there was no way out for Meursault (É 150 /​S 17). 5. Celeste and Raymond: because of ‘bad luck’ or ‘chance’ or ‘happenstance’, respectively, and everyone knows, or is supposed to know, what that is (É 194–​195, 196–​197 /​S 91–​93, 95–​96). 6. Marie: because Meursault is a man without empathy who cannot love her, cannot love himself, and cannot love anyone for that matter (É 161, 165–​166 /​S 35, 41–​43). 7. The prosecutor: because Meursault is a ‘stranger’ to his mother and a ‘monster’ to society, a man without a soul whom the state must execute to preserve public morals (É 194, 196–​197, 200–​201 /​S 90–​91, 95–​96, 100–​102). 8. Meursault: ‘because of the sun’, that is, because he could not bear the glare and heat of the sun and the Arab was in his way to the cooling water of the spring behind the rock (É 201 /​S 102–​103). 9. The jurors: because, consistent with the prosecution’s arguments regarding premeditation, Meursault made the third trip to the beach intending to commit murder (É 203–​204 /​S 105–​107). 10. The prison chaplain: because Meursault is an unrepentant sinner afflicted with original sinfulness who refuses to show remorse and beg God’s forgiveness for his sin (É 208–​212 /​S 115–​122). 11. The Arab: because Meursault overreacted to his necessary act of self-​ defense with his own unnecessary act of ‘self-​defense’ (É 174–​176 /​S 57–​59). 12. The Arab’s sister, Raymond’s mistress: because Meursault wrote the fateful letter to her but failed to grasp the consequences of his complicity in Raymond’s assault on her (É 158–​160 /​S 31–​33).

126 Heffernan 13.

Maman: because Meursault’s repression and suppression of his grief at and guilt over her death in the old folks’ home results in fatal anger directed against another human being (É 141–​150, 168–​176 /​S 3–​18, 47–​59).9 Some of these reasons would reveal more about the other characters than they would about Meursault himself. For example, to pick a possibility that is not listed here, the cynical journalists at Meursault’s trial do not seem to be very interested in why he committed the crime of which he is accused (and thus whether he is guilty or not), since their primary interest is in providing their readers back home in Metropolitan France, especially in Paris, who are bored during the summer, the slow season for the news, with sensational stories about what the people in the province, Algeria, are up to (É 189–​190 /​S 83–​84). The lone sympathetic journalist whom Meursault makes a point of mentioning appears to represent an exception to the rule (É 190–​191, 203–​204 /​S 85, 106–​107). Indeed, he appears to represent Camus himself, who as a journalist once covered and developed a keen interest in court cases. There is also a useful and fruitful connection between Camus and Augustine here. To complete his studies in philosophy and obtain his diplôme d’études supérieures at the University of Algiers in 1936, Camus submitted his thesis or dissertation Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism.10 In Chapter 4 of that work, he treats of Augustine’s philosophy and touches on the saint’s obsession with the problem of evil.11 In doing so, Camus displays a basic command of Augustine’s works, including his Confessions (397/​401). In Book ii of that work, Augustine explores the question of why he, as a restless and unruly sixteen-​year-​old adolescent acting in concert with his companions, seemingly gratuitously plundered a neighbor’s pear tree. Clearly intended to evoke associations with the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise (Genesis 3), the narrative of the pear tree incident provides the context for one of Augustine’s most penetrating analyses of moral motivation. According to 9

10 11

In his outburst to the prison chaplain Meursault suggests that he has been accused of murder and condemned to death ‘because he did not cry at his mother’s funeral’ (É 212 /​S 121). Cf. Albert Camus, ‘Préface à l’édition universitaire américaine’, in Oeuvres complètes i, p. 215, and ‘Preface to The Stranger’, in Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Philip Thody and trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1969), p. 335: ‘In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.’ See Albert Camus, Métaphysique chrétienne et néoplatonisme, in Oeuvres complètes i, pp. 999–​1081 (interrupted by pp. 1105–​1136), and Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, trans. Ronald Srigley (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2007). See Camus, Métaphysique chrétienne et néoplatonisme, pp. 1062–​1075, and Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, pp. 115–​130.

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his reflections, there are many different reasons why human beings do the evil that they do, some of which evil they want to do and some of which they do not want to do.12 Listing a number of actual deeds, for example, theft, homicide, and treason, and a number of possible motives, for example, pride, ambition, and avarice, Augustine also asks why one human being would kill another (Confessions 2.5.11). The question is general, of course, because there are presumably as many particular answers as there are people who kill people. Augustine does claim, however, that no one would believe that anyone would kill someone without a reason (sine causa) and that everyone believes that there must be a reason (causa) for such a serious deed. Yet the particular question remains without a definite answer, as does the question of why Augustine and his companions wasted the neighbor’s fruit. Indeed, Augustine’s entire line of inquiry into moral motivation here seems to suggest that, because human beings are originally sinful, that is, corrupt, depraved, or fallen by nature, they do not need any reason, and certainly not any sufficient reason, to do the evil that they do. The originally innocent Adam and Eve, on the other hand, had an apparently sufficient (but actually deceptive) reason to do the evil that they did, namely, eat an appealing piece of fruit and become like Gods. According to Augustine, the first human beings were not born sinful but became sinful by committing the first (human) sin, as a result of which the human nature that they passed on to their descendants was changed, that is, corrupted (City of God, Books 13–​14). With his Letter to Simplicianus (396/​398) Augustine became the founding father of the concept of peccatum originale, which is primarily and ultimately not a deed that human beings commit but a condition into which they are born. Eventually, he turned original sinfulness into an argument for embracing Jesus Christ as one’s lord and savior, because otherwise one is caught between a punishment that one does not deserve and a reward that one cannot earn: eternal life in heavenly blessedness. It is highly unlikely that the great Father of the Church would have got any further with Meursault than the examining magistrate did, for there is no evidence that Camus or Meursault accepted the notion of original sinfulness, though the latter often exhibits a revealing tendency to counter any suggestions of fault or guilt on his part: ‘[…] one is always a little guilty’ (É 152 /​S 20). In fact, Meursault tells the examining magistrate that he does not believe in God (É 181 /​S 69) and the prison chaplain that he does not believe in God as well as that he does not know what sin is (É 209, 210 /​S 116, 118)—​sin being by definition a transgression against the will of God. At the same time, however, 12

See Paul, Letter to the Romans, Chapter 7.

128 Heffernan Augustine’s analysis does not lose any of its value as a study in the overdeterminacy, opaqueness, and absurdity of human moral motivation. His conclusion is that some human beings sometimes do evil for the sake of evil, that is, they do not need a reason, and certainly not a sufficient reason, to do it. His point is not that there are sins and crimes without motives, but rather that there are different motives for different sins and crimes, that there are sins and crimes with multiple motives, and that there are sins and crimes whose motives are indeterminate in practice and indiscernible in principle. Thus, Augustine writes, ‘there was no motive [causa nulla] for my malice [malitia] except my malice’ (Confessions 2.4.9). One of the more plausible grounds for the belief in original sinfulness is surely the realization of the utter inexplicability of some unfathomable forms of human evil. In some cases, the evildoers themselves cannot understand, even upon lengthy reflection long after the fact, why they have done evil (one thinks of young perpetrators of mass shootings in schools), and in others they will never understand that they have done evil (one thinks of ideologically driven mass murderers who remain convinced that they have done good for a certain cause). Therefore, there is evil that is not rational but absurd, especially as measured by any normal standard of sufficient reason. As Meursault thinks in his prison reflections, ‘but, naturally, one cannot always be reasonable’ (É 205 /​S 111). The phenomenon of the overdeterminacy and opaqueness of moral motivation at least in part leads Kant in his practical philosophy to emphasize that what one does is more important than why one does it, even as he emphasizes the pivotal significance of doing the right thing for the right reason.13 With The Stranger Camus delivers a fascinating case study in the overdeterminacy and opaqueness of amoral or immoral motivation. Indeed, he even takes it one step further, to an investigation of the phenomenon of the absurdity of human motivation. As Camus describes it in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), the absurd is what lies, what emerges, what erupts, in the intelligibility gap between what is (without further ado) and what is meaningful.14 What is most ‘abnormal’ about Meursault, and what disturbs many ‘normal’ people about him, may be the fact that he displays hardly any intentionality toward intelligibility.

13

14

See Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, ed. Bernd Kraft and Dieter Schönecker (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1999), pp. 11–​74, and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Revised Edition, ed. and trans. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 9–​55. See Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Essai sur l’absurde, in Camus, Oeuvres complètes i, pp. 217–​315, and The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage International, 1991).

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Plausible Philosophical Answers to the Question Concerning Meursault’s Motive

Camus published The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Caligula between 1942 and 1944.15 He conceived of these three works as a trilogy on absurdity consisting of a novel, an essay (or, more accurately, a book of essays), and a play. The main character in the novel is an everyman (or anti-​everyman) who eschews higher purposes for simpler pleasures; the main character in the essay is a mortal hero who challenges the immortal gods and is eternally punished for it; and the main character in the play is a wicked Roman emperor who tries to come to terms with the death of his beloved sister (and lover) by tormenting, torturing, and terminating those around him. These works have as their central theme the question of how human beings can live meaningful lives in a meaningless world, indeed, in an indifferent, even hostile, universe. Yet Meursault should not be conflated with the author of The Myth of Sisyphus or Caligula, and especially not with the author of The Stranger. Meursault is not a philosopher, but rather an anti-​Socratic poster-​boy for the unexamined life16—​which does not preclude his having and giving expression to a ‘philosophy of life’ in the casual, everyday sense of the term. For his part, Camus was not an academic philosopher, but he did do philosophy in and through literature.17 Therefore, it also makes perfectly good sense to explore potentially philosophical answers to the question of why Meursault killed the Arab. Here are several—​listed for self-​evident reasons in no dispositive order: 1. Meteorological or cosmological answer: ‘because of the sun’. This allows Meursault to project the responsibility for his deed onto the indifferent universe or hostile world. 2. Legalistic answer: because Meursault feels threatened and is ignorant of legal distinctions and consequences. This permits him to try to exploit the law to evade justice. 3. Psychological answer: because Meursault deals destructively with his grief over his Maman’s death. There is a generally recognized connection between sorrow and anger. 15 16 17

For the third work of the trilogy, see Albert Camus, Oeuvres complètes i, pp. 323–​451, and Caligula & Three Other Plays, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1958), pp. 1–​74. See Plato, Apology of Socrates, 38a: ‘[…] the unexamined life is not worth living for the human being […].’ See Matthew Sharpe, Maciej Kaluza, and Peter Francev, eds., Brill’s Companion to Camus: Camus among the Philosophers (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

130 Heffernan 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

18

Pathological answer: because Meursault is a murderous and remorseless moral monster without a human soul. This does not take into account his generally normal behavior. Absurdist answer: because Meursault thinks that it does not matter whether he kills the Arab or not. This is consistent with Meursault’s general ‘philosophy’ of life and death. Nihilist answer: because Meursault thinks that the Arab’s life, like any life, is not worth living. This is an even more extreme variation on the absurdist answer. Existentialist answer: because Meursault thinks that he has to do something to realize his ‘project’. This is inconsistent with his general ‘philosophy’ that nothing really matters.18 Characterological answer: because Meursault lacks the virtue of empathy to an extreme degree. This is consistent with Meursault’s ‘beyond virtue and vice’ treatment of others. Ontological answer: because Meursault, unawares, is led by the necessary force of contingency. This recognizes the fact that he often chooses by not choosing to choose. Theological answer: because Meursault, originally sinful, acts with malice aforethought for the sake of malice aforethought. Unintelligible evil suggests original sinfulness. Thanatological answer: because Meursault wants to join his Maman in death. This is consistent with his behavior at trial, where he often acts against his own best interests. Postcolonial answer: because Meursault resents indigenous people and covets their country. He possesses racist attitudes toward and performs racist acts against Arabs. Phenomenological answer: because Meursault’s actions are overdetermined by multiple causes. This appears to be the most plausible, because most encompassing, answer. Sartre’s early study of The Stranger contributed substantially to its reception as an ‘existentialist’ novel. See Jean-​Paul Sartre, ‘Explication de L’Étranger’, Cahiers du Sud 30 (February, 1943), pp. 189–​206 (reprinted in Jean-​Paul Sartre, Critiques littéraires [Situations, i] [Paris: Gallimard, 1947], pp. 92–​112), and ‘An Explication of The Stranger’, in Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Germaine Brée (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-​Hall, 1962), pp. 108–​121. See also Eleanor Clark, ‘Existentialist Fiction: The Stranger’, Kenyon Review 84 (1946), pp. 674–​678. For his part, however, Camus vigorously rejected the designation ‘existentialist’ for himself and his work. See George Heffernan, ‘Camus and Husserl and the Phenomenologists’, in Brill’s Companion to Camus: Camus among the Philosophers, pp. 177–​198, here pp. 196–​198.

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All these potential answers center on the actions and character of Meursault, whom others perceive as a taciturn and withdrawn man (É 179 /​S 66). For example, at the wake and funeral of his Maman, Meursault lacks compassion, empathy, and sympathy, for he does not react with solidarity to the sobbing of his mother’s best female friend at the wake (É 146 /​S 10–​11) or to the struggle of her male fiancé, Thomas Perez, at the funeral (É 149–​150 /​S 15–​18).19 Back home in Algiers, he exhibits a need for sexual gratification but not for emotional intimacy (É 151–​152 /​S 19–​21), even as he shows that he is very observant in regard to objects and persons in his environment (É 152–​154 /​S 21–​24). He is a hard worker, and a reliable one (É 114–​115, 160, 202 /​S 25, 34, 104), but he is not interested in professional development and career advancement (É 164–​165 /​S 40–​41). He was once a student, but when he had to give up his studies he concluded that ambition did not really matter (É 165 /​S 41). He is hyposensitive in regard to others, especially Marie, but hypersensitive in regard to himself. He has read newspapers and books (É 187, 204 /​S 79–​80, 108–​109), and he goes to the cinema (É 151–​152, 160 /​S 20, 34). The prosecutor describes him to the jury as an intelligent man (É 199 /​S 100). Meursault lives an unexamined life, but his life becomes introspective in prison (É 182–​188 /​S 72–​81), especially as he agonizingly awaits news of his pardon or his execution (É 204–​208 /​S 108–​115). Occasionally, he experiences reflective moments, and he has thoughts and makes statements of a ‘philosophical’ nature in the broad sense. For example, according to the happy Meursault of Part i, nothing means anything, and this includes the death of Maman (‘Cela ne veut rien dire’: É 141 /​S 3) and the love of Marie (‘cela ne voulait rien dire’: É 161 /​S 35); one never changes one’s life, one life is as good as another, and he is not at all dissatisfied with his own life (É 165 /​S 41); and one can either do this or do that, but it all amounts to the same thing (É 212 /​S 121). Yet he does not like questions about himself, his actions, and his affairs (É 152 /​ S 21). He is self-​righteous insofar as he thinks that he is always right (É 211–​212 /​S 120–​121), even as he realizes that ‘one cannot always be reasonable’ (É 205 /​S 111) and repeatedly recognizes that no one understands him (É 179, 181, 196,

19

On the problem of empathy, which is not to be conflated with compassion or sympathy, see Edith Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung, in Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe 5, ed. Maria Antonia Sondermann (Freiburg, Basel, and Vienna: Herder, 2016 [Third, Revised Edition]), and On the Problem of Empathy, in The Collected Works of Edith Stein 3, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1989).

132 Heffernan 211–​212 /​S 66, 70, 94–​95, 120–​122).20 The examining magistrate especially irritates him with his penetrating question ‘why?’. Understandably, the unhappy Meursault of Part ii appears to be more reflective than the happy Meursault of Part i. Looking at the world in his own peculiar way, he explains to his defense attorney that he has lost the habit of analyzing himself and that it is hard for him to respond to those who want to examine him, he admits that his ‘physical needs’ often get in the way of his ‘natural feelings’, and he wants to say that he is ‘absolutely like everybody else’ (É 178–​179 /​S 65–​66). He also reveals that he does not feel much remorse for his crime (telling the examining magistrate that he is more annoyed than sorry for what he has done: É 181 /​S 70), as well as that he has never been able to truly feel remorse for anything in his life (É 199–​200 /​S 100). He thinks that ‘everybody knows that life is not worth living’, as well as that, since everyone is going to die at some point, it is obvious that when and how do not matter (É 207–​208 /​S 113–​114). He exclaims to the prison chaplain that ‘nothing matters’, and that he knows why, namely, because everybody is both privileged to live and condemned to die (É 212 /​S 121). He does not expect another life (É 211 /​S 119–​120), but he feels ready to live this life all over again (É 213 /​S 122). In the end, feeling full of calm and rid of hope, he opens himself to what he perceives as ‘the gentle indifference of the world’, which he finds ‘like himself, like a brother’ (É 212–​213 /​S 122–​123). Thus, he faces death claiming to have been happy and claiming to be happy again. Remembering Maman’s advice on more than one occasion, Meursault thinks that after a while one can get used to anything and that one can always find something to be happy about (É 185, 207 /​S 77, 113). Accordingly, Meursault’s ‘philosophy of the absurd’ can be summarized in the statement: Nothing in the whole absurd life that he has lived matters, including the deaths of others, and he knows why, namely, because everyone’s life ends in death, there is nothing after that, and what ends in nothing amounts to nothing (É 210 /​S 117). What prevents his absurdism from lapsing into nihilism is the real possibility of his experiencing happiness in his life on earth. All the pleas of the prison chaplain cannot shake Meursault’s love of this life (É 211 /​ S 119). Yet one should be careful not to take at face value Meursault’s seemingly outrageous claims about capital punishment in Part ii, Chapter 5, for example, that there is nothing more important than an execution, that it is the only thing that a real man can truly be interested in, and that if he gets out of prison 20

See George Heffernan, ‘“Mais personne ne paraissait comprendre” (“But no one seemed to understand”): Atheism, Nihilism, and Hermeneutics in Albert Camus’ L’Étranger/​The Stranger’, Analecta Husserliana 109 (2011), pp. 133–​152.

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he will go to watch every execution (É 204–​205 /​S 108–​110). The same holds for his last wish as expressed in the same chapter, which is for a bizarre expression of public solidarity, namely, for a large crowd of spectators to spew hate at his execution so that he might feel less alone (É 213 /​S 123). These and such utterances appear to be ironic twists added by Camus and aimed at exposing what he regards as the utter absurdity and perverse popularity of capital punishment. In fact, Meursault’s report on his father’s reaction of disgust to an execution that he witnessed is based on a reliable report on a real incident in the life of Camus’s own father (É 205 /​S 110).21 The author of The Stranger was a vehement opponent of the death penalty.22 One way to assess Meursault’s intellectual ability is to examine his pre-​ judgments about and prejudices against others, especially subalterns. A citizen of Algeria and a resident of Algiers, but one of French-​European ancestry and thus a member of the dominant minority, the pieds-​noirs, Meursault is a child of his culture.23 It is indicative of his cultural attitudes that he recounts that the first thing that he did after learning that Raymond’s mistress was an Arab was to write the fateful letter, thus posing the question of whether he would have done so if she had been French-​Algerian (É 159 /​S 32); that he remarks that the group of Arabs standing outside his building were ‘staring at us [Raymond, him, and Marie] in silence, but in that way of theirs, as if we were nothing but stones or dead trees’, thus projecting onto and into them the ‘hate stare’ (É 169 /​S 48); that he says that the Arabs on the beach were wearing ‘greasy overalls’, thus describing them as unclean (É 173 /​S 55); that he reports that the second

21

22

23

See Albert Camus, Réflexions sur la guillotine (1957), in Albert Camus, Oeuvres complètes iv, 1957–​1959, ed. Raymond Gay-​Crosier et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2008), pp. 125–​167, here p. 127, and Reflections on the Guillotine, in Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage International, 1995), pp. 173–​234, here p. 175. Cf. Herbert Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979), pp. 23–​24. On the history of the debate over the death penalty in France, see Robert Badinter, Abolition: One Man’s Battle Against the Death Penalty, trans. Jeremy Mercer (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2008), and Jeremy Mercer, When the Guillotine Fell: The Bloody Beginning and Horrifying End to France’s River of Blood, 1791–​1977 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008). On the cultural and historical background of Algeria before and after The Stranger, see Peter Dunwoodie, Writing French Algeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Christiane Chaulet-​Achour, Albert Camus et l’Algérie (Algiers: Barzakh, 2004); Martin Evans and John Phillips, Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007); and Meaghan Emery, The Algerian War Retold: Of Camus’s Revolt and Postwar Reconciliation (New York and London, 2020). One should always consult, as well, the classic in the field of postcolonial studies: Frantz Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris: Éditions François Maspero, 1961), and The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004).

134 Heffernan Arab was blowing into a little reed but could only get three notes out of his instrument, thus suggesting that the man is uncultivated and unmusical (É 173 /​S 55); and that he supposes that this Arab too was carrying a knife, thus presuming that Arabs carry knives (É 174 /​S 56). (An exception to the rule is Meursault’s description of the orderly behavior of Arab prisoners in Part ii, Chapter 2.) As it is plausible that Meursault wrote the letter to the Arab woman because she was an Arab, so it is also plausible that Meursault killed the Arab man because he was an Arab. Would Meursault have shot and killed ‘the Arab’ if the man had not been an Arab? It seems futile, however, to distinguish here between necessary and sufficient conditions. If to be reasonable means to be able to bracket one’s illegitimate prejudices (for, as Gadamer rightly points out, there are préjugés légitimes),24 then Meursault fails the test.25 This failure is directly connected to his inability and unwillingness even to engage the question of why he shot and killed the Arab. 5

Rationality and Absurdity in Meursault’s Search for Happiness

If the search for a definite sufficient reason why Meursault shot and killed the Arab is fraught or even futile, it is the main character of the novel who is responsible for this state of affairs. In this regard, it is philosophically noteworthy, and it is especially relevant for the many English-​speaking readers of The Stranger, that in Anglo-​American jurisprudence the prosecution is not required to specify a motive for the commission of a crime. Of course, if the 24 25

See Hans-​Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1975), p. 255: ‘Es gibt préjugés légitimes. Das liegt unserem heutigen Sprachgefühl sehr fern.’ Cf. ibid., pp. 256–​261. This is not to imply that Camus too fails the test. See Albert Camus, Chroniques algériennes, 1939–​1958, in Oeuvres complètes iv, pp. 293–​394, and Algerian Chronicles, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2013). See also Albert Memmi, ‘Camus ou le colonisateur de bonne volonté’, La Nef, December 12, 1957, pp. 95–​96; Pierre Nora, Les Français d’Algérie (Paris: René Julliard, 1961); Conor Cruise O’Brien, Albert Camus of Europe and Africa (New York: Viking Press, 1970); Jan Rigaud, ‘The Depiction of Arabs in L’Étranger’, in Camus’s ‘L’Étranger’: Fifty Years On, ed. Adele King (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 183–​192; Edward Said, ‘Camus and the French Imperial Experience’, in Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993), pp. 169–​185; Patrick McCarthy, Camus: ‘The Stranger’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 [Second Edition]); David Carroll, Camus the Algerian: Colonialism, Terrorism, Justice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Arthur Scherr, ‘Albert Camus’s L’Étranger and Les Muets: Violence and Reconciliation between Arab and Pied-​ Noir’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 59 (2017), pp. 76–​105.

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prosecution can do so, it may strengthen the case for the jury, as the prosecutor of the case against Meursault seems to think. However, it is not required to do so, because, for valid reasons, criminal motive, understood as the reason why a person commits a crime, is not considered to be a part of the facts and circumstances that constitute the crime itself (corpus delicti). The underlying justification is that many if not most criminals have no sufficient reason to commit their crimes, and that many if not most criminals themselves cannot adequately explain why they have committed their crimes. Therefore, it would make no sense to impose the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove a motive, and beyond a reasonable doubt at that, for an act that is in many if not most cases irrational, that is, absurd. Criminal motive is different from criminal intent, which, understood as the state of mind in which a person engages in criminal conduct, for example, with malice aforethought or with a display of depraved indifference toward the preservation of life, plays a crucial role in the determination of degrees, grades, and levels of guilt and responsibility for a criminal act. Thus, intentionality, as distinguished from motivation and causation, is the real key to establishing guilt and grades thereof. In The Stranger, the examining magistrate poses the question concerning Meursault’s motive (É 180 /​S 67–​68); the prosecutor makes claims about his intention and motivation (É 192, 198–​199 /​S 88, 99–​100); and Meursault makes an appeal to causation in his final statement to the court (É 201 /​S 102–​103). Between the closing arguments of the prosecution and those of the defense, the presiding judge asks Meursault whether he has anything to say for himself (É 201 /​S 102–​103). Meursault responds that in fact he never had the intention (‘l’intention’) of killing the Arab. Trying to understand his defense, the judge asks Meursault to state precisely the motives (‘les motifs’) for his act. Fumbling a little with his words and realizing how ridiculous he sounds, Meursault speaks quickly and blurts out that ‘it was because of the sun’ (‘c’était à cause du soleil’: É 201 /​S 103). Meursault has difficulty distinguishing between actions and events. The trigger did not give; he pulled it. The gun did not go off; he fired it. The Arab was not killed; he killed him. In fact, Meursault wanted to reach the source or spring (‘la petite source’, ‘la source fraîche’) behind the rock, and the Arab was blocking his way (É 173–​175, 179, 192 /​S 55, 57–​58, 67, 88). Therefore, Meursault killed the Arab not only in order to escape the glaring heat of the sun but also in order to reach the cooling water of the source or spring. Clearly, the sun and the source or spring are symbols. Certainly, Camus knew that the sun was the traditional symbol of light and enlightenment in

136 Heffernan the history of Western philosophy.26 Yet it is also an ambiguous and ambivalent symbol, because one can get too little of it but one can also get too much of it. For example, the effect of the sun and its light on the prisoners who have been freed from Plato’s cave in The Republic (Book vii) is double-​edged insofar as it can yield both orientation and disorientation for them. In several decisive scenes in The Stranger, as well, Meursault does not feel well under the sun, for it oppresses him unbearably. Yet the effect of the sun on him is not always harmful, for in the late afternoon he and Marie enjoy both the cool water of the sea and the warm heat of the sun (É 160 /​S 34). Fatefully for Meursault, however, the glare of the light and the heat of the sun are not on his side at the funeral of Maman and the killing of the Arab (É 149–​150, 175–​176 /​S 16–​17, 58–​59). For its part, the repeatedly mentioned but relatively neglected source or spring symbolizes, literally, cooling relief from the glare and heat of the sun, and reaching it, metaphorically, a return to the origin, a new beginning, possibly even a reunion with his Maman, a return to her womb, a rebirth of some sort—​regaining paradise on earth, perhaps? Meursault reveals what the source or spring means to him literally, but not metaphorically, and he may not even know himself. The answer to the question concerning the symbolic meaning of the source or spring, however, is the key to understanding why Meursault killed the Arab, because it represents what Meursault was trying to reach, and what, he believed, the Arab was preventing him from reaching, when he killed him. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the ‘reason’ why Meursault shoots and kills the Arab is ‘because’ it is absurd. The ‘philosophical’ lesson of the stranger, the character, unphilosophical as it is, is that the only way to live happily in an indifferent universe is to adopt an attitude of indifference toward everyone and everything in it. This is not, however, the philosophical lesson of The Stranger, the novel. The unreflective, ‘natural’ diffidence of Meursault has little or nothing to do with the reflective, practiced attitude of ancient philo­ sophers such as the Stoics, for example, who cultivated a deep sense of moral communitarianism, political cosmopolitanism, and cosmic providentialism. Meursault shot and killed the Arab not because he was trying to create a meaningful life in a meaningless world, or even to generate a little bit of meaning in a meaningless life in a meaningless world, but rather because he did not think that it made any difference whether he remained at the bungalow or returned to the beach, whether he shot or did not, whether he killed the Arab 26

See René Andrianne, ‘Soleil, ciel et lumière dans L’Étranger de Camus’, Revue Romane 7 (1972), pp. 161–​176; and Stephen Ohayon, ‘Camus’ The Stranger: The Sun-​Metaphor and Patricidal Conflict’, American Imago 40 (1983), pp. 189–​205.

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or not, and whether the Arab lived or died. Toward the end, Meursault thinks to himself that ‘everybody knows that life is not worth living’, that ‘it does not much matter whether one dies at thirty or at seventy’, and that, ‘since everyone is going to die, it is obvious that it does not matter when and how’ (É 207–​208 /​S 113–​114). But his lethal act did make a difference, for the victim, for the perpetrator, and for their others, and even Meursault, who had told his boss that people never change their lives, had to come to the realization that he changed his life with his deed. He did not go to Paris with Marie; he went to prison with Arabs. Yet what may be most philosophically alienating about Meursault, and therefore most strange about the stranger of The Stranger, is not that he does not properly mourn his Maman’s passing, not that he writes the fateful letter to Raymond’s mistress, not that he treats Marie insensitively, and not even that he shoots and kills the Arab. It is also not that he never finds an answer to the question of why he did it. It is, rather, that he is not interested in the question concerning his own motive. He does not seek, and he does not find. The inquiry into Meursault’s motive in shooting and killing the Arab is a crucial process in any attempt to understand The Stranger. If it becomes an obsession, however, this inquiry can obscure the question concerning Meursault’s legitimate motive in living his life, for his driving force is not his search for meaning but his desire for happiness, if only in the form of the modest contentment and everyday enjoyment that he gets from smoking, swimming, and sex. In Part i, Meursault says that he is happy until he kills the Arab and knocks several times on ‘the door of unhappiness’ (É 176 /​S 59). In Part ii, he says that he becomes happy again when he embraces what he describes as ‘the gentle indifference of the world’ (É 212–​213 /​S 122–​123). But was Meursault genuinely happy at the beginning, and is he genuinely happy in the end? Does he die ‘a happy death’?27 Does it follow from the fact that he claims to be happy that he is happy? Are first-​person happiness statements incorrigible, indubitable, and infallible? Or could Meursault be wrong about this? Also, if he is wrong about this, what else might he be wrong about? Can human indifference to cosmic indifference make a vital difference? Can this approach lead to happiness? Does Meursault even know what genuine happiness is? What is genuine happiness? Like all true philosophers, Camus prefers to question answers rather than to answer questions. In the ‘Preface to the American University Edition of The Stranger’ (1955/​ 1956), Camus defends Meursault against attacks on him as ‘a piece of social 27

See Albert Camus, La mort heureuse (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) (the pagination in Oeuvres complètes i, pp. 1073–​1136 and pp. 1103–​1196, is confused), and A Happy Death, trans. Richard Howard (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972).

138 Heffernan wreckage’ (‘une épave’) and describes him as someone who ‘does not play the game’, who ‘refuses to lie’, who is ‘animated’ by ‘a passion for the absolute and for truth’, and who, ‘without any heroics’, ‘agrees to die for the truth’.28 Yet readers do not need to consult his essay ‘The Enigma’ (1950) or his ‘Preface to the American Edition of The Myth of Sisyphus’ (1955) to understand that in The Stranger Camus does not advocate a philosophy of the absurd in the sense in which Meursault articulates it (more by his deeds than by his words).29 Rather, Camus, the author, creates a character, Meursault, who enables him to reduce the philosophy of the absurd to the absurd. Camus is ‘gentle’ with Meursault, of course, insofar as he lets him experience ‘the indifference of the world’ not as harsh but as ‘gentle’. Whether the readers experience the insensitivity of Meursault as ‘gentle’, is, however, another matter. The Arab whom he kills, and whom he does not mention even once in his rambling recollections and reflections during his long time in prison, certainly did not. There is no evidence that the victim thought, as the executioner did, that ‘life is not worth living’ (É 207 /​S 114).30 28

29

30

See Albert Camus, ‘Préface à l’édition universitaire américaine’, in Oeuvres complètes i, pp. 215–​216, and ‘Preface to The Stranger’, in Lyrical and Critical Essays, pp. 335–​337. The claim that Meursault does not lie, even considering Camus’s qualifications, has been refuted. See George Heffernan, ‘Can the Stranger Handle the Truth? Critical Reflections on Camus’s Claim that Meursault Refuses to Lie’, Journal of Camus Studies 8 (2018), pp. 85–​ 117. For an interpretation of Meursault as a kind of ‘hero’, see Robert Champigny, Sur un héros païen (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), and A Pagan Hero: An Interpretation of Meursault in Camus’ ‘The Stranger’, trans. Rowe Portis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969). See Albert Camus, ‘L’Énigme’, in Albert Camus, Oeuvres complètes iii, 1949–​1956, ed. Raymond Gay-​Crosier et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2008), pp. 602–​607, and ‘The Enigma’, in Lyrical and Critical Essays, pp. 154–​161. See also Albert Camus, ‘Préface à l’édition américaine du Mythe de Sisyphe’, in Oeuvres complètes iii, pp. 955–​956, and ‘Preface to the American Edition of The Myth of Sisyphus’, in The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, v–​vi. This is the revised version of a paper that I presented at the conference and at the workshop of the Albert Camus Society UK/​US on November 19 and on December 3–​4, 2021, respectively. I am grateful to Peter Francev, Simon Lea, Eric Berg, Maciej Kaluza, Kimberly Baltzer-​Jaray, and Arthur Szylewicz for the collegial dialogue and helpful criticism that have enhanced the essay.

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The Blood That Trickles from the Gospels Is the Color of Printers’ Ink: The Relationship between Religious Texts and the Absurd Eric B. Berg What is it about Camus that harnesses such a strong grip on Christian theologians and on Christian apologetics? It seems there is an unusually strong bond between Christianity and Camus. In this article I will argue that beyond the intentional, relentless, Christian imagery and language Camus uses in his work, it is the relationship between his fundamental concept of the absurd, best articulated in The Myth of Sisyphus, and the historical construction of the foundational texts of the Christian faith, The Gospels. By way of this relationship, they both articulate the same unique metaphysic. Camus has always been a powerful and engaging conversation partner for Christians. It is not surprising as his early academic work was on Augustine and early Christianity, progressing to clear images of Christianity in The Stranger, including his comment that ‘Meursault is the only Christ we deserve’ in the 1955 preface to The Stranger, running deep through the character Father Paneloux in The Plague, his post-​war engagement with the Dominicans on the topic of ‘What Unbelievers Expect of Christians’, and culminating with his last novel The Fall that is loaded with Christian imagery. Camus has a sustained and consistent publication record engaging Christianity from 1937 to 1958. The theological language and imagery that Camus employs are not accidental, they are far from it, they are used with skill, knowledge, and are highly intentional. For the definitive treatment of Camus’s use of theological language see Jim Woelfel’s 1975 text Camus: A Theological Perspective. In that text, Woelfel makes the clear case for the linguistic connection and this essay makes use of the Woelfel text as a stepping off point to ask and answer the question ‘is there anything more to it’?1 Is there more beyond the imagery and language? I argue yes there is, and it is the articulation of a shared metaphysic centered on the absurd.

1 It is not the case the Woelfel’s text is lacking, in fact I see this article as a minor extension of that landmark text.

© Eric B. Berg, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_009

140 Berg There is a long and sustained relationship between scholars engaging the works of Camus and his connections to Christianity. Thomas Merton is not the very first, but brings a significant body of Christian work to the table when he writes The Hidden Ground of Love; The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns as a draft of a text on Camus and Religion. From the late 1940s forward many works have been penned on the connection between Camus and Christianity, from the insightful Champigny’s A Pagan Hero (1969), Kaufmann’s Religion from Tolstoy to Camus (1961), Adel King’s Camus (1968), Jean Omnius’s Albert Camus and Christianity (1970), the aforementioned Woelfel’s Camus a Theological Perspective (1975), to Mumma’s awful Albert Camus and the Minister (2000). A quick jstor search yields an astonishing 2,394 results on Camus and Christianity starting in 1947 and running through 2021. The premium source for leading articles on Camus is The Journal of Camus Studies publishing many first-​rate articles on Camus and religion and specifically Christianity. A rich and rewarding tradition of scholarship is indeed present. First, some fundamentals must be put in place. Can one be Christian and absurd? Camus’s answer is a straightforward ‘yes’, Camus: ‘It is possible to be Christian and absurd’2 In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus takes up a fascinating discussion of the relationship between the Biblical text and the absurd and Camus writes, ‘… what contradicts the absurd in that work (Dostoevsky) is not its Christian character, but rather its announcing a future life’.3 It is the surrender to a future life that is intellectual suicide for Camus, not the fact that the text is a Christian text, an important distinction. This brings us to the question of the Bible and the Gospels in relation to the absurd. It is also worthy to note that my analysis is not of Camus and the sacred, but of religion, and more closely, Christianity. For an excellent analysis of Camus and the sacred see Ron Srigley’s essay “Camus’ Sense of the Sacred” in The Journal of Camus Studies, 2012. The next fundamental point to establish: Can the Gospels be absurd? In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus notes ‘… the absurdity of the Gospel’.4 This observation takes place in the same paragraph I previously cited where he engages in a discussion of Dostoevsky in the larger context of Christian literature. That Camus makes note of this connection himself cuts my workload in half, as I am just charged now with illuminating the connection further and making my case that this connection, between a core concept in Camus and a pillar 2 Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus (New York: Vintage International, 1991) p. 112. 3 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 112. 4 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 112.

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of Christian thought, is a worthwhile area to explore. With the fundamental questions answered, I will now outline a bit about the texts we will work with in relationship with The Myth of Sisyphus. The holy text of the Christian faith, The Bible, is a complex and complicated area to step into as a scholar. The scholar that enters this world must be ready to engage with the text in a way that few other texts demand of the reader and academic. For example, the very use of the phrase ‘The Bible’ is not clear. The makeup of the Bible is not the same set of accepted texts across Christian denominations or major division in Christianity. For example, ‘the books of the Bible accepted by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches include a number of texts and stories (such as those narrated in the Book of Judith and Book of Tobit) that many Protestant denominations do not accept as canonical’.5 Thus, to simply say ‘The Bible’ is a careless statement in the academy. One must be clear which Bible precisely one is working with. The next step is to select a translation of the text, and all choices have their own minefield to negotiate. For this paper I will work with the Protestant (specifically Lutheran) version and the New Revised Standard Version (nrsv) translation of the text. These problems being addressed, and to limit the scope of this essay, I will focus on The Gospel accounts to illuminate the absurd, specifically one of the Synoptic Gospels, The Gospel of Mark. The Synoptic Gospels of the Christian faith (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as we have them today, give us a limited, surprising, indirect, delayed, layered, edited, and often contradictory narrative description of Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the Christ. These three interrelated accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the Christ were all reconstructed from three separate yet connected narrative accounts, many years after the events that are reported to have happened, and over the years these accounts have been changed. All three Synoptic Gospels start their literary life as oral traditions and then are written down as time moved on and the Jesus movement started to grow and become somewhat formalized. These three accounts, along with the fourth account in The Gospel of John, make up the central narrative of the Christ event and form the foundation of the faith of the largest religion in the world today. The Biblical encounter is in a special literary category and I am ready to defend my position that the absurd will not surface in the encounter with the reader in the same way as it does with a religious text if one looks for it in another context. Be it the Koran, The Bible, the Torah, or any other legitimate

5 Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, (New York, Oxford International Press, 1997) p. 22.

142 Berg religious text, there is a unique relationship between reader and text that is not present in other text we encounter despite the intensity with which we engage the text in question. The religious reader has an additional partner in the conversation and that is faith, and if the reader is from a mainline Christian tradition, we add doctrine, hermeneutics, tradition, et al to the engagement with the text. Thus, it takes the larger structure of religion to make the encounter an absurd encounter that rises to the level of a faith crisis. The reader is engaged with the text in a special way and has much more invested than she has with a work of fiction for example. I am not arguing that a work of fiction cannot engage the absurd encounter with the reader, in fact it is a wonderful tool to accomplish this, perhaps the best tool. What I am arguing here is that legitimate religious texts, such as the Bibles have the same ability that other text have to bring forth the absurd encounter; plus, they layer on faith claims that also triggers an existential crisis in the believer, placing these texts into a special category and this strengthens the bond between religious person, religious text, and the work of Camus. Here, I must raise a concern. I am thinking of the possible counter-​argument that one may create a religion of Hemingway for example. And, hypothetically, they may engage the work of Hemingway from a faith position and equate The Old Man and the Sea with the Gospel of Mark. The concern I have here is that one may be able to argue that all texts are the same in this way, the absurd encounter may engage with a Hemingway text in the same way that it does with a legitimate religious texts and the connection between Christianity and Camus’s absurd is nothing more that the heavy use of language and imagery by Camus. I object to this claim as the relationship with the reader and Hemingway will not be the same due to the lack of formal structure with the ‘Hemingway religion’ in contrast to Islam or Christianity. With Christianity there are immense structures of doctrine and hermeneutics long-​standing in place that creates the necessary reality that facilitates the confrontation between believer and text that allows the absurd to surface in a way that sets it apart from other text. Faith, combined with the structure of a mainline established religion allows the absurd to surface and cause an existential crisis in the person of faith. It forces a choice in the way a Hemingway text will not. The person of faith will have to make choices to move forward, or commit intellectual suicide and stand resolute in the face of the facts about the text. Earlier, I used the phrase ‘legitimate religious text’ and this is what I mean by this claim, a text that is central to a mainline long-​established religion. This is not to argue that the mainline established religions of the world are qualitatively better than any that may fall out of this loose category I have developed here. It is probably quite the opposite, mainline well-​established religions, with

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doctrine, seminaries, professors of theology, scholarly journals, hermeneutics, well-​developed distinctions between orthodox teaching and heresies and the like are predisposed to encounter the absurd in the context of personal faith and forces the believer’s hand when the absurd rises in this context. Religions or forms of Christianity that are less well-​established may have the flexibility to avoid this faith crisis. When reading the core documents of the faith, precisely because they have those elements in place, gives rise to the absurd encounter between believer and text. It is not clear to this author that an encounter with the absurd when reading core documents of the faith is a good thing for the development or growth of that faith. However, this is not a comparative religion or normative essay, it is a descriptive essay attempting to illuminate the long-​standing intense relationship between the Christian faith and Camus, offering to the reader a possible reason for this unique relationship. The central points that support my argument that the Bible, and the Gospels in particular supply the special bond between Camus and Christians by way of the absurd: –​ The canon is an immovable, static, frozen object that confronts the person of faith in the same way a person encounters the world. –​ One way ‘out’ is intellectual dishonesty, the person can accept a dogmatic position regarding the scriptures and commit intellectual suicide. –​ The core texts of the faith have been altered from their original words. This is incredibly destabilizing for the person of faith. –​ Other voices of the core message of Christianity have been left out, thus giving the believer an incomplete picture of the world. –​ The Bible may have been altered for misogynist and colonial reasons. –​ Faith systems are shattered when confronted with the reality of the text in the same way they are shattered when they clash with the world. –​ This parallel relationship draws the Christian into Camus’s work and Camus into the Christian world with increase gravity. –​ Therefore, the intense relationship between the two is further explained because they both articulate a unique metaphysic. Camus’s idea of the absurd is a foundational concept for his philosophical work and is brought forth to the world in The Myth of Sisyphus. In this text Camus takes great pains to outline this fundamental concept of the human condition that is classified in Western philosophical thought as metaphysics. Metaphysics is also where Western philosophers place the idea of religion and as a subcategory of that, Christianity. I will now argue that this fundamental aspect of the human condition that Camus illuminates in The Myth of Sisyphus is the same relationship that Christians of faith experiences when engaging their fundamental texts, The Gospels, when read in an honest way.

144 Berg What I mean by ‘an honest way’ is using the current and well-​developed tools of Biblical criticism to read these foundational texts of the faith. This style of engagement often comes with it a great deal of pain, but it is an intellectually honest approach. Thus, the absurd does not formally raise its head for a fundamentalist that reads the Biblical text as infallible and ignores the clear and plain evidence in the Bible that our expectations of the text do not line up with what the Biblical text actually is objectively. 1

The Bible as a Frozen and Static World

Another element that our experience of the absurd and a Christian reading the Gospels share is the static and frozen characteristics of what we encounter. In the world, we form and hold our expectations for that world, and these expectations often run headfirst into the world, it is this relationship that develops that births the absurd. The world simply will not change, we are confronted with facts that do not match our desires, expectations, or hermeneutic for the world we encounter. Camus does a fine job of illuminating this in The Plague with the cold hard mathematical facts of biology with plague and our expectations that it certainly will not take the life of certain people, like innocent children, It will, in fact, make them suffer and they will die. Next, I will illuminate what I mean by the claim that the Bible is frozen and static like the world we encounter. 2

Winners and Losers

The Gospel of Mark happens to be a winner. What do I mean by a ‘winner’? The Gospel of Mark is in the Bible today, other accounts of the Christ event are not, thus ‘losers’ exist. The parameters and metrics for who won and lost and the scorecards have been lost to time, for the most part. What did the text ultimately win? Canonization. Mark is one of the 27 texts to make it into the New Testament and Mark is one of only 4 Gospels that the ‘church’ recognizes as an authoritative account of the life of the Christ event. This set of 27 took a long time after the Christ event to become official. Most scholars place a date of 367 c.e. set forth by the Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt named Athanasius as the moment the canon was set. Many other accounts of the life of Jesus did not win and are not canonized. Mainline Christians carry expectations into the biblical text and have been confronted with a static and frozen text since the fourth century C.E. The Bible as we have it today, will not change. Changes

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to the canonical text are rare and often minute. For example, new editions for 2022 edition of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible ‘ … does not use the word “girl” when referring to a young woman. Mark 14:69 now speaks of a “female servant” instead of a “servant-​girl.”’6 Small changes happen, like removing “girl” however, the larger picture is frozen. No matter what may be discovered in a legitimate archeological dig in Egypt this afternoon, the hypothetical text I am referring to from Egypt will not be added to the Bible. No matter how illuminating, legitimate, well preserved, documented, having excellent provenance, it will forever stand outside the canon. The world that the collected books of the Bible create has been the same since the fourth century and will most likely forever be the same set of text as it has stood for more than 1,700 years. The Christian also encounters a frozen and static reality in The Gospels. There are many ancient texts that hold the requisite provenance to be included in the modern Bible but are not in the canon. For instance, there was or is a Gospel of Mary, of Philip, of Truth, of James and many more including the Secret Gospel of Mark. There are acts of the apostles that are not in the Bible, lost letters including another letter to the Corinthians attributed to Paul. Famous or infamous apocalypse text like The Shepherd of Hermas and the Secret Book of John are not included. Let’s take a quick look at one. The Gospel of Mary comes to us today by way of two Greek fragments from the third century c.e. (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus L 3525 and Papyrus Rylands 463) and a more complete version from the fifth century c.e., the Berlin Codex. American biblical scholar Bart Ehrman argues7 that the Gospel of Mary was written in the second century, very close to the reported Christ event, in fact some Biblical scholars place it close to the composition date of The Gospel of John that is included in the Bible. Reported to be the account of Mary Magdalene, it was rejected from the canon for various reasons including it does not actually tell the tale of the ministry of Jesus but is an account after the resurrection, it is a regional inter-​Christian fight and does not center on the Good News, and of course, it is the account from a woman. The Gospel of Mary will never be included in the canon. The sealed nature of the Bible and the idea of a set canon, when brought to the attention of a person of faith obviously raises serious questions regarding the missing content of the narrative. Why not The Gospel of Mary? Because it is not orthodox. Camus notes in a direct discussion of orthodoxy and heresy in Christianity that ‘One recognizes one’s course by 6 https://​relig​ionn​ews.com/​2021/​11/​17/​new-​revi​sed- ​stand​ard-​vers​ion-​bible-​upda​ted-​with -​consid​erat​ion-​for-​mod​ern-​sensib​ilit​ies/​ Sourced 1.29.22. 7 Bart Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that did not make it into the New Testament, (New York, Oxford Publishing, 2003).

146 Berg discovering the paths that stray from it’.8 (113) The immovable object of reality (the Biblical canon) gives rise to the absurd when orthodox expectations and demands meet the reality of how the canon was constructed and its somewhat arbitrary permanent nature. At this point it is time to introduce a number of examples from one of the Synoptic Gospels, Mark. I will be using several examples to make my case including the prime example of the ending of The Gospel of Mark (Mark 16:8–​ 20). I will be taking the deepest dive into the history of this anomaly at the end of the text to make my case. The idea of the absurd encounter for people of faith will hold for the entire Biblical text, but to make this argument manageable without loosing any integrity, I will use as the emphasis the very foundation of the Christian faith, The Gospels, specifically Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with a special emphasis on The Gospel of Mark as mentioned above. The Protestant Reformation allowed scholars to begin this process of tight investigation into the Bible as the act of Biblical scholarship was then freed (comparted to the 13th century for example) to ask, investigate, and answer difficult questions of the text. Luther’s 1536 translation of the Bible may be argued as leading the way. The text was opened up as time went on, especially the curious relationship between the synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke came forth in the 19th century. The critical act of Synoptic Gospel comparison gives rise to the historical critical method. Not limited to the Bible or holy text, it is an academic tool that both caused great advances in the understanding of these text and the faith anchored in them, it also caused a great deal of pain by way of growth in Christianity. The strongest roots of this approach are in the Protestant tradition, specifically Lutheranism and it is within this tradition I will start and finish primarily with a sizable debt to American scholar Bart Ehermann. The questions of the text are raised early by the likes of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict Spinoza in the 17th century, Jean Astruc makes advancements in the 18th century but not to overshadowed by the questions of G.E. Lessing that helped launch Kierkegaard’s own work in the Biblical text. These early scholars pave the way for the first golden age of Biblical Criticism with names like Kähler, Schweitzer, Barth, Bultmann, N.T. Wright, and Käsemann leading the way. Tremendous growth happened immediately when this method of textual criticism took off, and recently it has experienced another period of dramatic growth with the addition of scholars that are not white males and not educated from the same seminaries and by the same chain of scholars that made contributions over the past 300 years. Women, persons of 8 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 113.

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color, native scholars, Islamic thinkers, are included in a list too long to name here that have opened this field beyond all expectations, expanding the “neutrality” requirement to one of identifying bias in the text. For example, Native American theologian George E. “Tink” Tinker has been breaking open Biblical scholarship since the early 1990s. These developments add another layer of shattered expectations and when encountering Bible. Of the three traditional approaches: form, source and redaction criticism, it is the latter that will have the biggest impact on this paper and my argument. The desire, or one desire among many of these early biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers was to arrive, as close as possible, to a neutral or objective reading the Biblical text as opposed to a doctrinally driven reading. Daniel Harrington, a leading historian of this approach, makes it clear that the emphasis has always been on neutrality.9 The intentions were admirable, but the scope was not wide enough in the 19th and 20th century to bring a full understanding of the text to believers. Nevertheless, the act and what it opened up forever changed the nature of faith for many believers and within the academy Biblical scholarship entered the modern era. It is clear to this author that Camus is familiar with the practice of Biblical Criticism. It is a fair assumption that a well-​educated and well-​read inquisitive person like Camus living in a French colony would know this, but we can go a step past assumptions. A good place to demonstrate this comes from an obvious source, his work titled Christian Metaphysics and Introduction to that work we find evidence of his familiarity with Biblical criticism. Here, I rely on the expert translations of Ronald Srigley. The very young Camus writes of First Century Christianity: ‘It is in this manner that Christian thought, constrained to express itself in a coherent system’.10 And when getting clear on what the faith means ‘The most reliable method is to go back to the New Testament text themselves’.11 Both statements bring me to the clear conclusion that Camus is familiar with this approach and sets his interest on fire looking for the firsts in Mediterranean thought. Understanding the way that biblical criticism changed the faith, and was feverishly underway in Europe when Camus was alive brought a modern understanding to the young Camus and his view of the Bible. Biblical criticism in France was significant adding a number of important names of honor to the academy that were contemporaries of Camus. 9

Daniel J. Harrington, “Biblical Criticism”, Oxford Bibliographies. (Oxford University Press), Retrieved 15 November 2020. 10 Albert Camus, Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, trans. Ronald Srigley, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press), p. 39. 11 Camus, Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, p. 46.

148 Berg A list of French intellectuals of Biblical criticism in the 20th century would include: Albert Sweitzer (born 1875), Roland Guérin de Vaux (born 1903), Abbé Jean Carmignac (born 1914), Oscar Cullmann (born 1902), and Claude (Marie-​ Émile) Boismard (born 1916) as a short list. The Gospel of the Church. Religious texts are notoriously difficult to work with as the political and weight of the faith of countless others stand in the balance. Thus, these texts become highly charged in the academy to an extent other text do not. For example, try and find a particular passage in Plato that draws even 10% of the fire that Mark Chapter 16 verses 1–​8 and 9–​20 do. Although Plato rightfully occupies a central place in the history of Western philosophy, and many scholars work diligently and care deeply about his work, there is no comparison to Biblical studies, especially with a controversial set of verses like the end of the Gospel of Mark. First and foremost, the Bible as a text is a cacophony of voices, written over many years, from many geographical points, with no central editing. When we sit down with a text from the ancient world that was written by one person, for example Augustine, we bring expectations to the text that are often fulfilled and does not bring rise to absurdity or crisis in the way Camus defines it and the way I am using it in the paper. In addition, the great Saint Augustine’s publications are not included as a holy text, but they are theology, and we can take them or leave them. There is not an option to reject The Bible and remain a mainline Christian. If one rejects the Bible as a Lutheran, for example, one is not Lutheran anymore. The point being, with a single voice authoring The Confessions we have consistency of an author. In The Bible we do not have that and it vastly complicates the issue when compared to other text. Moving to the Gospel of Mark, it is widely accepted that it is from one pen, but who? That question does not have a clear answer. Thus, when Mark is placed into the larger context of the Bible as a whole, and we do not have definitive evidence of who wrote it down the first or even the hundredth time, these two factors alone predisposes the reader for experiencing absurdity and the aforementioned existential crisis when reading Mark. 3

Focus on the Gospel of Mark

Who wrote this narrative down? The narrative, according to the church, is the account of the life according to Jesus’s disciple Mark. This Mark is mentioned several times in the Book of Acts, and Acts 12:25 gives us a look at this Mark: ‘And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their

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ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was Mark’.12 But this Mark did not write it down, The Gospel of Mark survived as an oral tradition until about 68 c.e. and was ‘frozen’ in time, in that form by an unknown person. This does not mean it did not change from that first draft, quite the contrary and these changes are an important element in bringing forth the feeling of absurdity and crisis in believers. However, we must also account for the erratic notion of the preservation of a narrative in an oral tradition stretching over several generations before we even take a first look at scribal transmission. The author of Mark appears to be, according to the ‘best’ scholarship, a Greek-​ speaking person living outside Palestine. The account of the Christ event from Mark’s perspective begins with the baptism of Jesus and concludes in a very convoluted way with the call to ‘go and tell’. Biblical scholars agree that The Gospel of Mark is probably the earliest written account of the Christ event dating to roughly 68 c.e. According the best math and quality reconstructions of the reported events from the text and other sources, the Gospel of Mark was recorded about 35 years after the events it narrates if we take 33 c.e. as a reliable death date for Jesus and 68 c.e. as a reliable date for the Gospel being recorded. Mark may have used another source for help, possibly the elusive ‘Q’ or the lost source of ‘Quella’ a list of sayings of Jesus and possible narrative of his life. We can leave the problems of oral tradition transitioning to written document behind for the purposes of this argument as that has little impact on the believer and does not contribute to the rise of the absurd. The Christian faith community is committed to text as they find it in the Bible. Here, the interesting conversation begins. As we begin, Camus warns us ‘One can, however wonder how much is clear in that notion and by direct analysis try to discover its meaning on the one hand and, on the other, the consequences it involves’.13 The Gospel of Mark has gone through several significant and undeniable alterations over time. Moving both from the early verses to the ending, and this pattern also sets us in the motion of moving from least significant to the most significant changes to the text. The Gospel of Mark opens with a very important event, the baptism of Jesus, and references the Old Testament, specifically the prophets, linking the idea of the Messiah in the Hebrew faith to the announcement of Jesus of Nazareth as The Christ. As the ministry of Jesus launches with his baptism by John the Baptist the reader of the text is immediately brough into a full religious conversation with the Hebrew tradition

12 Acts 12:25, nrsv. 13 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 29.

150 Berg through verses Mark1: 2–​3. The Gospel reads: ‘As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’”,14 My Bible, and English nrsv indicates directly in the text that most of this passage is taken from Isaiah, and it is partially correct to cite that as some of it does come from Isaiah 40:3, but other parts come, roughly, from Exodus 23:20, and Malachi 3:1. Earlier versions of the text read ‘From the Prophets’ rather than just giving Isaiah credit, and the older version is much more accurate, especially when approached from a scholarly disposition. What was written first, ‘Prophets’ or ‘Isaiah’? At what point was it changed when transcribing the text over the years? It appears that the incorrect version is the one that appeared first by the hand that wrote the Gospel of Mark and a scribe changed this along the way.15 It is what Biblical scholars call an ‘intentional’ change or alteration to the text as opposed to a slip of the pen. This doesn’t do much to erode faith, but it does open the door for a confrontation with the text and our faith expectations of the text, that is has not been altered by human hands over time to meet or change the meaning. Even a more liberal Christian that understands the nature of the text as a pedestrian to Biblical scholarship has an existential moment when these alterations to the text become apparent. It is a destabilizing event in the realm of faith. As Camus notes in The Myth, ‘But with its first move this world cracks and tumbles: an infinite number of shimmering fragments is offered to the understanding. We must despair from ever reconstructing the familiar, calm surface which would give us peace of heart’.16 I will now work with the second or mid-​point example of alteration of the Gospel of Mark. Mark Chapter 15 verse 34 contains a what appears to be an intentional alteration of the passion narrative. Arguably, the passion narrative is the apex of the Biblical text for Christians, thus this alteration does not take place in an insignificant part of the text. The nrsv reads: 34 At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’?17 These are the final words of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Mark. Biblical scholar Bart Eherman illuminates this alteration with great skill when he writes,

14 15

Mark 1:2–​3, nrsv. https://​ehr​manb​log.org/​illus​trat​ion-​of-​a-​text​ual-​cha​nge-​did-​mark-​make-​a-​mist​ake/​ Sourced 1.27.22. 16 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 18. 17 Mark 15:34, nrsv.

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What is striking is that in one early Greek manuscript (the fifth-​century codex Bezae –​an erratic manuscript that nonetheless on very rare occasions preserves an original reading when all other Greek manuscripts say something else) and several Latin manuscripts, that often agree with it, Jesus’ cry is translated into Greek as: “My God, my God, why have you mocked me?”18 Part of the battle over this verse comes with the natural desire to have the quote match up with a verse from the Psalms. Psalm 22:1 uses ‘forsaken’ in the English, from the Greek, from the Hebrew and matches the desired tenor of the passion narrative. The desire to match the Hebrew tradition, the desire to not have Jesus feel as if he was being ‘mocked’ by God at his death, combined with the evidence of earlier manuscripts reading ‘mocked’ in the Greek to ‘forsaken’ makes for a strong case for scribal alteration. There is strong evidence that it was changed, and for this case, it matters not if it adheres to the original, what matters is that changes were made along the way, to a critical moment in the narrative. What was first reported to have been the last words of Christ and what is now recorded in the text differs. The end of The Gospel of Mark is the last and most significant example i would like to illuminate to make my case. The two oldest manuscripts discovered and in circulation today of The Gospel of Mark ­chapter 16, Codex Vaticanus 325–​350 c.e. and Codex Sinaiticus 330–​360 c.e. both conclude ­chapter 16 and the Gospel in its entirety with verse 8. It is not until the early 5th century that verses 9–​20 are added, they appear in Codex Bezae roughly 400 c.e., Codex Alexandrinus 400–​440 c.e., and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus roughly 450 c.e. Why change The Gospel? Verses 5–​7 read: As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 ‘Don't be alarmed’, he said. ‘You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him’. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you’.19 Most Biblical scholars argue that the young man in the white robe is a messenger from God as his appearance is typical in the Biblical text when God appears,

18 19

https://​ehr​manb​log.org/​an-​inte​ntio​nal-​cha​nge-​in-​mark-​1534/​ Sourced 1.27.22. Mark 16: 5–​7, nrsv.

152 Berg also this is a classic epiphany communication with the immediate statements being a word of calming, ‘Don’t be afraid’. The other Synoptic Gospels make it clear this is a visitation and a communication from God. Thus, we have a well-​ established patten on direct communication from God and most importantly, the command to ‘go and tell’ given to women. As Christianity is an evangelical religion, the command to ‘go and tell’ could not be more serious. Verses 14–​16 has Jesus making another appearance to the disciples and gives them an ‘official’ commission to tell the story. Verse 20 ends the Gospel with the disciples following the command of Jesus and proclaiming the good news. Verse 8 gives us the narration of the women fleeing from the empty tomb, and saying ‘nothing to anyone, because they were too frightened’.20 However, they are given the command to go and tell in verses 5–​7. This fact is important for may theologians, most notably Gerhard Forde, in explaining why the ending of the Gospel has been changed and this author agrees with their conclusions. I agree with the conclusion that the end of the Gospel of Mark was changed because women are given the command to tell the story of Jesus, they are the first to be given this authority. Thus, women are legitimate priests of the Church. When verses 9–​20 are added the ‘official commission’ was then given to men and women lose the authority to preach the Word. I agree that this is the most likely reason the text was changed, to eliminate women as priests and reserve the office for men only. There is some thin evidence that it may have been present in Mark in the late second century c.e. but it is more likely that early church fathers were adding Psalm 110:2 as a sort of doxology to the narrative of the resurrection. Other scholars, such as E. P. Gould have identified 19 of the 163 words from 9–​20 are unique and do not occur elsewhere in the Gospel of Mark.21 The evidence strongly points in the direction of intentional alteration. Not to lose sight of why this is important, because this is a fascinating piece of scholarship and it casts a long shadow over this part of the paper, it shatters faith expectations when brought to light. Today, most versions of the Bible include the newer additions (verses 9–​ 20) and often make some note of the variation. Many Bibles will read: ‘Longer ending’, ‘Shorter ending’, ‘Alternate ending’ or make a note that verses 9–​20 are not present in the earliest versions of Mark, yet verses 9–​20 are in 90% of the Bibles you will pick off a bookshelf. As my colleague R.J. Stewart always asked me, ‘Ok, but so what?’ The point of all this about the Bible by way of the Gospel of Mark illuminates this: when 20 21

Mark 16:8, nrsv. E. P. Gould, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Mark (New York: Charles Scribner’s Press, 1896), p. 303.

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a person of faith reads The Gospel of Mark, the act leads to human expectations running head-​long into disappointment, confusion, and shock when the Gospel of Mark is honestly encountered. This act, by Camus’s definition, opens up the opportunity for the absurd by way of a crisis of faith. This, is the other link between Christianity and Camus. To stand resolute in front of the clear facts about the text is intellectual suicide. Intellectual suicide and the Gospels. One example of intellectual suicide is enough to illuminate the correlating idea from Camus. The following statement from the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod of United States makes my point: ‘The Bible is God’s inerrant and infallible Word, in which He reveals His Law and His Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ. It is the sole rule and norm for Christian doctrine’.22 The doctrinal dictum that the Bible is ‘inerrant and infallible’ does not allow the believer any option but intellectual suicide in this confrontation. This moment is well described by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, ‘I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion’.23 The Biblical text, as we have it, resists this clarity and cohesion that we long for. When the believer is confronted with the problems I illuminated in The Gospel of Mark, especially the ending of Mark the absurd raises its head. To quote Camus again, ‘The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter …’.24 The triangulation that Camus describes for the human condition, is exactly recreated in the realm of Christian faith, the facts of the case are unyielding or remain silent in the face of human faith or nostalgia. What a believer brings to the text is confronted with what the text actually is, and this confrontation brings for the absurd as a crisis and can lead to intellectual suicide as an option. What does it mean to commit intellectual suicide in the context of an absurd encounter with a religious text? Ignoring inconsistencies in the Biblical text is, to use Camus’s term, intellectual suicide. The inability for one to coherently argue that the Gospels are infallible or even approach modern standards of an accurate narrative causes a foundational tension in the Christian faith. All this, especially the contradictions and confusions, are compounded by the addition of the Pauline Epistles to the New Testament and the exclusion of many ancient books that were not included in the canon of the New Testament. When these texts are understood to be as complicated and altered as they are, I will refer to in this paper as an ‘honest reading of the text’, our expectations for a firm foundation of faith 22 https://​www.lcms.org/​about/​beli​efs Sourced 1.29.22. 23 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 51. 24 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 29.

154 Berg are destabilized and this condition can best be described as the absurd. Albert Camus put it this way, ‘The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter, these are the three characters in the drama that must necessarily end with all the logic of which an existence is capable’.25 I argue here that this quote, with the readers permission, may be converted to a faith statement: ‘The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter, these are three characteristics in the drama that can end with all the logic of which faith is capable’. A faith statement fitting for the historically and currently dominate forms of Christianity. The relationship between reader and Biblical text brings forth the absurd, and it is this, combined with Camus’s heavy use Christian symbols and language, that has caused this long-​ standing and fruitful relationship between Camus and Christians. Beautifully stated by Camus, ‘Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors’.26 When Camus describes the engagement with art and the absurd he makes my point well, In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus writes, So it is with the work of art. If the commandments of the absurd are not respected, if the work does not illustrate divorce and revolt, if it sacrifices to illusions and arouses hope, it ceases to be gratuitous. I can no longer detach myself from it. My life may find meaning in it, but that is trifling.27 The Bible as art, clearly the Bible can stand firmly in that category as it is literature, contains poetry and songs. Attached to this work of art are religious expectations and with that hope. The religious reader often cannot detach themself from it and the hope it generates, bringing expectation in the form of doctrine to the art, opens up the absurd and demands from the religious reader a choice, accept the text as it is, or intellectual suicide with the move to Biblical inerrancy. Standing resolute in front of the facts. The road of accepting the text is not an easy one by any estimate. There are still important choices for the person of faith to make that all contain within them the threat of falling into a hermeneutic of intellectual suicide. And it is an intellectual practice that one does not achieve and retain in a state of permeance, the world of Biblical scholarship is constantly changing, as are ancillary disciplines, like philosophy, theology, archeology, linguistics, and cultural studies. Camus notes, ‘It calls for 25 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 112. 26 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 115. 27 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 102.

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daily effort, self-​mastery, a precise estimate of the limits of truth, measure, and strength’.28 The absurd, for the religious reader of the Bible may surface around any street corner. Thus, ‘A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world’.29 One connection between The Myth of Sisyphus and The Bible that cannot be overlooked centers on one word: myth. Christian theologian Rudolf Bultmann takes the modern Christian lead working in this area, Bultmann wrote ‘The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character’.30 In the pre-​Christian world ‘myth’ means narrative, but it takes on a notion of fiction and acquires a notion of unreliability or fantasy. In fact, Paul warned Christians against calling the Christ narrative myth in 1 Timothy 4:7 and to reconnect with the Greeks on this point, Plato also condemns myth in The Republic. The idea of myth then brings the point of Camus using Sisyphus in his work and the general character of the Gospels as they move from the first century c.e. to the contemporary period. We have come to understand though this paper that Camus has a deep and long-​standing relationship with Christianity that goes beyond the use of theological language and Christian images, it is a unique shared metaphysic they both articulate. This unusual bond is amplified by a very core principle in Camus’s work, that of the absurd triggering an existential crisis. It is imbedded in the very composition of the central text of Christianity, when fully understood in light of current scholarship that causes an encounter with the absurd that quickly rises to the level of an existential crisis for the person of faith. The direct correlation between Camus’s absurdity best articulated in The Myth of Sisyphus and the result and the faith crisis experienced by honest readers of the Biblical text further illuminates the strong and unique bond between the two. 28 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 115. 29 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6. 30 Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth by Rudolf Bultmann and Five Critics edited by Hans Werner Bartsch.(New York, Harper & Row, 2005.) p. 21.

­c hapter 8

Unlikely Heroism: Sisyphus, Camus, and the Absurd Posture Matthew Bowker Sisyphus herded cattle. Beyond that, he was a cheat and a liar. Near him, on Corinth, lived Autolycus, who was a master thief and whom Sisyphus suspected of stealing. Therefore, one day Sisyphus engraved all of his cattle’s hooves “with the monogram ‘ss’ or, some say, with the words ‘Stolen by Autolycus’.”1 After proving Autolycus’ theft, Sisyphus snuck into Autolycus’ house and seduced his daughter, Anticleia (a woman at first literally ‘without fame’) who would later give birth to Odysseus, whose renowned cunning has been attributed to his father’s manner of seduction.2 According to Robert Graves, although Sisyphus ‘promoted Corinthian commerce’, ‘his contemporaries knew him as the worst kind of knave on earth’, presumably because of his extra-​marital activities. Legend has it that Sisyphus, enraged that Salmoneus had usurped the Thessalian crown, was told by the Oracle at Delphi to sire children with his nieces, which he did. But after learning his true motive was not love, Sisyphus’ niece, Tyro, killed the two sons. Sisyphus then entered the marketplace holding the dead bodies and falsely accused Salmoneus of incest and murder, exiling him.3 Sisyphus knew that Aegina had been abducted by Zeus and carried off to Oenone, later called simply Aegina, but he refused to tell Aegina’s father, the River-​God Asopus, what he knew until Asopus gave Corinth a perpetual spring. When Sisyphus finally told Asopus what he knew, Zeus punished him for telling ‘divine secrets’ to Asopus, and summoned Hades, who had enough trouble 1 Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Volume i (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1955), p. 216. 2 Odysseus’ nickname, ‘Hypsipylon’, is the masculine form of Hypsipyle, a play by Euripides and a legendary woman who saved her father when the women of Lemnos murdered all the men on the island for adultery (after Aphrodite made all the women smell so bad that their husbands took up with Thracian women imported to the island). When the other women learned that she had spared her father, out of vengeance she was sold into slavery to Lycurgus, king of Nemea. There, while she was acting as nurse to Opheltes, the king’s infant son, she became distracted (ostensibly by the needs of the Seven Against Thebes) and, in her neglect, the child was killed by a snake. 3 Graves, The Greek Myths, p. 217.

© Matthew Bowker, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_010

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capturing Sisyphus, for even Hades was handcuffed by trickery and was kept in Sisyphus’ house for several days.4 After Ares resolved the situation, Sisyphus once again implemented a ruse to keep him out of the underworld. Before descending to Tartarus, Sisyphus told his wife Merope not to bury him. Knowing that Persephone would have sympathy for this situation, Sisyphus went to Persephone and argued that he should be left on the far side of the river Styx. He begged: ‘Let me return to the upper world, arrange for my burial, and avenge the neglect shown me. My presence here is most irregular. I will be back within three days’. But ‘as soon as he found himself once again under the light of the sun’, he reneged on his promise and remained in the upper world.5 Sisyphus is sometimes spelled Sesephus and may be the Greek variant of Tesup, the Hittite Sun-​God. And, as the one who was originally injured by Autolycus’ theft, Sisyphus recalls the story of Jacob and Laban in Genesis, in which Rachel steals ‘household gods’ from her father, his uncle.6 At this moment, Albert Camus enters into the legend and, to a great degree, makes it his own. Camus and other scholars disagree and, eventually, demur on the reason that Sisyphus is given such a memorable and extraordinary punishment, but Camus makes Sisyphus into a Promethean figure by claiming that he risked his fate with the gods for the sake of water for his countrymen: ‘To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water’.7 Sisyphus is given a ‘shameless stone’, originally a Corinthian sun-​disk, and is ordered to push the stone/​disk to the top of a steep hill at the top of which stood the vault of Heaven. Of course, Sisyphus can never complete his task: Each time he gets close to the top, the stone rolls back down by its own weight, Sisyphus returns to the base of the hill to retrieve it, and he begins again, ‘though sweat bathes his limbs, and a cloud of dust rises above his head’.8 At some point, Sisyphus, the trickster and rebel, is broken. He apparently no longer wishes to escape Hades, nor longs for the light of day, but fully accepts his punishment. According to Camus, he is not an but the ‘absurd hero … as much through his passions as through his torture’. But neither his passions nor his acceptance of his torture seem particularly heroic. According to Camus, Sisyphus’s ‘scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won 4 Graves, The Greek Myths, p. 217. 5 Graves, The Greek Myths, p. 218. 6 Graves, The Greek Myths, p. 219, n1. 7 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York, Vintage, 1991), p. 119. 8 Graves, The Greek Myths, pp. 218–​219.

158 Bowker him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth’.9 Camus claims that at the very moments when Sisyphus walks down the hill to retrieve his stone, having failed to reach the vault of Heaven yet again, that he is most ‘conscious’. It is also the moment when he becomes ‘superior to his fate’ and ‘stronger than his rock’.10 Sisyphus, claims Camus, is superior to his fate and stronger than his rock because Sisyphus knows that, no matter his labors, the stone will roll back down the hill and he will, once again, fail at his task. Sisyphus ‘knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent’,11 unlike the ‘workman of today’ who, without the same (Marxist?) ‘consciousness’, believes each day that his labors will lead him somewhere new. But the story gets stranger. The myth, according to Camus, becomes tragic only ‘at the rare moments when it becomes conscious’. We may forgive Camus’s mix-​up here, lest we understand him to mean that the story, itself, becomes conscious of itself. Rather, what he means is that Sisyphus, ‘powerless and rebellious’, now ‘crowns his victory’ by dint of ‘the same lucidity that was to constitute his torture’.12 For Camus, at least in his early writings such as The Myth of Sisyphus, we may say that lucid sacrifice is better than unconscious contentment. Why? Only if tragic and lucid sacrifice represented an act of rebellion, not so much against a real ill of this world as against fate, ‘the world’ itself, or the gods. But why are rebellion and victory so important? The unfortunate answer is that ‘there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn’.13 Scorn, or contempt, at the gods does little to help improve Sisyphus’s or anyone else’s condition; indeed, it does the opposite. Sisyphus consciously conforms to the requirements of his eternal punishment and it is this conscious conformity that Camus valorizes, so long as it is mixed with hatred. It is as if Sisyphus were saying with his actions, ‘I accept this torture for the crimes of passion I have committed, for which I do not repent’, like Oedipus, in a moment of clarity, who cries out, ‘Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well’, which, for

9 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 120. 10 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 121. 11 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 121. 12 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 121. 13 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 121.

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Camus, is ‘the recipe for absurd victory’, as ‘ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism’.14 Let us consider this matter further. Sisyphus asks for help from Persephone, who grants him a temporary return to the world of the living. For his crimes, however, Sisyphus is condemned to the realm of the dead. Nothing around him is alive or vibrant. And yet, according to Camus, he may descend ‘in joy’ just as easily as ‘in sorrow’.15 To be joyful, then, is to scorn or spit in the face of one’s victimizers, to ‘drive out of this world a god who had come into it with … a preference for futile sufferings. [Now] it makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. All Sisyphus’s joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols’.16 We find a temptation here to make suffering into a masochistic ideal. Camus seems to be saying that as long as one is conscious of one’s pain, as long as ‘fate’ becomes a human matter and not a metaphysical or religious one, then one can claim victory over it because one’s consciousness is, in itself, an act of revolt. There is something sloppy about the psychology of the argument as well. It borders on magical thinking or what Hanna Segal would call a ‘symbolic equation’, where symbols are mistaken for the things themselves. Indeed, Germaine Brée asks: ‘What is a revolt that ends in the acceptance of a Sisyphus’?17 Is becoming conscious so acquisitive that it means not just being aware of, but possessing all of one’s circumstances? And even so, if one’s circumstances are bleak, why is this a victory unless the battle is a battle between unconscious suffering and conscious suffering? For Camus, life is a battle between unconscious suffering and conscious suffering. The problem is that this vision of victory still leaves us in a desolate and helpless world: ‘In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory’.18 Do we no longer hear the voices of others in absurd victory? Or do we hear them but ignore them because we know that, for them, there is no succor. ‘The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a 14 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 122. 15 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 122. 16 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 122–​123. 17 Germaine Brée, Camus, (Revised First Harbinger Books Ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), p. 208. 18 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 122.

160 Bowker personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable’. Having accepted that his destiny that is both inevitable and despicable, the absurd person is ‘a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end’, which makes of him something of a fool.19 The blind man needs help to see, but Camus refuses and insists, instead, not only that he does not need help but that it is the seeing man who needs help to see the endless night that the blind man perceives. The real, unconscious goal here is to share the darkness with others, with all others, until the entire universe is ‘divested of illusions and lights’.20 Camus believes that he inhabits a ‘condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults … Everything is ordered in such a way as to bring into being that poisoned peace produced by thoughtlessness, lack of heart, or fatal renunciations’.21 These conditions are, for Camus, certainties to which ‘I must sacrifice everything … to be able to maintain them’, and even ‘adapt my behavior to them’.22 In the end, Camus claims that Sisyphus finds contentment by struggling toward the summit, which is why he famously proclaims, ‘il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux’. [one must imagine Sisyphus happy].23 But, as Brée points out, we are forced to ask ourselves: what summit? ‘The ethics peculiar to Camus’s four preceding heroes are derived from the assertion that there is no ‘upward’ path. But Sisyphus is now a moral hero, a stoic, convinced that, in spite of the gods, man’s dignity requires him to ‘struggle toward the summit’’.24 Camus is arguing that, rather than reconciling it, wishing it away, or fighting it, we must accept and adapt to the truth we know about our lives: that we do not matter in an unhelpful and unreasonable world. We are impotent to change our plight, but Camus offers us what Jean-​Paul Sartre would call an invitation to mauvaise foi [bad faith] if we can accept absurdity as a ‘given’ and act accordingly. Camus has worked hard to argue that rational and spiritual perfection are impossible, and that human activities are not meaningful, that all that eventually holds truth for Camus is absurdity, the ‘confrontation of this irrational 19 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 123. 20 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6. 21 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 20. 22 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 121. 23 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 123. 24 Brée, Camus, p. 208.

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[world] and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart’.25 Is this call echoing in the human heart an example of ‘the myriad wondering little voices of the earth … unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces’ which are ‘the necessary reverse and price of victory’?26 If so, we must ignore them and make sacrifices to this absurd confrontation and to the conclusions to which it leads until, eventually, we must even adapt our behavior to suit what appears to be an impossible set of demands. After all, if one refuses to take leaps of faith or to commit ‘philosophical suicide’, one is left with a ‘ravaged world in which the impossibility of knowledge is established, in which everlasting nothingness seems the only reality and irremediable despair seems the only attitude’.27 For Camus, holding onto brokenness is a sign of our wholeness, because we have not given in to the desire to forget, to ignore, or to cheat the logic of absurdity. The key is finding out what is broken. It is the early loss of help and togetherness that breaks the child’s world. In the face of disruption or damage to early relationships, one has to contend with ‘the contradictory desires at once to search for and recover the lost relationship and to escape from painful reminders of loss’.28 This search and the resulting code of ‘absurd ethics’, serves both purposes well. 1

Making Meaning

Consider the possibility that this is how we make meaning: Family relationships organize our purposes and attachments, which are filtered through an interpretive context or structure of meaning to organize our actions, for the ability to learn from experience relies on the stability of the interpretations by which we predict the pattern of events. We assimilate new experiences by placing them in the context of a familiar, reliable construction of reality. This structure in turn rests not only on the regularity of events themselves, but on the continuity of their meaning … Confidence in the predictability of our surroundings rests not only on the accident of living … in a consistent world, but on our ability to abstract

25 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 21. 26 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 23. 27 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 25. 28 Peter Marris, Loss and Change, Revised Edition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), vii.

162 Bowker from particular events the underlying laws which govern them, in ways which are relevant to our human purposes. marris 1986, 6

But, of course, this regularity and predictability are precisely what Camus seems to have lost in Mythe, where there is ‘a direct connection between this feeling [of absurdity] and the longing for death’, which is the very subject of Camus’s essay: ‘This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting is properly the feeling of absurdity’.29 The social order evolves from the physical order, as we perceive it. But the principle which determines the predictability of the social environment are even more obviously of our own making than the sense we impose [or fail to impose] on the natural world … Each symbolic grammar is a language to express the meaning of relationships –​their purposes, expected patterns of interaction, the framework of assumptions about the world into which they fit. Any challenge to it is likely at first to provoke bewildered resentment.30 Remember, it is not the falsity of the system of meanings that generates the absurd dilemma, but rather a disruption in any system of meaning. Even Camus agrees that ‘a world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world’.31 Nonetheless, ‘what we cannot do is survive without a system of some kind for predicting the course of events. It does not matter that the system may be false on another system’s terms, so long as it identifies experiences in a way which enables people to attach meaning to them and respond’.32 The system holds to the extent that it provides help in a regular and predictable way. Indeed, ‘the predictability of behaviour is profoundly important, and it depends not only on some shared sense of the meaning of relationships but on conventions of expressing this meaning, which must be insisted upon all the more anxiously because it is arbitrary’.33 Camus takes the destruction of meaning to mean that no system of purposes and attachments can function for him or others, when it is, shall we say, his world that has collapsed, not necessarily ours. Or, it is ours if we share in 29 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6. 30 Marris, Loss and Change, p. 7, emphasis added. 31 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6. 32 Marris, Loss and Change, p. 6. 33 Marris, Loss and Change, p. 7.

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or identify with his particular dilemma, which is being helpless. In this way, helplessness is the new idol to which we sacrifice ourselves. I judge the notion of the absurd to be essential and consider that it can stand as the first of my truths …. If I judge that a thing is true, I must preserve it …. For me, the sole datum is the absurd. The first and, after all, the only condition of my inquiry is to preserve the very thing that crushes me, consequently to respect what I consider essential in it …. A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it. A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future. That is natural.34 Absurdity has made its way into ‘essentials’, ‘truth’, and even ‘nature’, which must be preserved, whereas, earlier, such notions and such behavior were treated as highly suspect. Camus is quick to point out that absurdity must lie not in the world or in the self but in the relation between the two. But he is not so circumspect about the construct of meaning, itself. That is, Camus seems to expect meaning to reside in the world and, what is more, that the world should present this meaning to him when he needs it. At this point, the idea of human meaning becomes nonsense as it would be given and, to the extent that it is unchanging and unchangeable, inhuman. 2

Relational Absurdity

Camus’s vision of the human being was, of course, that of a noble but tragic creature inhabiting a tragic (absurd) universe. In the first essay of The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus refers to either ‘the absurd’ or ‘absurdity’ as: a deprivation of ‘the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land’, a ‘divorce between man and his life’, an ‘odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent’, a moment when ‘the stage sets collapse’, ‘the denseness and strangeness of the world’, ‘the familiar and yet alarming brother we encounter in our own photograph’, ‘the elementary and definitive aspect of the [mortal] adventure’, and ‘the confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world’.35 Here we find an intellectual universe in which the essential

34 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 31. 35 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus pp. 6–​28.

164 Bowker realities of objects and forces such as ‘the world’, ‘the void’, and ‘the soul’, are more or less taken for granted, and, in that sense, are not terribly helpful. The final definition cited in the paragraph above, however, does advance our purpose, for when it is combined with Camus’s later elaboration of absurdity as the conflict or ‘divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints’, we are able to understand Camus’s vision of absurdity as a flaw or incongruity or lack (or manque, in Lacanian language) within a relationship.36 Camus contended that if there is absurdity in the human condition it is not simply an emanation of the human being nor of ‘the world’, but of the relationship between the two, specifically of ‘the confrontation between the human need [l’appel humain] and the unreasonable silence of the world’. This phrase –​l’appel humain –​is pregnant with meaning inasmuch as the notion of a person or child calling out for help or succor, but finding no reply, brings to mind the deprived or abandoned child faced with the psychically annihilating silence of a missing or depriving caregiver. It is unfortunate that Justin O’Brien’s (confounding) translation of the French word ‘appel’ as ‘need’ has for so many years obscured this obvious resonance and imagery. An appel is, first and foremost, a call or cry. In a second sense, it is an appeal. Thus, what is absurd, for Camus, is that the human call, the human cry, the human appeal for help, is met with silence. Absurdity is ‘born’ –​Camus’s use of the verb, naître, also calls to mind childbirth, infancy, and childhood –​in the chasm between an expectant cry and a terrifying absence, much as the subjective existence of the child is threatened with destruction if cries for the parent are unheeded.37 When the word ‘appel’ is encountered again in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus argues that the project of the absurd person is to find out if it is possible to live sans appel, ‘without appeal’.38 In this case, Camus uses appel to play on the juridical meaning of ‘appealing’ to a higher authority, and Camus seems to say: If the absurd person cries out expectantly but finds that the object of his need is silent, absent, or even radically diminished, then declaring this experience to be ‘absurd’ entails the refusal to make any further appeals. This indignant refusal, which rings of Aesop’s ‘sour grapes’, seems necessary for Camus if we are to maintain our dignity, or, at least, if we are to protect ourselves from further disappointment. Camus, then, asks us to preserve our awareness of absurdity, of the disharmony between our expectations and the realities of silence, loss, abandonment, 36 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 50. 37 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 28. 38 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 53.

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and deprivation we face. To refuse to ‘appeal’ them, in one sense, is a kind of appeal, since we are exhorted to “[keep] the absurd alive” by ‘contemplating it’,39 ‘through constant awareness, ever revived, ever alert’ to hold such agonies before our minds in order to ‘preserve the very thing that crushes [us]’.40 Even if it were possible to contemplate absurdity without losing ourselves in an imagination decoupled from reality, why would we wish to preserve the very thing that crushes us? Why is ‘the important thing … not to be cured, but to live with one’s ailments’?41 One answer is that when we declare conditions or events to be absurd, we paradoxically refuse to call (appeal) them and call (appel) them back, binding ourselves to their absence or deficiency by refusing to mourn their loss. Indeed, even Camus knows that absurdity ‘binds [the mind that desires and the world that disappoints] one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together’.42 For Camus, this binding hatred is built into the natures both of the human being and of the world. But, in psychoanalytic terms, one might say of such a perspective that it denies the possibility that what makes human existence absurd is a product of the human psyche: that we make experience absurd or not absurd. Put another way, Camus’ universe –​his ontology, if you will –​consists of reified supra-​human objects and forces that operate independently of the psyche and that actively contribute to the absurdity of the human experience: such as ‘the world’, ‘the void’, and ‘the soul’, etc. Confronted with such material, a psychoanalyst would likely note an unwillingness or failure to ‘own’ the emotions that constitute the absurd feeling or experience. That is, to the extent that we locate responsibility for absurdity in objects and forces outside of ourselves –​and while Camus places partial responsibility on our shoulders, more often he gives the impression that it is really ‘the world’ that denies us, that it is the world that is primarily responsible for our absurd condition –​we impoverish ourselves as agents or subjects who define and determine our own experience. Camus’s ‘external’ objects –​of which perhaps the most important and yet the least well-​defined is ‘the world’ –​are what a thoughtful psychoanalyst might understand as externalizations of internal objects created in the process of sorting out (or failing to sort out) internal dilemmas, particularly those associated with abandonment and helplessness.43 39 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 54. 40 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 31. 41 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 38. 42 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 21, 50. 43 It would, of course, be foolish to be too strict or binary in our approach to the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds, as these worlds overlap to a significant degree, and this overlap is part of

166 Bowker One problem with raging against externalized objects is that these objects are created and shaped almost exclusively by fantasy, by the mind of the one who rejects them. Thus, hatred of an abandoning object or envy of the privileged person who do not seem to experience the same abandonment translates into a form of hatred and self-​hatred. The position of one who rages against the impossibility of being ‘at home’ in the world –​a position embodied not only in Camus’s ‘absurd stance’ but in much late modern and postmodern thought –​ comes to resemble the position of the melancholic who finds himself stuck in a ‘mental constellation of [perpetual] revolt’.44 At times, Camus’s project seems more or less in line with the “normal” work of mourning Freud described in his famous essay, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, in which reality-​testing helps the individual to see ‘that the loved object no longer exists, and [to proceed] to demand that all libido should be withdrawn from its attachments to that object’.45 As opposed to the process of mourning, in melancholia the assimilation of loss and the prospect of creating attachments to new objects are rejected. The loss, itself, is left unmourned, and even remains unconscious to the melancholy person, who nevertheless rages violently against it and against himself. As Freud famously put it, when ‘the shadow of the [lost] object [falls] upon the ego’,46 the abandoned self punishes itself along with the bad object-​in-​self to which it is now bound by both love and hatred, finding pleasure in identifying with the pain-​inducing qualities of the object, which is to say: in inflicting pain and suffering on the self.

44

45 46

the foundation of the school of psychoanalysis to which I will turn most frequently in this essay, the school of object-​relations theory, which contends that our inner world are shaped by our interactions and relationships with objects (others) and that internal models and internal objects are created and then managed, repressed, or, quite frequently, cast out into the world to be re-​enacted throughout life. Externalization, a crucial part of the psychic economy that must rid the inner world of objects that are too dangerous or toxic to contain, is used, therefore, when managing internal conflicts or dilemmas proves to be impossible. External objects are ‘created’ and imbued with qualities (or the absence of qualities, i.e., depriving or withholding natures) to contain what cannot be contained within the self. Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” In: On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology, and Other Works, edited by J. Strachey, pp. 243–​ 58. (Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud no. 14., London: Hogarth), p. 248. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”, p. 244. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”, p. 249.

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If the love for the object … takes refuge in narcissistic identification, then the hate comes into operation on this substitutive object, abusing it, debasing it, making it suffer and deriving sadistic satisfaction from its suffering. The self-​tormenting in melancholia, which is without a doubt enjoyable, signifies … a satisfaction of trends of sadism and hate which relate to an object, and which have been turned round upon the subject’s own self.47 For Freud, both mourning and melancholia may be occasioned not only by the loss of a loved person, but by ‘the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, [or] an ideal’.48 Thus, losses, abuses, tragedies, and traumas of all varieties, large and small, individual and collective, may generate our need to mourn or to become melancholy, to either adjust to loss or to revolt against it. Because the losses for which Camus recommends the absurd stance are often of a broader, more political order, we may understand absurdity as a psychological posture of perpetual, melancholic revolt. Lately, melancholic revolt has been valorized as something heroic, along lines quite similar to those advanced by Camus. For Jacques Derrida, for instance, the failure or impossibility of mourning is rooted in an ethical injunction not to erase the other. Derrida argues that mourning should fail because, when it fails, it succeeds in leaving the other intact: It is ‘a tender rejection, a movement of renunciation, which leaves the other alone, outside, over there, in his death, outside of us’.49 In her essay on Levinas and Kristeva, Ewa Ziarek draws out the logical conclusion to Derrida’s argument by claiming that the melancholic’s inability to heal from grief must be recognized as a valiant refusal, undertaken with ‘unusual sobriety’, resulting in ‘a powerful critique of the desire to master alterity through the order of representation’.50 But these accounts get the idea of separateness wrong. To refuse to complete mourning, to refuse to (re-​)cognize the lost friend, is actually to refuse to let go of the lost friend. To reject our interiorizations and imaginations of the

47 48 49 50

Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”, p. 251. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”, p. 243. Jacques Derrida, Memoires for Paul De Man: The Wellek Library lectures at the University of California, Irvine. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989) p. 35. Ewa Ziarek, “Kristeva and Levinas: Mourning, Ethics, and the Feminine.” In: Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva’s Writing, edited by K. Oliver, 62–​78. (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 73.

168 Bowker person does not leave the other alone or ‘intact’, but seeks to preserve, without (re-​)cognizing, the friend’s vital uniqueness. In successful mourning, we are able to admit that this vital uniqueness has been lost and cannot be preserved because the living person is gone. To (re-​)cognize and mourn a loss is to permit the self to separate from the lost and cared-​for object, and to permit the object to separate from the self. Refusals of mourning, then, are refusals of the possibility of thinking about and relating to a lost beloved object, even an object that exists now only in memory or fantasy. They are refusals of communication between self and object in favor of a permanent (although agonizing) binding or communion. Members of a family or group who can only find connection through proximity, sameness, and belonging commune in melancholia and even in hatred, because communication is impossible. In Julia Kristeva’s words, they ‘nostalgically fall back on the real object (the Thing) of their loss, which is just what they do not manage to lose, to which they remain painfully riveted’.51 The absurd posture, then, seems to be motivated by a refusal to mourn loss, to understand it, and to ‘appeal’ it, all of which seems to afford the absurd self some protection against experiencing the most devastating effects of loss. Instead, a specious freedom and innocence are asserted as the absurd person attempts to ‘establish my lucidity in the midst of what negates it … [and to] exalt man before what crushes him’.52 In a similar way, survivors traumatized by the horrific violence of the Nazi Holocaust have been noted to resist psychological healing on the grounds that such healing is too similar to ‘granting Hitler a posthumous victory … To them [Holocaust survivors], self-​integration appears antithetical to the only justification of their survival –​that they are obligated to be angry witnesses against the outrage of the Holocaust’.53 Instead, ‘scorn’, for the self’s aspirations to healing, meaning, and being alive is the tool of the absurd rebel (Camus 1991b, 121). ‘Scorn’ prevents the absurd rebel from making meaning from loss. However, scorn also affords the rebel, by a circuitous route, a way to reconnect with something involved in the lost object-​relationship, something whose loss would be intolerable. This loss is the loss of righteous indignation, a combination of assumed innocence and rage, 51

Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. Translated by L.S. Roudiez. European Perspectives Series. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 43–​44. 52 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 87–​88. 53 Henry Krystal, ‘Trauma and Aging: A Thirty-​Year Follow-​up’. In: Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by C. Caruth, 76–​99. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 83.

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that may overtake the character of the absurd rebel and supplant his or her identity such that, rather than a creative subject, we find an individual who lives in permanent melancholic revolt, ressentiment, and reaction against a perceived harm done. 3

The Absurd Posture

To approach absurdity as a way of relating to objects in the inner world projected outward, rather than as an objective description of the world outside and its constituent parts reflected upon internally, is to imagine that absurdity describes a psychic posture involving certain dynamics operating within individuals or groups. A careful look at this idea suggests that ‘absurdity’ resembles ‘outrage’, which derives from the Old French outrage, and the Latin ultra +​ agium, meaning that which is outré, beyond or outside. Although, etymologically speaking, the term ‘outrage’ has nothing to do with ‘rage’, there is a kind of rage involved in designating something an ‘outrage’. When an offending person or thing is declared an ‘outrage’, it is designated outside of the bounds of reason or acceptability, as if by means of an intellectual exile we defended ourselves from, and perhaps avenged, its affront. When something has scandalized our ‘sensibilities’, we find it outrageous (outré-​geous) and, in doing so, we relegate it to a separate, exogenous category. We make it foreign, alien, incomprehensible. We cast objects outside of the realm of meaning, recognition, comprehension, and communication when we say, ‘This loss is not understandable but absurd’. At the same time, we find a means to connect with our own overwhelming rage and grief. We sacrifice our ability to mourn the loss of these objects, to make meaning from their absence or silence or badness, in order to take up a position of psychological revolt and melancholic communion with our own anger at having been rejected, hurt, or deprived. As I have sought to demonstrate elsewhere, the absurd posture readily becomes one of permanent rage and perpetual grieving that may even insist upon the imposition of rage, loss, and grief upon others in the name of solidarity. It can be fairly said of Camus that the thrust of his oeuvre is a multi-​faceted attack on an abandoning or depriving agent. Camus rails against ‘the world’, at powers that be, and even, at times, at God, for not being present, for not responding to our cries for help, for not bestowing on us what we need to make

170 Bowker our lives worth living.54 In this sense, Camus’ work is about the unattained privilege of feeling ‘at home’ in the world and, therefore, of being capable of living with the ‘ontological security’ needed to make life meaningful. Those who believe they are ‘at home’ have chiefly lied to themselves, according to Camus, have taken an unjustifiable ‘leap of faith’, or have otherwise betrayed a truth they know or ought to know about life and about themselves: that human beings can never be ‘at home’ in the world, barring some kind of help that is lacking. Thus, whose who claim to be at home, therefore, provoke rage and envy for enjoying or pretending to enjoy a comfort we lack. With only a few exceptions, Camus wrote of this privilege of being ‘at home’ not in a literal sense, but in a broader, philosophical one. Over the past several years, I have argued that Camus’s absurd posture and ambivalent attachment to the idea of ‘home’, lay at the root of his most scandalous political stance: his rejection of complete Algerian independence from France. Camus’ reasoning boiled down to the fact that the descendants of European colonists in Algeria (such as himself) were not guilty for having been born there. Since Algerian independence and self-​determination would likely have required the displacement of these immigrants and their families, robbing them of their connection to their home, Camus held that absolute autonomy for Algeria was untenable. While Camus was right that the ancestors of colonial occupants need not bear guilt for the actions of those who preceded them, it did not obviously follow that the pursuit of a reasonable and just solution to a complex political dilemma may not require them to suffer, just as autochthonous Algerians suffered mightily under French occupation. Camus, a highly influential public figure on this subject, could well have advocated for measures that would have mitigated the negative impacts of Algerian independence on the descendants and families of European colonists. Instead, it seemed as if his ambivalent attraction to and rejection of the idea of finding a ‘home’ in the world led him to support a continued but mitigated French colonial presence, effectively denying the native Algerian people the opportunity for full political self-​determination. If absurd protest refuses separateness, communication, and help in favor of melancholic revolt and rage, then its moral and political platforms will distract us from the most urgent necessities, such as recognizing and confronting obvious injustices, making reasonable and meaningful assessments of present-​day dilemmas, and offering political and moral judgments while accepting necessary consequences of those judgments. 54 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 2–​15.

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Instead, the vision of political community and identity advanced by Camus with respect to Algeria bore an uncanny resemblance to those totalizing ideologies Camus rejected throughout his life. That is, Camus demurred on the most difficult political realities while holding up a rather bizarre ideal of a shared, Mediterranean, ‘ur-​cultural’ identity to deny the need for Algerian independence. Indeed, for Camus, it seemed, at least in his more abstract writings on the subject, that any community could be formed so long as it shared an experience of suffering.55 Communities, then, need not be founded upon the codification of relationships based upon identities, attachments, or shared purposes, but, simply, ‘upon rebellion’, which generates an ‘awareness … no matter how confused it may be’ of our basic connectedness.56 It is this ‘metaphysical’ solidarity that Camus defends quite often, in which ‘a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself’ in order to establish ‘the kind of solidarity that is born in chains’.57 For Camus, ‘the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague’.58 Community and solidarity seem to be found primarily or exclusively in identification –​which Freud understood as the most primitive and ‘earliest emotional tie’ with another person. Unfortunately, rather than emphasizing the (re-​)cognition, communication, and relatedness of the separate and often incommensurable needs of distinct persons and parties, Camus’ political theory seems an attempt to found a community on the grounds of shared meaninglessness. This ideal of communion through suffering and strangeness, as I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere, is echoed throughout postmodern and contemporary ethics, in which subjectivity and recognition are rejected in favor of group membership founded upon a ‘point of identification with suffering itself’.59 Both the absurd and the postmodern vision of community, then, present real

55 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 14–​22. 56 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 21,14. 57 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 17. 58 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 22, emphasis added. 59 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, (London: Verso, 2004), p. 30, emphasis added.

172 Bowker obstacles to the contemporary imagination of meaningful (re-​)cognition, inter-​subjectivity, and communication as moral and political values. For those who are missing the capacities to find or create homes for themselves, efforts to establish a home in world outside take the shape of an ambivalently-​driven search for the lost home and for the lost objects that would have secured that home. The search for a new home in a new world is ambivalently driven because the goal is both to recover the home and to destroy the home. It may even take the shape of destroying the homes of others, so as to return to an internal state of being that is not safe but is, at least, familiarly dangerous. These complex quests for a home, rather than engendering nurturing attitudes toward the self and others and a shared recognition of their need to create places where children can safely develop into autonomous persons, all-​too readily impels those engaged with it to adopt destructive, paranoid orientations and ‘mental constellation[s]‌of revolt’ toward external representatives of internal objects that make life in the home absurd, if not dangerous. In ‘revolting’ against the unjust distribution of privilege, one may even end by unconscious taking–​up (re-​enacting) the role of the depriving and oppressing agent one consciously rejects. 4

Conclusion

If Camus’s ‘absurd man is the contrary of the reconciled man’,60 and if his aim, in a world perceived to be pervaded by victimization, violence, and loss, is not to recover meaning and wholeness but merely ‘to live with [his] ailments’,61 then only by perpetuating a condition of disrupted being can the absurd rebel find his innocence. Only in a survival scenario where all are constantly under threat of extinction is the absurd rebel able to suppress the temptation to assert subjectivity, announce values, make history, and live creatively, not in the sense of a creative artist, but in the sense elucidated by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, where mature creativity requires a more or less integrated self, not one preoccupied with rage or revolt. The absurd stance, while seeming to rebel against a bad object, actually replicates key components of the bad object’s violence, particularly its extremity. The absurd actor must destroy the enemy and then destroy himself, so that all

60 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 59n. 61 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 38.

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guilt and badness are erased from memory. One way to understand this unfortunate repetition is to recall that a substantial part of what makes a ‘bad’ object ‘bad’, in formative experience, is that the bad object represents a lie. The lie of the bad object is that it promises care and gratification but delivers pain and deprivation. For Camus and others, conforming to reality by understanding it, by ‘living with it’ in a figurative sense, or by justifying it and making it appear to be ‘good’ means lying about the realities of pain and deprivation, consenting to them as if they were help and gratification. However, for Camus, it would seem that this lie has come to represent all that is bad about the bad object. That is, the badness of bad objects and bad acts are found not in their violence but in our comprehension of their violence. Real violence and destructiveness are attended to less than the self’s symbolic, psychological, and internal negotiations with the ideas of violence and destructiveness. Badness is thereby displaced from the violent act and actor onto the self that might justify the act, rationalize violence, or otherwise partake in what absurd and postmodern rebels consider to be cruel illusions of care, justice, or progress. Perhaps there is no more appropriate term than ‘absurd’ to describe our horror and outrage at Auschwitz, or at the Nazi guard who famously told Primo Levi that ‘hier gibt es kein warum’ [‘Here there is no why’]. Because shock, confusion, and senselessness already pervade such horrors, we may be reluctant to give them up. Declaring such events to be absurd both contains and distances us from their injustice, inhumanity, and terror. What Camus seems to say of such events is that they force us to contend with losses so great we have no recourse but to find them absurd, lest we lose some important part of what makes us human. To mourn, to heal, and to move on from these tragedies, Camus and others seem to say, would be to accept them, which, in turn, would normalize them, integrate them into the fabric of everyday life. Camus seemed to recognize that the fight against absurdity is itself absurd, because we declare Auschwitz absurd today to protest Auschwitz’s occurrence yesterday, which is quixotic but understandable as a psychological stance that will not tolerate the acceptance or assimilation of the losses of life, humanity, and moral limits that Auschwitz implies. We may be terrified of assimilating such losses because we are terrified of getting used to them, of being connected to them, in no small part because we fear that to do so would invite their repetition. If the posture of absurdity permits such losses never to be fully understood, and therefore never to be fully mourned, it also permits us to experience ourselves as largely innocent combatants against those who instigated them.

174 Bowker Nevertheless, read in this light, absurdity become a protest not against violence but against comprehending violence: the comprehension of loss and violence associated with rationalization or habituation that covers them up, often by declaring loss and violence necessary or understandable in the context of its causes or intentions. In rebelling against the comprehension of loss and violence, the absurd rebel ends up rebelling against the ability to make them meaningful and the ability to live through them, and even live beyond them, as subjects. By equating meaning, understanding, mourning, and thinking with collaboration, conformity, and complicity in violence, such perspectives terrorize understanding and being by forcing the self into an absurd dilemma whereby its ability to comprehend, contend with, and ‘live with’ badness and violence become affronts to its innocence. Perhaps, like Camus’s relative utopianism, such perspectives are not so bold as to seek ‘a world in which murder no longer exists’.62 What is troubling is that, in the place of world without violence, we should seek a world in which a form of psychological violence and self-​violence is used as a tool to destroy meaningful doing and being. Most who write of the Holocaust qualify their work by asserting that the experience can never be completely understood. Some even argue that what makes the Holocaust unique is that ‘what occurred in Nazi death camps was so absolutely evil that, like no other event in human history, it defies human capacities for understanding’.63 Such claims arise from an absurd protest against the Holocaust’s horrors. We are mystified not only out of respect for all those who suffered so immensely, but because our mystification is an integral part of our protest. But does calling Auschwitz ‘absurd’ make the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust more meaningful? Does it prepare us to live and struggle against future atrocities or does it only offer shallow reassurance that, as long as one remains mystified by loss, all is not lost? Perhaps there are sufferings so great, so threatening even to witness or contemplate, that our ability to make them meaningful should be revoked in protest. In this spirit we may understand

62

63

In the short essay, ‘To Save Lives’, Camus offered a theoretical frame for his ‘relative utopianism’: ‘People like myself want not a world where murder no longer exists (we are not so crazy as that!), but one where murder is no longer legitimized. Here we are indeed utopian –​and contradictorily so. For we live in a world where murder is legitimized, and if we do not like that, we must change it … In a more relative utopia, we could demand that murder be no longer legitimized’ (1991, pp. 120–​121). S. Nieman, S. 2002. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 2, emphasis added.

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Claude Lanzmann’s declaration that ‘there is an absolute obscenity in the very project of understanding’ the Holocaust.64 Theodor Adorno’s famous statement that poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric and Primo Levi’s claim that, ‘if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence’ express a sentiment that is not entirely dissimilar.65 The real question of absurdity is the question of whether people like Lanzmann, Adorno, and Levi are right. Taken together, our projects of understanding, poetry, and Providence compose much of our ability to accept loss, to assimilate loss, to make loss meaningful. Refusing understanding, therefore, protects our outrage as one small thing that can never be lost, but it also requires that our outrage can never be resolved, that reality can never be comprehensible or meaningful, and that while we may revolt in order to be a part of a collectivity, we must sacrifice our ability to be mature adults. 64 65

Claude Lanzmann, ‘The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening with Claude Lanzmann’. In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by C. Caruth, 200–​20. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 204. Primo Levi Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. Translated by S. Woolf. (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996), pp. 157–​158.

­c hapter 9

Explanation and the Unreasonable Silence of the World Craig DeLancey 1 Introduction1 In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus describes the absurd in several different ways.2 We can however recognize some, if not all, of these different accounts as falling in two broad categories. Some of his concerns are teleological, and some of them are epistemic. The teleological accounts of the absurd concern purpose, and our sense that we lack a justified or sufficient purpose. This is captured in Camus’s opening to the book, where he claims that suicide is the ‘only truly serious philosophical problem’.3 And, ‘I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions’.4 ‘Meaning’ here means purpose, in French as in English; the question of whether we should kill ourselves is explicitly framed at the outset as the question of whether we have sufficient purpose to go on living; or, equivalently, if our purposes are sufficient reason not to commit suicide. Camus also makes use of a teleological approach when he uses the term ‘absurd’ to refer to a passion or experience: ‘From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all’.5 He describes a tension, a struggle, between our desire for a sufficient purpose, and a recognition that history and the universe are without purpose: ‘The absurd is born of this confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world’.6 But, in contrast to these teleological uses, Camus also makes an explicit argument that the absurd is our inability to understand the world. This epistemic absurd he describes as a failure of ‘rationality’: ‘With the exception

1 My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. 2 See Craig DeLancey, ‘Camus’s Absurd and the Argument against Suicide’, Philosophia 49 (February 2021): 1953–​1971. 3 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien. (New York: Vintage, 1955), p. 3. 4 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 4. 5 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 22. 6 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 28.

© Craig DeLancey, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_011

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of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge’.7 He goes so far as to suggest that science itself is a failure, which asks ‘futile’ questions.8 These two different approaches to the absurd present us with a problem: they appear independent. We can imagine—​and many of us believe—​that there is a world that can be successfully described by science, but which is without purpose. And, we can imagine a purposeful world that is incomprehensible; the ancient view of a world ruled and directly influenced by capricious, unpredictable gods was such a cosmos. Can we then reconcile Camus’s two approaches? Or is he using diverse and independent notions of the ‘absurd’ in The Myth of Sisyphus? In this essay, I will argue that we can reconcile his approaches. Although they are distinct, and some aspects of his account are indeed independent of others, we can reconcile the teleological and epistemic notions of the absurd by recognizing the central importance of teleological (often called ‘functional’) explanation in our everyday lives. I will proceed as follows. In Section 2, I review the teleological notion of the absurd, and show how it is essential to Camus’s long-​term project. In Section 3, I review his account of the epistemic absurd. Section 4 gives an account of the nature of teleological explanation, and its relation to other kinds of explanation. Using this account of teleological explanation, I show how the teleological and epistemic accounts of the absurd are fundamentally related. 2

The Teleological Absurd

One sense of the absurd stands out in Camus’s own start to The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus sees his method as analogous to Descartes’s method of doubt;9 only, instead of doubting that he knows, he will try to doubt whether he has reason to go on living. ‘I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions’.10 This question of purpose was a central theme throughout Camus’s work. More than a decade after its initial publication, Camus wrote a preface for the American edition that states explicitly that this book and The Rebel struggle with a common theme. ‘The fundamental subject of The Myth

7 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 18. 8 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 19. 9 A decade after its publication, Camus would tell an interviewer that ‘When I analyzed the feeling of the Absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, I was looking for a method and not a doctrine. I was practicing methodical doubt. I was trying to make a ‘tabula rasa’, on the basis of which it would then be possible to construct something’ (lce, 356). 10 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 4.

178 DeLancey of Sisyphus is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore, it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face’.11 He is wise to choose suicide as his theme. There is a certain amount of effort, of work, that goes into living. The question of whether that work is worth doing is the question of whether we have purposes which make it worthwhile. Camus repeatedly reminds us throughout the text that this is his theme. ‘One kills oneself because life is not worth living, that is certainly a truth’.12 Camus’s readers were presumably ready to hear his concern. Many shared with him a conviction that the history of the world did not suggest that history had some overarching purpose. And yet, one can object that surely human beings do have purposes. If we look at the behaviors of people, we see that they always understand themselves in terms of their own purposes. In what sense then can life be said to ‘lack meaning’, to be purposeless? Camus’s brief phenomenological analysis of a situation where we experience the absurd gives us an answer. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show; you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this ‘nausea’, as [Jean-​Paul Sartre] calls it, is also the absurd.13 This is at first perplexing. On the one hand, there is clearly a sense in which part of my alienation is that this man does not have purposes that I comprehend and share. But doesn’t he have purposes of his own, that he comprehends? He does, but it turns out that we can turn that same analysis upon ourselves. Camus asserts that we can experience the same alienation from our own lives: It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, street-​car, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm …. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.14 11 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. v. 12 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 8. 13 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, pp. 14–​15. 14 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, pp. 11–​12.

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Essential to this experience is that corrosive ‘Why’?, which asks if our purposes are justified and if they are sufficient. I see the man in his phone booth, and he can begin to seem strange—​‘inhuman’—​if I ask, ‘What is it all about? Why is he alive? Why so animated’? But the same corrosive questioning can be turned against myself: I can look at my own life, and question my purposes, embedded in my routine—​perhaps a monotonous routine. As a result of such reflection, and asking ‘Why’?, my purposes seem no longer justified or sufficient. An important clarification must be made at this point. As we noted, it cannot be simply that human beings are without purposes. We can with confidence, for example, assume that the man in the phone booth is speaking and gesturing with purpose. He would explain his own actions by citing those purposes. For the teleological absurd to be consistent with this observation, it must be that what we lack is a purpose, or purposes, that are justified and sufficient. I use ‘justified’ and ‘sufficient’ as primitives here. But we can say at least that a purpose is justified if it does not collapse (we do not judge it as contingent, arbitrary, unjustified) when we ask Camus’s corrosive ‘Why’? The purpose will not evaporate under interrogation. We may want other criteria and explanation of what justifies a purpose, but at least justification must be such that asking ‘Why’? of one’s purposes does not dissolve the justification away and make the purpose seem futile. One necessary criterion for a purpose being sufficient is that it gives one reason to go on living. This is Camus’s concern: not whether we have some purpose or other, but rather whether we have a purpose that gives us reason to go on with the effort of living. What we see in these passages is that Camus believes we have an experience in which we doubt whether our purposes are justified and sufficient, and from this looms the question of whether life is worth continuing. Contrast Camus’s corrosive ‘Why’? with the teleological conception of Aristotle. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers an account of how we can determine the natural purposes of a human being or human activity. So if what is done has some end that we want for its own sake, and everything else we want is for the sake of this end; and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (because this would lead to an infinite progression, making our desire fruitless and vain), then clearly this will be the good, indeed the chief good.15

15 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Roger Crisp. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 4 [1094a16-​22].

180 DeLancey These purposes are self-​justifying: We speak of that which is worth pursuing for its own sake as more complete than that which is worth pursuing only for the sake of something else, and that which is never worth choosing for the sake of something else as more complete than things that are worth choosing both in themselves and for the sake of this end. And so that which is always worth choosing in itself and never for the sake of something else we call complete without qualification.16 On Aristotle’s account, my purposes are partially ordered by the relation, ‘_​_​_​is for _​_​__​ ​’. For example, eating is for nutrition, or study is for the acquisition of knowledge. But at the end of each such ordering will be a purpose that has no other purpose; it is reflexively for itself. Aristotle is giving us an implicit method to find such a good. I ask you why you exercise, and you say that you exercise because you want to strengthen your heart. I ask why strengthen your heart, and you say it would be healthy. I ask you why seek to be healthy, and there is no further purpose to which you can refer. Being healthy is for being healthy. Health is a natural end (a natural telos) of a human being. Thus, in this hypothetical analysis, exercise is for strengthening the heart, strengthening the heart is for health, health is for health. For Aristotle, these natural ends came together in the organizing purpose of eudaimonia, living with excellence. The term translated as ‘complete’ in this passage is teleios, which also has a sense of having achieved its purpose. At the time when he is writing The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus is in the company of the existentialists in rejecting an account like that of Aristotle. When we reach the end of our ordered purposes, what we find is not a natural and justified and sufficient purpose, but rather a purpose like all the others—​but now floating freely, without self-​justification. (We can say that, for the existentialists, the relation ‘_​_​_​is for _​_​_​’ orders our purposes, but it is an irreflexive relation.) Heidegger makes this explicit in his own analysis. He observes that every ready-​to-​hand entity (for example, a tool encountered through its use) has an ‘in-​order-​to’, and the Dasein using that equipment has a ‘towards-​which’.17 At the end of a partially ordered chain of such relations of the towards-​which is the for-​the-​sake-​of-​which of a Dasein: ‘the “for-​the-​sake-​of-​which” to which

16 17

Nicomachean Ethics, p. 10 [1097a30-​1097b1]. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1962), p. 99.

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every “towards-​which” ultimately goes back’.18 These purposeful relations create a network of meanings and possibilities for Dasein. But, for Heidegger, in the attunement (the mood, Befindlichkeit) of Angst, one can see that one’s for-​ the-​sake-​of-​which is contingent, it is merely a product of one’s choices. It is ‘nothing’. Presumably we need some criteria, independent of our own choices, for when a purpose is justified and sufficient. As we saw, one example of such a criterion can be found in Aristotle’s reasoning about purposes in The Nicomachean Ethics. There Aristotle argues that we can know the good is complete because it is a purpose that is not for some other end. A good is thus an end-​in-​itself. For Aristotle, it is axiomatic that these final ends are justified and sufficient. But for the existentialists, instead, this is just evidence that our justifications don’t work; they ultimately are just exhausted with something that is an arbitrary choice. Consider Sartre’s version of existentialism to see how these criteria of justified and sufficient fail to be satisfied in his account of human purposes. Values are wholly the creation of human being: [H]‌uman reality is that by which value arrives in the world. But the meaning of being for value is that it is that towards which a being surpasses its being; every value-​oriented act is a wrenching away from its own being toward _​_​_​_​_​_​.19 This is Sartre’s way of capturing purposefulness in his own metaphysics, in which he claims that the for-​itself (the kind of being that you and I are) is nothing, because it is free and so without any essence. Values negate the world as it is, and are identical with our striving for a world that is not—​a world which we have willed as a goal. Thus, for Sartre, human values are completely the product of a choice. One chooses to do action A, and in so doing one values A and makes of A a purpose. But is this purpose justified or sufficient? Satisfaction of these criteria would require some measure or criterion that allows us to distinguish the justified and sufficient purposes from those that are not justified and sufficient. For Sartre, the answer must be no, since there is no other criterion on offer to distinguish one purpose from another. The for-​itself that values A by doing A can just as easily choose to hinder all attempts to do action A, and thereby 18 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 119. 19 Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel Barnes. (New York: Washing­ ton Square Press, 1956), p. 144.

182 DeLancey value the opposite. The one criterion that Sartre offers regarding our choices is authenticity, choosing while recognizing the responsibility of one’s freedom. However, this authenticity concerns the state of the acting for-​itself, it is not a criterion for purposes themselves. Sartre never denies that one could be an authentic Nazi or an authentic member of the French resistance. It is for this reason that Sartre was never able to complete an ethical theory, although at the end of Being and Nothingness he promised to dedicate himself to this task.20 He left behind a large cache of notes on ethics which testify to his fruitless struggle.21 Heidegger, in contrast, is a more difficult case. In our average everyday living, we do not question our purposes, and thus seem to prima facie take them as sufficient and justified. But when in Angst, we can come to understand that our purposes are contingent, and therefore presumably unjustified. In response, like Sartre, Heidegger offers only that we can “choose to choose” and form a kind of life (authentic existence) in which we recognize this contingency. But here again, there seems to be no reason to pick one purpose over another, and so it is hard to see how any purpose can be justified or sufficient. Camus’s reasoning, although implicit, is clear enough. We might address his concerns with the following argument:

premise 1:

If one has a justified and sufficient purpose, then one has reason to continue to live. premise 2: If one has reason to continue to live, then suicide is not justified. conclusion 1: If one has a justified and sufficient purpose, then suicide is not justified.

Let us call this ‘argument 1’. The argument is valid, and Camus and many of his readers would have found it sound. One could make a very strong case that the 20 21

After a list of open questions that remain at the end of Being and Nothingness, Sartre writes, ‘All these questions, which refer us to a pure and not an accessory reflection, can find their reply only on the ethical plane. We shall devote to them a future work’, p. 798. We can see his inconclusive work in, Notebooks for an Ethics, translated by David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Simone de Beauvoir, in contrast, succeeded in The Ethics of Ambiguity to create an ethics that could rank some values, but she did so only by adding several new axioms to existentialism: that increased freedom reveals more being, and that we want to reveal more being. From these, she derives that we should seek in all actions to increase freedom. This becomes then a measure of purposes: purposes should be preferred to the degree that they increase freedom. (See The Ethics of Ambiguity, translated by Bernard Frechtman, Secauccus NJ: Citadel Press, 1947.)

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argument is sound. The first premise must be true, given the criteria we have adopted for ‘justified’ and ‘sufficient’. The second premise would seem to follow from what we probably mean by ‘suicide is not justified’. But the question that torments Camus is: what if one does not have a justified and sufficient purpose? Does it then follow that suicide is justified? From argument 1 it does not follow; to infer it would be to commit the fallacy of denying the antecedent. But this raises a troubling consideration. Is argument 1 misrepresenting our condition? Is our existential condition better captured by the following argument; call this argument 2:

premise 3:

One has a justified and sufficient purpose if and only if one has reason to continue to live. premise 4: One has reason to continue to live if and only if suicide is not justified. conclusion 2: One has a justified and sufficient purpose if and only if suicide is not justified.

This argument is also valid. If we accept the conclusion of argument 2, then our lack of a justified and sufficient purpose would indeed entail that suicide is justified. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus implicitly holds to argument 1, and rejects argument 2. Although Camus is not as explicit in his reasoning as I am above, he seems to make this point when he observes, ‘people have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments’.22 Thus, we lack a justified and sufficient purpose, but it does not follow that we should kill ourselves. Rather, Camus argues that more life is a goal that can sustain us: If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.23

22 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 11. 23 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, pp. 60–​61.

184 DeLancey His examples of such a life include such types as Don Juan, an actor, a conqueror, and a creator. There is much in this view that coheres with Nietzsche (one is reminded of the early prototypes of the Ubermensch described in the third Untimely Meditation: ‘They are those true men, those who are no longer animal, the philosophers, artists and saints; nature, which never makes a leap, has made its one leap in creating them’).24 Camus’s notebooks are disappointing sites for finding clues to his philosophical development; he rarely reveals his reasoning about philosophical questions in them; but it is of interest that while working on The Myth of Sisyphus he refers in the Notebooks to reading Nietzsche. There are differences in their approaches here, however. In the Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche recognizes that Darwin has shown that we are animals, and he points out that we recognize that animal suffering is pointless;25 the goal of the philosopher, artist, and saint is to make of humanity something super-​animal, and in so doing give a meaning to our suffering. Instead, Camus coheres better with Nietzsche’s spirit of amor fati. Camus’s absurd heroes, in The Myth of Sisyphus, show heroism by embracing their lives, and demanding more life. During the war, Camus changes his view—​or, given that he repeatedly insists that The Myth of Sisyphus was a kind of experiment and starting effort, perhaps it is better to say during the war he clarified and developed his view. In the fourth Letter to a German Friend, he projects onto his German interlocutor the belief that from the absurd comes ethical nihilism. ‘For a long time we both thought that this world had no ultimate meaning and that consequently we were cheated. I still think so in a way’.26 This justifies the violence of Nazism: ‘You supposed that in absence of any human or divine code the only values were those of the animal world—​in other words, violence and cunning. Hence you concluded that man was negligible and that his soul could be killed …’.27 But Camus says he chose a different path: I … chose justice in order to remain faithful to the world. I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature

24

Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, edited by Daniel Breazeale and translated by R. J. Hollingdale. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997), p. 159. 25 Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, p. 157. 26 Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, translated by Justin O’Brien. (New York: Vintage, 1960), p. 28. 27 Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, p. 27.

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to insist on having one. This world has at least the truth of man, and our task is to provide its justifications against fate itself.28 Later, in The Rebel, Camus endorses the view that there is a human nature: Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving?29 Indeed, this human nature is revealed to us through the history of our revolt. That we share such a human nature means that there is a fact of the matter about what is better or worse for a human being. It will determine certain human purposes that should be respected. Camus often liked to refer to his views as being rooted in Mediterranean, as opposed to Germanic, philosophy; and this seems indeed true, as his ultimate position is one that is consistent with Aristotle’s own. Thus, the primary view of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, and the view that explains the consistent concerns of all his work, is the teleological absurd: X is teleologically absurd if and only if X lacks a justified and sufficient purpose. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus considers the possibility that the world, history, and each human being lack a justified and sufficient purpose. But in Camus’s later work, it is rather history and the universe that lack a purpose. The problem then becomes how to foster the fragile, and tragically doomed, human purposes in this indifferent world. This is not to suggest that there is not an important relation between different kinds of things lacking purpose. Camus recognizes that often we have justified human purposes with reference to cosmic or historical perspectives. He sometimes refers to this as ‘unity’. Camus never defines ‘unity’, but we can determine its meaning by his use and by how he contrasts it with totality. Unity would be a state where history or the universe had some purposes (that is, there existed some ‘transcendental’ purposes) and our human purposes cohere

28 Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, p. 28. 29 Albert Camus, The Rebel, translated by Anthony Bower. (New York: Vintage, 1956), p. 16.

186 DeLancey with, and are felt to be sufficient and justified because they cohere with, those purposes. If man realized that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled. If thought discovered in the shimmering mirrors of phenomena eternal relations capable of summing them up and summing themselves up in a single principle, then would be seen an intellectual joy of which the myth of the blessed would be but a ridiculous imitation.30 This is a longing for a single, enduring, and external purpose that can act as guide to our human purposes. It was a commonplace of earlier philosophy that such unity existed, and that we simply fail to perceive it because of the complexity of the world and of God’s plan. That sentiment is well-​captured by Alexander Pope in his ‘Essay on Man’, where the poet tells us that: All nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony, not understood; All partial Evil, universal Good: And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite, One truth is clear, ‘Whatever is, is right’.31 Of course, Camus rejects any such claims, for the simple reason that we have no evidence that they are true: ‘My reasoning wants to be faithful to the evidence that aroused it. That evidence is the absurd. It is that divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, my nostalgia for unity, this fragmented universe and the contradiction that binds them together’.32 Camus also sometimes refers to ‘totality’. Totality is instead a desire to have a unity of a single purpose that is enforced and that justifies oppression. In The Rebel, Camus will offer as an example of totality the ‘Caesarian Marxism’ of Stalin; for these Marxists, the totality is the belief that history has a purpose—​ the telos of achieving communism—​and any action that speeds this end is justified. ‘Totality is, in effect, nothing other than the ancient dream of unity

30 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 17. 31 Alexander Pope, Pope: Poetical Works, edited by Herbert Davis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 249. 32 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 50.

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common to both believers and rebels, but projected horizontally onto an earth deprived of God’.33 Throughout The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus also refers to the ‘experience’ of the absurd: ‘From the moment that absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all’.34 And: ‘The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world’.35 This too is a slightly different use of the term ‘absurd’, but one that can easily be reconciled with the teleological conception of the absurd. Like Heidegger’s Angst, in the experience of the absurd one has the harsh experience of recognizing that the world is without purpose, and perhaps also that one’s own purposes are unjustified or insufficient. Camus is thus describing a tension between a desire for unity, and a suspicion that there will be no unity; and he also seems to be describing a tension between a desire for a justified and sufficient purpose, and the experience we have when we come to believe that we may lack a justified and sufficient purpose. Thus, at the bottom of this account is still the teleological conception of the absurd. It might be useful to contrast this understanding of Camus’s teleological absurd with an alternative one. In an article that responds to Camus’s reflections on the absurd, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel offers a view that he presents as corrective of some kind of confusion he ascribes to Camus. His view strikes far from Camus’s concerns, and fails to offer a plausible alternative interpretation of Camus’s work. However, contrasting Nagel’s interpretation with our own does offer an insightful distinction. Nagel begins by claiming that a common form of argument that human life is absurd is not sound. His concern is arguments that depend on such claims as ‘nothing we do now will matter in a million years’ or that ‘we are tiny specks in the infinite vastness of the universe’.36 He claims that because justifications must end, then scale of time involved should not matter. It is interesting that the existentialists had a clear sense that our purposes are essentially temporal; it is for this reason that Being and Time concludes with a lengthy analysis of time. But it is sufficient here to note that time scales do matter to the kind of teleological analysis we discussed earlier. A person may have the goal of being a father, and seventy years of life may be sufficient for this; but human beings 33 Camus, The Rebel, p. 233. 34 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 22. 35 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 28. 36 Thomas Nagel, ‘The Absurd’. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68, No. 20, Sixty-​Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Oct. 21, 1971), p. 716 and 717.

188 DeLancey are also capable of having purposes that extend far in time, past a likely time of death. In such a case, death is an impediment to the realization of those purposes. Camus frequently cites death as an aspect of the absurd for this reason. But it is another aspect of Nagel’s analysis that is more strikingly different. It is necessary to quote Nagel at some length: When a person finds himself in an absurd situation, he will usually attempt to change it, by modifying his aspirations, or by trying to bring reality into better accord with them, or by removing himself from the situation entirely. We are not always willing or able to extricate ourselves from a position whose absurdity has become clear to us. Nevertheless, it is usually possible to imagine some change that would remove the absurdity—​whether or not we can or will implement it. The sense that life as a whole is absurd arises when we perceive, perhaps dimly, an inflated pretension or aspiration which is inseparable from the continuation of human life and which makes its absurdity inescapable, short of escape from life itself.37 Thus, for Nagel, the absurd is a sense of the failure of our lives to live up to some standard that we have. We experience or are aware of the absurd when we take a kind of external or god’s-​eye view of our lives: ‘We step back to find that the whole system of justification and criticism, which controls our choices and supports our claims to rationality, rests on responses and habits that we never question’.38 The feeling of the absurd arises ‘by the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt’.39 This is not dissimilar to Heidegger’s analysis of Angst, or Camus’s observations about the corrosive ‘Why?’ But there is a substantial difference. For Camus, the absurd is not just a product of doubting the entirety of one’s system of justifications. Thus, one does not need an external view of all of one’s purposes to recognize the absurd. We can see this by looking to two kinds of examples. First, Nagel argues that the purposes of non-​human animals cannot be absurd. ‘A mouse … is not absurd, because he lacks the capacities for self-​consciousness and self-​ transcendence that would enable him to see that he is only a mouse’.40 But 37 38 39 40

Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 718. Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 720. Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 719. Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 725.

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if the absurd were not dependent upon this external, self-​transcendent perspective, then a non-​human animal’s life could be absurd. This is precisely the position that Nietzsche adopts in the Untimely Meditations. Recognizing that Darwin has shown that human beings are animals, Nietzsche promptly infers that our lives are threatened by the absurd precisely because the lives of animals are often absurd: More profoundly feeling people have at all times felt sympathy for the animals because they suffer from life and yet do not possess the power to turn the thorn of suffering against itself and to understand their existence metaphysically; one is, indeed, profoundly indignant at the sight of senseless suffering.41 Camus does not discuss the purposes of non-​human animals, but his teleology is closer to Nietzsche’s than to Nagel’s. An animal’s suffering will be absurd if it is not justified or sufficient. Second, a more serious break concerns the status of human suffering. We can illustrate this when we consider an important scene from The Plague. In a climactic passage of the novel, a young child dies of the plague while the protagonists of the novel look on, doing their best to try to save the child but unable to do so. The scene is horrific and compelling. One of those present at the death is a priest of the city who had previously preached that the plague was a punishment that the city residents had earned through their impiety. The narrator, Dr. Rieux, in an unusual loss of his temper, angrily tells the Priest after the child dies: ‘That child, anyhow, was innocent, and you know it as well as I do’. The point is clear: the child’s death was not a cosmic punishment. There is no purpose to this child’s death. It is absurd. But it cannot be absurd on Nagel’s view, unless we somehow adopt the external transcendent view on our own lives or the life of the child: absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. Like skepticism in epistemology, it is possible only because we possess a certain kind of insight—​the capacity to transcend ourselves in thought.42

41 Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, p. 157. 42 Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 727.

190 DeLancey But there is no issue of transcendence in such a case. We do not need to entertain some kind of super-​human perspective to recognize the absurdity of a child’s death. We feel it from a perspective well ensconced in our everyday lives and concerns. Nagel uses his notion of the absurd to criticize Camus: Camus—​not on uniformly good grounds—​rejects suicide and the other solutions he regards as escapist. What he recommends is defiance or scorn. We can salvage our dignity, he appears to believe, by shaking a fist at the world which is deaf to our pleas, and continuing to live in spite of it …. This seems to me romantic and slightly self-​pitying.43 The reference to scorn is to Camus’s claim in the ultimate section of The Myth of Sisyphus, where—​referring to the victory of Sisyphus over his fate—​Camus says, ‘There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn’.44 We see here a notion that is consistent throughout Camus’s work: that we can revolt against our fate, and in that way achieve a kind of victory over it. By counseling scorn, Camus is not recommending that we go about with our teeth clenched. A charitable reading makes this obvious. In his novel The Plague, for example, Camus offers a new vision of the absurd hero: this hero does his best to try to promote human flourishing, working in solidarity with other human beings. The absurd hero opposes that which does harm to human beings, even when such efforts are of uncertain efficacy. The scorn is demonstrated through a strength of conviction. It is a refusal to submit to despair. Dr. Rieux, the absurd hero of The Plague, expresses this scorn when he is asked by his friend Tarrou whether he believes in God. Rieux said that he’d already answered: that if he believed in an all-​ powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort; no, not even Paneloux, who believed that he believed in such a God. And this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely. Anyhow, in this respect Rieux believed himself to be on the right road—​in fighting against creation as he found it. ‘Ah’, Tarrou remarked. ‘So that’s the idea you have of your profession? More or less’.45 43 Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 726. 44 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 121. 45 Albert Camus, The Plague, translated by Stuart Gilbert. (New York: Vintage, 1948), p. 127.

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Note here that Rieux sees the practice of medicine as his ‘scorn’, his rebellion against creation. For creation harms human purposes—​for example, by breeding diseases which kill us, which kill even children, for no purpose. To oppose this, to try to protect human purposes, even when one is very unlikely to succeed, is a kind of revolt that asserts our purposes against a universe indifferent to those purposes. Nagel is thus in error when he suggests that by the ‘absurd’, Camus does, or should, mean what Nagel does. They have different and largely incompatible conceptions. Their solutions are also different. In place of scorn, Nagel claims the right attitude is irony. Philosophers sometimes distinguish between a straight solution to a problem, and a skeptical solution. A skeptical ‘solution’ to a problem is in fact is not a solution, but rather a claim that there is no solution but we can live with the problem. The stance of irony—​too often a temptation in 20th Century philosophy—​is a skeptical solution. Nagel is arguing that there is no solution to the absurd, but we can live with it, although we are changed by feeling now a certain potential distance from our lives. Camus is not tempted by this move. All his work is an attempt to see how we might better understand and respond to the absurd. As we saw in the fourth Letter to a German Friend, Camus in part conceives of this as an ethical requirement: the quest for a solution to the absurd was a quest for a better human condition. To counsel irony towards the death of a child or against fascism or against terrorism is self-​satisfied and unsympathetic. One imagines Nagel telling us, with haughty distaste, that it is plebian to get all worked up about existence. Camus, instead, is writing for, and he is writing in sympathy and solidarity with, the kind of people who get all worked up about existence. 3

The Epistemic Absurd

The teleological absurd is the primary notion of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, and it coheres with Camus’s later work in philosophy. However, Camus does use the term ‘absurd’ in at least one other way in The Myth of Sisyphus. He refers also to the absurd as the world being resistant to explanation. We can find ourselves ‘perceiving that the world is ‘dense’, sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us’.46 His concern at first seems to be that theories do not satisfy us, they do not explain the world as we would want. ‘This world I can touch, and I judge likewise that it exists. There ends all 46 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 14.

192 DeLancey my knowledge, and the rest is construction’.47 Furthermore, he suspects that his method of beginning with the absurd and trying to derive its implications seems to trap him in a position of doubting the possibility of knowledge: ‘The method defined here acknowledges the feeling that all true knowledge is impossible. Solely appearances can be enumerated and the climate make itself felt’.48 This underlies Camus’s critique of Husserl in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus believes the Phenomenological method at first holds out the promise of being an austere realism, where a strict discipline of observation allows us to identify features of our experience. But in the end, Camus laments, Husserl embraces a kind of Platonism. Husserl claims the method can identify essences, which are themselves independent of the phenomena: When … Husserl exclaims: ‘If all masses subject to attraction were to disappear, the law of attraction would not be destroyed but would simply remain without any possible application’, I know that I am face with a metaphysic of consolation.49 Here ‘consolation’ is what Camus also calls ‘nostalgia’, a longing for a kind of theory (such as a Platonist theory) that we had rightly rejected but that offered us consolations that are not available in the absurd. Chiefly, such a theory holds out the promise of some metaphysical grounds for unity. We long for such a theory, and sometimes give in to the temptation to believe it. That would be to live with ‘appeal’, and Camus likens it to a kind of philosophical suicide. Camus is willing to extend his critique of ‘rationalism’ to science. Speaking to what is presumably a scientist, he says: You describe [this world] to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanism and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multi-​colored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduce to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus.

47 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 19. 48 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 12. 49 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 46.

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You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry.50 This part of his critique is rather unconvincing, if read literally as an attack on the claim that science produces knowledge. The atom was understood not to be similar to a little solar system, by the time he is writing. And, besides, he is writing at a time of explosive and continuing progress in the sciences. It is interesting to wonder how familiar Camus was with the natural sciences. He did develop a friendship with Jacques Monod, later to receive the Nobel Prize for his work in biology. It is noteworthy that Camus does not again, after The Myth of Sisyphus, attempt to criticize the sciences. At first, it might seem then that we have a new version of the absurd here, the epistemic absurd: X is epistemically absurd if and only if X cannot be explained. This characterization is preliminary; I shall later argue for a weaker, more narrow interpretation. A number of scholars have argued that this is Camus’s primary meaning for ‘absurd’.51 Sartre was one such scholar. In an essay that considers The Stranger, he writes, ‘This will be the source of the feeling of the absurd or, in other words, of our incapability of thinking the events of the world with our concepts and words’.52 I have already argued that the teleological absurd is more fundamental, because it is consistent with the primary concern across all of Camus’s work. But in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus does clearly use the term ‘absurd’ to refer to an epistemic limit or failure of some kind. Furthermore, in the initial portion of the book where he lays the groundwork for the absurd condition, he spends far more time discussing this epistemic absurd than he does discussing the teleological absurd.

50 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 19–​20. 51 These include Richard Wollheim, ‘The Political Philosophy of Existentialism’, The Cambridge Journal, volume vii, issue 1 (1953); John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960); and John Foley, Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2008). 52 Jean-​Paul Sartre, ‘The Stranger Explained’, in We Have Only this Life to Live, edited by Ronald Aronson and Adrian Van Den Hoven (New York: New York Review of Books, 2013): 35. Also, Cruikshank (1960, 45) quotes Sartre as writing: ‘Camus’s philosophy is a philosophy of the absurd. For him the absurd arises from the relation between man and the world, between man’s rational demands and the world’s irrationality’.

194 DeLancey We must note also that Camus does introduce another notion of the absurd, closely related to the epistemic notion of the absurd, but noticeably distinct. This is the absurd as contradictory or paradoxical. If I accuse an innocent man of a monstrous crime, if I tell a virtuous man that he has coveted his own sister, he will reply that this is absurd …. ‘It’s absurd’ means ‘It’s impossible’ but also ‘It’s contradictory’.53 Here, Camus appears to remain open to the idea that the world may allow for contradiction or incoherence. This is the sense that ‘absurd’ took on in the theatre, where a play like Waiting for Godot or The Rhinoceros seems to break the laws of physics, if not the laws of logic. However, in the context of his overall argument, Camus does not make use of such an extreme notion. Rather, he stresses that the absurdity in this sense largely arises from a mismatch between our expectations and some claim or observation. Thus, it would seem that the epistemic absurd could potentially explain this additional sense of the absurd. We are left with two puzzles. What precisely is the best interpretation of the epistemic absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus? More importantly, the epistemic absurd would seem to be wholly independent of the teleological absurd. This would seem to entail that the resulting arguments are themselves unrelated, and that Camus is really talking about two quite independent problems with two sets of independent consequences. To see this, consider each potential entailment. Does the teleological absurd entail the epistemic absurd? We know that it does not because we can think of potential ways the world could be where the entailment would fail. One is in fact the modern scientific world view. On this view, the universe is teleologically absurd. That is, it is true that: the universe does not have a justified and sufficient purpose. This is trivially so because the universe does not have any purpose. However, the universe can be explained, and the tremendous successes of the scientific method demonstrate this. Consider the converse: must the epistemic absurd entail the teleological absurd? Here again, the answer is that it need not do so. The world of the ancients captures this well. For them, the universe was epistemically absurd because it was largely ruled by the wills of the gods, but these gods had free will and were unpredictable and potentially capricious. As Shakespeare puts it: ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport’. But this mythical world was purposeful; it was not teleologically absurd. Here

53 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 29.

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we have a model of the world that is (at least superficially) consistent with the epistemic absurd but not with the teleological absurd. 4

Teleological Explanation

There is one obvious sense in which the epistemic and the teleological relate: epistemology is fundamentally a teleological enterprise in that it concerns what one should believe. That is, we can interpret it as offering a purposeful account of belief, where the purpose is to believe claims that meet or pass certain standards. This fact, however, will not resolve our puzzle. Camus has suggested that there is some kind of epistemic failure, and thus presumably (in at least some cases) a failure to show what one should believe. But this still appears to be independent of the question whether I have sufficient reason to continue my existence. There is another relationship which is relevant here. Some kinds of explanations are fundamentally teleological in the sense that teleology is used to explain a phenomenon. These are explanations of a kind sometimes called ‘functional’. Given that the word ‘function’ is ambiguous, and includes both teleological and non-​teleological meanings (a mathematical function is not teleological, for example), it will be best to use the term ‘teleofunctional’, which sometimes appears in the literature. A teleofunctional explanation is one given in terms of purposes, rather than causes. If an object falls towards the earth, the causal law of gravitation describes the relationship as a dynamical one where each state of affairs uniquely determines the next one. For many, this kind of dynamical law is the quintessential form of scientific explanation.54 It refers only to causes as described by law-​like relations, laying out a dynamical development. But in the biological sciences or the human sciences (e.g., psychology, economics), we find ourselves often required to use a different kind of explanation. We say that the purpose of the heart is to pump blood, or that Tom got onto the bus because he wanted to go to his mother’s house, or that people are rational agents in a market because they seek to maximize utility. Such explanations require reference to a purpose; they are teleological.

54

Although, for a criticism of this view, see Chiara Marletto The Science of Can and Can’t, (New York: Viking, 2021).

196 DeLancey A better interpretation of Camus’s epistemic absurd would be that we fail to find adequate teleofunctional explanations of the world. Let us call this the t-​epistemic absurd: X is t-​epistemically absurd if and only if there is no teleofunctional explanation of X that cannot be replaced with a causal explanation that is at least as successful in explaining X. The awkward additional clause is necessary because of course one could offer a teleofunctional explanation of anything. We could say a stone fell to the Earth because its telos is to return to the Earth. But such an explanation is inferior to, and replaceable by, the causal law of gravitation. Thus, a teleofunctional explanation must be both useful and irreducible to a causal relation, on this accounting. Let’s consider the examples above. We say that the purpose of the heart is to pump blood. This is similar to countless other kinds of explanations one might find in biology or in the medical sciences. It is difficult to imagine how doctors could practice their discipline if they did not understand organs, for example, in terms of their purposes. This concept of purpose is required to distinguish health from disease, for example. Something is a disease only if it impinges upon a biological purpose. There are countless possible changes to the heart that can happen, but only those that have the potential to interfere with its ability to pump blood are diseases. Similar, in the social sciences, we often refer to the motives of agents. Tom got onto the bus because he wanted to go to his mother’s house. This attributes to Tom a goal, and we can explain his behavior in terms of this goal. It also allows us to make predictions. We can predict, for example, that at the stop closest to his mother’s house, he will dismount and walk to her house. Or, if the bus gets a flat tire, we predict that he will seek some other form of transportation. Or consider rational choice theory, fundamental to economics. It is assumed that people have preferences, which are teleological states of mind (that is, they are goals held in mind that guide action). Rationality is defined in terms of these states—​for example, it typically includes that the preferences are well ordered. And, these purposes then serve to make predictions of rational agents. Thus, we see that teleological explanations can be essential to key concepts of many disciplines, can generate predictions, and can even serve as a foundation to a methodology. When Camus calls for explanation of the world, and despairs of achieving it, what he is most longing for is a teleofunctional explanation. As noted above, Camus claims that if we had ‘unity’—​if our purposes were justified and sufficient because they cohered with some purpose of history or of the

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universe—​we would be filled with joy. He expresses a similar sentiment regarding knowledge: what he claims we long for is unity in knowledge. Science insults this longing, because it is most successful when it eschews teleofunctional explanations; furthermore, if we want to know about the universe, we turn to a discipline like astrophysics, not economics, and here we find the complete triumph of causal explanations. Teleofunctional explanations play no role in these cosmic explanations. The world is not mine, Camus says. This can only mean: it has no purposes that can make me feel at home in it, it has no purposes that can justify my own purposes or give to me purposes. Teleofunctional explanations could be realist or anti-​realist. One important issue is that for some of the existentialists, teleological explanation was essentially also a form of anti-​realism. Heidegger defends the view in Being and Time that we primarily first encounter the world through our purposes, and we encounter useful beings in a way that actually determines their possibility for being encountered or present. This gives these useful things encountered through use a special ontological status as the ‘ready-​to-​hand’ (Zuhandenheit). This makes the presence of beings dependent upon the agent doing the revealing, and in turn dependent upon the purposes of that agent. This is where teleofunctional explanation can be seen as a natural precursor to a form of anti-​realism. Heidegger embraces this consequence, and perhaps its most obviously problematic consequence is that claims about pre-​human eras are rendered paradoxical. Quentin Meillassoux called this anti-​realism ‘correlationism’, because it assumes the world is revealed and accessible only as correlated with the perceiver. This raises an obvious problem.55 A paleontologist can claim that: 250,000,000 years ago, trilobites lived in the seas of Earth. Heidegger must translate such a sentence to mean: It is true now (because Dasein exists now to let it be revealed) that 250,000,000 years ago, trilobites lived in the seas of Earth. But this move will not solve the problem, since any paleontologist would agree with the following claim: 250,000,000 years ago, it is true that trilobites live in the seas of Earth. Another aspect of such anti-​realism is that different agents with different purposes will have a different ‘world’. This view is not original to Heidegger, who cites in his lectures The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics the work

55

See Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, translated by Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2010).

198 DeLancey of Jakob Johann von Uexküll (1864–​1944).56 Uexküll was a scholar interested in how meaning was created for diverse organisms. He proposed the idea of an umwelt, a ‘surrounding world’, that each organism inhabits which is unique to that organism because the organism has its own unique purposes and its own unique perceptual abilities. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus at one point makes claims that could have come directly from Uexküll: Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cat’s universe is not the universe of the anthill. The truism ‘All thought is anthropomorphic’ has no other meaning.57 Camus’s t-​epistemic absurd, however, need not entail anti-​realism. A weaker interpretation of an umwelt is that although we experience the world through our purposes, and often explain the world with reference to our purposes, we can still refer to and speculate about other (possible) phenomena, including phenomena that we cannot directly perceive or ‘encounter’, and thus there can still be evidence-​transcendent truths. This is the view in fact of strong realists in the tradition of Karl Popper. This position is not open to Heidegger because he equates truth with the revealing of being that Dasein makes possible. Camus makes no such equation, and seems to take truth as a primitive. In an interview in 1957 he said A press or a book is not true because it is revolutionary. It has a chance of being revolutionary only if it tries to tell the truth. We have a right to think that truth with a capital letter is relative. But facts are facts. Answer whoever says that the sky is blue when it is gray is prostituting words and preparing the way for tyranny.58 I think here that his statement that “We have a right to think that truth with a capital letter is relative” is merely an assertion that we should allow philosophers and others to continue to raise their skeptical doubts and to make their various epistemic explorations. But Camus immediately insists that ‘facts are facts’, which is practically the slogan of realism.

56

Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 251. 57 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 13. 58 Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, p. 168.

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Reconciling the Epistemic and Teleological

Our puzzle was that the teleological absurd and the epistemic absurd appeared wholly independent. Neither entailed the other. This would not be a refutation of Camus’s views, but it would suggest that he is using the term ‘absurd’ ambiguously and also that his arguments may not apply to all his uses of the term. However, our analysis of the epistemically absurd suggests that we need a refinement of the concept to the t-​epistemic absurd, which is formulated in terms of explanation. This provides a solution to our puzzle. The teleological absurd and the t-​epistemic absurd are closely related. First, the teleological absurd would seem to entail the t-​epistemic absurd, if our domain of explanation is sufficiently narrow. Thus, if the universe is without any purpose, then it is both teleologically absurd but also t-​epistemic absurd, because there can be no teleofunctional explanation of the universe if it has no purpose. (Recall that, as defined here, a teleofunctional explanation explains something in terms of real purposes; so a thing without purpose must be t-​epistemically absurd.) If history is without any purpose, then it is both teleologically absurd and there can be no teleofunctional explanation of history. And if human beings are without any purpose, then they are teleologically absurd and there can be no successful teleofunctional explanation of human beings and human actions. Camus’s position in The Myth of Sisyphus, we noted, is that the universe and history lack purpose, but he does not assert that human beings are purposeless but rather he raises the doubt that their purposes are justified and sufficient. But even if we adopt his later view that human beings have purposes—​ even purposes which are justified and sufficient—​there is still a fundamental relation between the teleological absurd and the t-​epistemic absurd. This is because we continue to long for unity, and this unity would be achieved if we had a teleofunctional explanation of the universe or history that seemed to justify our own purposes. It is in religion that we find a teleofunctional explanation of the universe—​for example, the claim that the universe was created in an act of will for specific purposes—​which could give us a teleofunctional explanation of our history and our own purposes (which are presumably a product of and serve the purposes of God). It is in Marxism, Hegel, and related doctrines that we find a teleofunctional explanation of history, which gives us a teleofunctional explanation of our place in this history that provides a justification for certain purposes (e.g., those deemed to speed communism). But Camus remains adamant that both of these are philosophical suicide; the universe and history lack any purpose; and though we long to explain our place

200 DeLancey in the world using teleofunctional explanations (that is, we long for unity) we cannot achieve this. Of course, we might have some false but useful teleofunctional explanation of history or the universe or even human action. Or, we could have a reducible explanation of some phenomenon using teleofunctional explanation. This latter is in fact precisely what most contemporary accounts of teleofunctions claim to do. Accounts like those in Millikan or DeLancey59 aim to reduce teleofunctions to particular kinds of complex arrangements of causes; this is a reduction, but for someone like Camus it would better be described as eliminativism, since it would change the meaning of ‘purpose’ too much. We can see this because it would not in any way allow for even the possibility of unity: there would be no purpose to be explained by purposes of history or the universe, since on these accounts they could be replaced with causal accounts. There are important relations in the other way also, from the t-​epistemic absurd to the teleological absurd. If we have a successful teleofunctional explanation of some phenomenon, then this is prima facie evidence that the phenomenon is purposeful. Of course, as noted, we are currently in the position where all the human and biological sciences make continual use of teleofunctional explanations. Many scientists presumably expect that these teleofunctional explanations can ultimately be reduced, but no one can yet fully describe such a reduction. As I noted, this would really be an elimination; it would mean that the ‘purposes’ weren’t really purposes, with respect to Camus’s concerns. But setting aside worries about reduction and elimination, if we explain some event in terms of purposes—​if we explain Tom’s getting on the bus by saying he is fulfilling his purpose to go to his mother’s house—​then our teleofunctional explanation entails that Tom has a purpose. It may not be justified or sufficient, but it is a purpose. Thus, from the fact that we have (as yet) ineliminable teleofunctional explanations of human action, but we have eliminated teleofunctional explanations of the universe or history, we have shown that human beings are purposeful, and the universe and history are not. This is precisely the world that Camus describes.

59

Craig DeLancey, ‘Ontology and Teleofunctions’, Synthese 150 (2006): 69–​98. Ruth Millikan, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (Cambridge, MA: The mit Press, 1984).

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Conclusion

Camus sometimes uses the term ‘absurd’ in ambiguous ways. There may have been aspects to his own account that he himself had not thought through sufficiently well. He admitted as much when he reiterated frequently that The Myth of Sisyphus was an experiment, a work in progress, an attempt at starting on a certain problem. He was impatient with the fact that few seemed to take him at his word about the preliminary and provisional nature of the text. He wrote in his review of Nausea in 1938, and thus years before the publication of The Myth of Sisyphus, that ‘The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning,’60 and more than a decade later (1950) he reiterated the point: What is the point of saying yet again that in the experience which interested me, and which I happened to write about, the absurd can be considered only as a point of departure …. In the same manner, with all due sense of proportion, Cartesian doubt, which is systematic, was not enough to make Descartes a skeptic.61 Around this same time, Camus renounced the very term. In an interview in 1951 he tells us, ‘This word “Absurd” has had an unhappy history, and I confess that now it rather annoys me …. I was looking for a method and not a doctrine. I was practicing methodological doubt’.62 In The Rebel, this becomes more clear. He uses the term ‘absurd’ in the introduction, where he revisits and revises his argument against suicide, but then the term appears only sparingly after. His concern, however, remains the same: in a universe that is teleologically absurd, swept up in a history that is teleologically absurd, how can we identify and foster human purposes? The absurd, understood both as the teleological absurd and as the t-​epistemic absurd, remain essential to Camus’s lifelong project to understand how we all can best live in a world that is indifferent to us. 60

Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Philip Thody and trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy, (New York: Vintage, 1970), p. 201. 61 Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, p. 159. 62 Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, p. 356.

­c hapter 10

Sisyphus in Hell: The Absurd Thought against (New) Fascism Samantha Novello And Polo said: “The hell of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the hell where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept hell and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognise who and what, in the midst of hell, are not hell, then make them endure, give them space.” italo calvino, Invisible Cities

∵ (New) fascism denotes a protean and transnational political phenomenon characterised by contagious emotional dynamics and mimicry (Lawtoo 2019): mainly used to refer to ‘Trumpism’, or what has been more broadly defined as twenty-​first century ‘aspirational fascism’ (Connolly 2017), it exploits people’s vulnerability to suggestion, as well as irrational and especially violent drives, by triggering ‘mirroring affects’ (Lawtoo 2019) or movements of imitation (mimēsis) of political leaders’ emotional states both among the people at crowd gatherings and in the ‘new masses’ of supporters/​followers virtually connected through the social media (hyper-​mimesis). The dangers of mimetic pathos reloaded by new media (Lawtoo 2021a) to which (new)fascism exposes contemporary democracies, made apparent in the United States Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, have brought the pathological impact of mimēsis on the public scene to the attention of contemporary political theorists. Situating itself at the intersection between phenomenology and neurosciences, the so-​called ‘mimetic turn’, or re-​turn to mimēsis (Lawtoo 2019) challenges the socio-​political import of imitation and affective contagion in an age of global emergencies –​from Covid-​19 pandemics to anthropogenic climate crisis and

© Samantha Novello, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004526761_012

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world war scenarios –​where the Homo sapiens’ difficult and often courageous search for truth (logos) seems to give way to the unconscious and nihilistic enjoyment of emotional states (pathos) of the Homo mimeticus. The works of Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, René Girard and Jean-​Luc Nancy are seen to provide crucial insights into the generative power of imitation (Lawtoo 2009 and 2019) which, by transgressing the logical principle of non-​contradiction, catalyses both (new)fascist contagious pathologies and alternative (democratic) pathologies, that is to say, critical discourses about the affective logic of mimēsis (Lawtoo 2021, 165–​6), thus, laying down the conditions for political resistance against (new)fascism. This contribution aims to challenge the import of Camus’s 1942 philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in providing not only a magnifying lens for observing and becoming aware the mimetic pathological dynamics that pervade our social and political communities (Lawtoo 2019, 204), but more importantly in offering some ‘strategies to swim in an opposed direction using both our reflective and mimetic faculties1 [….] channeling the currents of visceral repulsion (new) fascist leaders generate to initiate modes of affective and reflective resis­ tance and opposition to fascist mimesis’ (Lawtoo, 2019, 204). An attentive reader of Nietzsche’s works since the early 1930s (oc iv 640; Favre 2004), in his letters and notebooks Camus proves to be precociously aware2 of the socio-​political implications of emotional life, of which Max Scheler’s phenomenological research provides him with a rigorous philosophical account. In particular, the German phenomenologist’s book on the nature of sympathy and love, which Camus is likely to have read in French translation during his years at the University of Algiers (oc iv 643), delineates a method for exploring the affective logic (logique du coœur) of individual as well as collective action. The absence of Scheler from Lawtoo’s genealogy of prominent thinkers who deal with mimetic pathos is somewhat surprising, especially considering the broad reception and impact of the German phenomenologist’s work on the French philosophy of the interwar period (Spiegelberg 1982). In Wesen und Formen der Sympathie Scheler investigates the pathological effects of the obliteration of the I-​other relationship, and dwells on id­io­ pathic (self-​centred) and heteropathic (ecstatic) types of identification and affective fusion (Einsfühlung) in order to explain a variety of group and mass

1 The absurd creation is the emblem of that ‘daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other’ (ms 94, oc i 299). 2 Cf. Todd 1996, 117.

204 Novello behaviours, from orgies to enthusiasm and collective hypnosis (Scheler 2003).3 Developing Scheler’s sociological remarks, The Myth explores the role of emotional attitudes (love/​hate) in shaping human conduct; it focuses especially on the affective logic of suicide, which provides Camus with a key for understanding antithetical political phenomena such as mass suicide4 and resistance against mass murder (genocide and democide) under totalitarian regimes. Thus, Camus’s first philosophical essay, the genesis of which must be situated in the historical and philosophical context of the Nazi Occupation of France, not only offered an instrument for political resistance against Nazi terror (Politis 2009) but delineates a theory of mimetic pathologies for resisting against forms of emotional contagion which, eighty years after first publication of The Myth, still plague the political sphere, coalescing in (new) fascism. 1

Absurd Mimēsis

In The Myth, a particular attention is paid to mimetic pathos in the section on ‘Drama’, where Camus distinguishes the ‘thoughtless’ (inconscient) everyday type of man, who is caught in the restless alienating hastening of modern (hyper)accelerated society and is egocentrically absorbed in what he could be by frantically imitating consumption-​based lifestyles displayed by adverts and mass media, from the ‘absurd’ type of man who ‘begins where that one leaves off’ (ms, 65). Emblematically illustrated by the theatre actor, the ‘absurd man’ is described as a ‘mime of the ephemeral’ (ms, 67), whose ‘lucid heart’ directs his concerns towards what is most certain and immediate, i.e. appearances (phenomena) (ms, 65–​6). While most of the life of a ‘thoughtless’ type of man is ‘spent in implying, in turning away, and keeping silent’, the absurd actor ‘is the intruder [who] breaks the spell chaining that soul, and at last the passions can rush on to their stage’ (ms, 67–​8). The ‘absurd’ type of actor delineates the peculiar method of knowledge of an embodied mind ‘wholeheartedly’ committed ‘to being nothing or to being several’, that is to say, to evade the narcissistic

3 Echoing Scheler’s work, in the post-​war years political theorist Hannah Arendt spells out the dangers of political pathology, detecting in the lovers’ affective fusion (‘love’) the ‘most powerful of all antipolitical human forces’ (Arendt 1998, 242), liable, that is, to destroy the ‘web of relationships’ that constitutes the public space, where freedom, plurality and equality (isonomy) are interwoven by acts (speech, deeds) of appearance and mutual recognition (Arendt 1998, 175 and ff.). 4 Camus expounds the relationship between nazi mimetic pathology and collective suicide in his 1951 philosophical essay, The Rebel (oc iii 220).

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prison of the Ego (‘losing oneself’) and to inaugurate a process of liberation (‘to find oneself’) from those illusions such as the cartesian Subject (‘[t]‌hat idea that ‘I am’, my way of acting as if everything has a meaning’, ms 50) or teleological reasoning (‘Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences’, ms 50) on which moral common rules are founded. Rejecting the metaphysical notion of free will (‘that freedom to be’), which he considers, along with Nietzsche, to be an invention of Western reason, Camus detects in death and the absurd the principles of ‘the only reason­ able freedom: that which a human heart can experience and live’ (ms 52). He associates this ‘absurd’ freedom with the ‘divine availability’ of a man condemned to death, who feels ‘sufficiently remote from [his] own life to increase it and take a broad view of it’ (ms 51, my italics), disinterested ‘with regard to everything except for the pure flame of life’ (ms 52). These passages echo Camus’s reading of Spinoza5 through the lens of Nietzsche’s La Naissance de la philosophie à l’époque de la tragédie grecque attested by his 1942 notebooks (nb ii 32, oc ii 962, Favre 2004, 203). The author of the Ethics Demonstrated in Geometric Order is seen to provide the example of a thought that loves what is instead of what tends to or is to be, and hates moral hierarchy (nb ii 33). Spinoza’s monotonous, a-​teleological and inhuman world, where everything is given once for all, is ‘made for courage’ (oc ii, 962). Now, courage is an essential feature of the ‘absurd’ man’s attitude that necessarily, i.e. logically entails (oc i 263, ms 55) increasing one’s life and ‘being faced with the world as often as possible’ (ms 53) –​‘the absurd is tantamount to substituting the quantity of experience for the quality’ (ms 52). In order to elucidate the peculiar logic of this absurd ‘morality of quantity’, Camus resorts to Nietzsche’s code of ethics which consists in ‘obey[ing] at length and in a single direction: in the long run there results something for which it is worth the trouble of living on this earth as, for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason, the mind –​something that transfigures, something delicate, mad, or divine’ (ms 55). What separates the everyday type of man, akin to the modern man of ressentiment in Nietzsche and Scheler’s diagnoses, from the ‘absurd’ actor, who turns his body into an instrument of knowledge,6 is the direction of mimetic

5 Under the guidance of Jean Grenier, who was acquainted with Léon Brunschwig’s work on Spinoza, Camus reads the french translation of the Tractatus theologico-​politicus in 1937 (oc i 836; oc iv 643) and is likely to combine his philosophical-​political reflection on the liberation of man with the peculiar ‘mysticism without theology’ of René Poirier, his director of studies at the University of Algiers in the mid-​30s. 6 ‘The mask and the buskin, the make-​up that reduces and accentuates the face in its essential elements, the costume that exaggerates and simplifies […] Through an absurd miracle, it is

206 Novello pathos. Probably reminiscent of the critique of Nietzsche’s ‘psychology of the stage-​player’ in The Case of Wagner, where the ‘greatest mime’ is identified as a charismatic leader (tyrant) who manifests his contempt of the world through the calculated rejection of thought (logos) (cw, § 6) and the pursuit of the ‘elementary’ –​pleasure, enthusiasm or affective contagion (pathos) –​in order to politically subjugate the public, Camus situates the ‘absurd’ actor at the opposite side of the spectrum of mimetic pathology. Like the genius in Scheler’s Vorbilder und Führer,7 the ‘absurd’ type of man enacts an attitude of love of the world directed towards the enhancement, or growth in plenitude of givenness. By ‘perfecting himself only in appearances’ (ms 67), the absurd mime illustrates an attitude of radical empiricism in the phenomenological sense (‘appearing creates being’, ms 67) that ‘sweep[s]‌over centuries and minds’ in order to experience (‘exhaust’) and enter deeper into the world by ‘heretically’ multiplying the embodied perspectives on all type of phenomena (ms 69).8 The metaphor of the actor’s ‘lucid heart’ (ms 65) brings the patho-​logy of the ‘absurd’ thought into full focus: on the one side, lucidity, i.e. the capacity to meet the impenetrable meaninglessness and inhumanity of the world by keeping one’s eyes open and not eluding what is (ms 56), evokes the phenomenological notion of intentionality,9 namely that aboutness which is the peculiar feature of conscious mental states (De Monticelli 2020, 360). On the other side, as Camus writes to Bonnel in 1943, the absurd apparently excludes value judgments, but living is, in a more or less elementary way, judging (oc i 321), that is to say, (in phenomenological terms) position-​taking (De Monticelli 2020). The ‘unbelievable disinterestedness with regard to everything except the pure flame of life’ (ms 52, my italics) of the absurd type of man illustrates the initial stage of a phenomenological reduction (epochè) which is the condition for an

the body that also brings knowledge’ (ms 68), that is to say, the actor’s body becomes the privileged space of a phenomenological reduction. 7 A copy of the 1944 edition of Scheler’s Vorbilder und Führer translated in French under the title Le Saint, Le Genie, Le Héros, figures in the catalogue of Camus’s private library (Fonds Camus). 8 Like the genius in Scheler’s Le Saint, Le Genie, Le Héros, the absurd actor is described as a ‘traveller’ and a stranger (‘intruder’) who breaks free from the fetters of the captive mind. In his 1942 notes for his chronicle of the political resistance against Nazi-​Fascism, published in 1947 under the title The Plague, Camus writes that after experiencing the absurdity of the plague, the people look like emigrants (oc ii 978). 9 Camus’s definition of the absurd in The Myth incorporates the phenomenological notion of intentionality, understood as ‘a specific property which, if instantiated, makes minds of or about objects and facts’ (Salice 2018, 604 quoted in De Monticelli 2021, 360).

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act of value-​ception10 (ms 48, Novello 2020) that allows for things to appear in their pristine purity11 (Spiegelberg 1960, 246), that is to say, free from all moral and metaphysical misconceptions.12 Thus, the political character of absurd performance (‘the play’) lies in its capacity to ‘catch the conscience’ of the spectator (ms 65) and initiate a process of periagoge in the phenomenological sense, that is to say, an axiological re-​orientation of the whole being, liable to radically change and broaden perspectives through an affective ‘conversion’ from hatred to love (Novello 2020). Without subscribing to neither Husserl’s nor Scheler’s phenomenologies of essences (ms 40–​1), in The Mythe of Sisyphus Camus delineates a phenomenological method of thought which aims at bringing the patho-​logical consistency of human acts –​from suicide to murder and resistance against murderous acts and orders –​into full light by focusing on human emotional life. Anticipating René Girard remarks, according to whom the Western literary topos of the plague expresses the contagious irrational logic of un-​ differentiation and mimetic violence (Lawtoo 2021, 161), in his notebooks of the early 1940s Camus resorts to the metaphor of the plague to designate the pathological condition (‘stupidity’) of a ‘captive mind’ in which hatred and contempt of the world trigger inadequate responses to reality (nihilism). Like the prisoners of the Platonic cave,13 the ‘thoughtless’ everyday type of man is chained to those social and political constructs (‘lies’) that shut him off from the world, de-​activating his capacity for resistance (indifference) against the suffering of his fellow men (Bauman 1989). Now, in The Myth and later in his novel, The Plague, Camus shows to be primarily concerned with the liberating power of the ‘plague’, namely, with the capacity of all experience

10 11 12

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Accessible to intuition, love denotes a creative act by means of which a positive value is given or perceived bringing about a growth of the value of things and of others (Scheler 2003, 230). ms 17. Furthermore: ‘I am not interested in philosophical suicide but rather in plain suicide. I merely wish to purge it of its emotional content and know its logic and its integrity’ (ms 45). Camus distinguishes a philosophy of evidence, i.e. a philosophy that is repugnant not only to his intelligence (esprit) but to his heart, such as the philosophy of hitlerism, from a philosophy of preference which he does not simply have but which he knows, thus, implying the correctness of this further development of the absurd reasoning (oc ii 986–​7). In 1942 he notes that one must be a madman, a criminal or a coward to consent to the plague, i.e. Nazi terror in front of which the only consistent decision is revolt (oc ii 978). The mythical identification of Oran with Plato’s cave is suggested in the third part of Camus’ 1947 novel (oc ii 152), where the plague is associated with the political condition of the ‘state of siege’.

208 Novello of absurdity –​during a pandemic or under Nazi terror and total war14 –​to prime a process of emancipation from the murderous illusions of metaphysical Reason, Nietzsche’s ‘Circe of philosophers’, culminating in a transvaluation of all values. 2

Resisting the Plague

With The Myth of Sisyphus Camus situates himself among the thinkers of ‘Nietzsche’s second French moment’ (Le Ridier 1999) who were ‘crazy’ about the author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra , subscribing like Georges Bataille to the German philosopher’s critique of modern rationalism. During World War ii and the Nazi Occupation, Camus and Bataille were drawn together by their deep awareness of the ethical and political challenges raised by Nietzsche’s investigation into the phenomenon of nihilism. Confronted with Fascism, they both refused to consider the German thinker a precursor of Nazism and were both committed to defending his thought from its Fascist misappropriations.15 Bataille is considered to be one of the most interesting and influential theorists of mimēsis and his reflection on the relationship between transgression and mimetic (or Dionysian) communication, which turns frenzy, emotional contagion and fusion into the key elements of the experience of the social and political community, is seen to provide some crucial insights into the fascist movements of the 1920s and 30s as well as (new)fascism (Lawtoo 2019). From his 1933 essay on ‘The psychological structure of fascism’ onward, the French writer associates fascism, which entails violence and excess as the result of breaking the laws of social homogeneity founded on productiveness and usefulness, with that ‘heterogeneous’ part of society which designates ‘everything resulting from unproductive expenditure (sacred things themselves form part 14 15

Letter to Roland Barthes, 1955 (oc ii 286). Shortly after the Liberation of Paris, Bataille signed an article, ‘Nietzsche est-​il fasciste? (Is Nietzsche fascist?)’, which was published on the 20th of October 1944 in the journal Combat [de la Résistance et de la Révolution] directed by Camus. An autographed copy of Bataille’s work figures among the publications by and on Nietzsche in the catalogue of Camus’s private library and bears the following inscription: ‘[…] la morale pourrait-​elle être poussée trop loin? (Could morality be pushed too far?)’ (Favre, 2004, 204) –​a possible allusion to Bataille’s ‘Discussion sur le péché’ (‘Discourse on guilt’) that Camus attended at Marcel Moré’s place in March 1944 (Bident 2009). The text of this discussion on summit morality and morality of decline was later included in the 1945 book On Nietzsche, in which Bataille reworks the argument of Inner Experience and engages in a silent and overtly polemical conversation with Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus.

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of this whole)’ rejected by the ‘homogeneous’ society as waste or transcen­ dent value –​from trash and vermin to the mob and violent individuals who refuse the rule, such as madmen, leaders, poets, etc. (Bataille, 1979, 69). Fascist politics is seen to capitalise human fascination for that ‘accursed share’ (part maudite) that exceeds the rational (‘conscious’) and economic logic of social life. Bataille dwells in particular on the ‘affective relations that closely associate (identify) the leader to the member of the party’, which explain and found fascist power in ways that are analogous to military and religious power16 (Bataille, 1979, 80–​1). Bataille (2006, 46) distinguishes a political, i.e. negative acceptation (that which is 'wrested by individuals from public power') from a sovereign concept of freedom, which he identifies in the notion of (moral) ‘summit’ (sommet). Morality of summit and morality of decline replace the traditional notions of ‘good’, associated with the respect of the individual being, and ‘evil’, which entails the violation of individual being. While moral decline denotes every attempt to preserve the individual within her own limits and for the purpose of enriching her, moral ‘summit’ refers to an excess or exuberance of forces with entails a measureless expenditure (dépense) of energy, generally associated with an act (dance, orgie, sacrifice) that violates the integrity of the individual being –​labelled as ‘crime’ or ‘sin’, it is is closer to evil than good (Bataille, 2004, p. 17). By identifying the ‘summit’ with freedom, which he describes as ‘human autonomy at the heart of a hostile, silent nature’ (Bataille 2004, 46), Bataille is clearly suggesting a proximity between his ‘inner experience’, understood as a nietzschean quest for a godless mysticism, and the absurd experience in Camus’s 1942 philosophical essay.17 But subscribing to a dionysiac nietzscheanism which exceeds18 reason’s servile logic, Bataille criticises the deceptive ‘will to truth’ fuelling the ‘job [that] each time would be to exhaust the 16

‘[Th]e religious value of the chief is really the fundamental (if not formal) value of fascism, giving the activity of the militiamen its characteristic affective tonality, distinct form that of the soldier in general. The chief as such is in fact only the emanation of a principle which is none other than that of the glorious existence of a nation raised to the value of a divine force (which […] demands not only passion but ecstasy from its participants)’ (Bataille 1979, 81, my italics). 17 In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus also refers to the mystics as providing the example of a ‘spontaneously accepted slavery’ through which thought 'escape[s]‌from everyday sleep' and recovers 'a deeper independence' (ms 51). 18 According to Habermas, Bataille escapes the enslavement that modernity inflicts on human beings by shattering the sovereignty of the Cartesian philosophising Subject and evading the closed space delimited by Western reason in the irrational dimension of the ‘heterogeneous’, where elementary violence and happiness are closely related (Le Ridier, 1999, p. 155–​6). Pierre Klossowski, instead, situates Bataille’s research beyond the death

210 Novello infinite working out of possibilities’ (Bataille 2004, 47) –​an implicit allusion to Camus’s emphasis on the awareness of the limits (‘absurd walls’) of a humiliated reason that logically entails a rule of conduct inspired by the absurd ‘passion to exhaust everything that is given’ (ms 52; oc i 260), also expressed by the epigraph to The Myth of Sisyphus from the Greek poet Pindar (‘O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible’). Against Camus’s argument in The Myth, in ‘Summit and Decline’ Bataille separates living, thus, acting and questioning from knowing and traces the former in communication, namely, a sovereign desire to go beyond being and the self (Bataille 2004, 22) –​‘[i]‌ndividuals can only communicate –​live –​outside themselves’ (Bataille 2004, 25) in the realm of unknowing and unspeaking (Bataille, 2004, 37). Quoting Inner experience, he resorts to the image of an electric stream to denote life and he describes communication –​among the various elements that compose a living organic being as well as among different beings with a society –​in terms of a ‘contagion of energy, movement, and heat, or transfer of elements’ (Bataille 2004, 25). Insofar as life ‘streams out of itself […] incessantly opening to whatever flows out or rushes up to it’ in ‘rest­ lessly rhythmic and heterogeneous collisions with other electric ‘whirlings’ that follow various ‘burning trajectories’ (words, books, monuments, symbols, laughter, lovemaking, etc.) of contagiousness (Bataille, 2004, 25–​6) consensually risking the isolated individual being, ‘[a]ll “communication” participates in suicide, in crime’ (Bataille 2004, 26, my italics). The ‘contagious’ experience destroys the ego and along with the philosophical Subject (Foucault 1977) it dissolves the object of knowledge, thus, turning the other into a ‘phantom’. So while Camus refuses suicide (ms 55) as an act that is inconsistent with the commitment to multiply the ‘succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul’ (ms 55), that is indifferent to the future and ceaselessly aware of the darkness and ‘bloody mathematics that orders our condition’ (oc i 230) in the face of which ‘no code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori’ (ms, 20), Bataille instead admits the possibility of suicide as the result of the destruction of the integrity of individual existence in oneself and in others attained in communication (Bataille 2004, 26). The mimetic (‘unconscious’) transgression of limit (crime) is precisely what guarantees ‘communication’19 –​in his view, ‘[e]xistence can’t at one and the same time be both autonomous and viable’ (Bataille, 2004, 47).

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of all form of rationalism: he communicates in a language that is interwoven with mock notions, thus, beyond itself (Le Ridier 1999, 175). Bataille calls this affective contagion ‘sympathy’ and points out that ‘[c]‌ommunication is love’ (Bataille, 2004, 18).

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Now, fascism is seen to exploit the Nietzschean ‘psychology of the stage-​ player’ by triggering mimetic pathos, namely, the hypnotic or ecstatic identification between leader and masses for the purpose of political efficacy. Insofar as it is the ‘accomplished uniting of the heterogeneous elements with the homogeneous elements, of sovereignty in the strictest sense with the State’20 (Bataille 1979, 82), the ‘Fascist solution’ to the crisis of modernity is a deception (duperie) (Le Ridier 1999, 169). In particular, Bataille resorts to the metaphor of the plague to denounce the subjection of the sovereign (‘unconscious’) mimetic pathos to a political order that uses its quantum of violence (crime) to secure the closed community (State) erected by Western reason. Although Camus shares Bataille’s diagnosis of Fascist political pathology (‘irrational terror’, oc iii, 212 and ff.), he could not be more distant from the Bataillan identification of political resistance in the Dionysian ‘Non serviam’, whose heinous homology to the fascist pathological transgression was widely acknowledged by his contemporaries, from Breton and Sartre to Caillois and Habermas (Le Ridier 1999, 156–​7). The divergence between the two is attested by Bataille’s critique of The Myth: in his work On Nietzsche, the author of Inner Experience seems to reproach Camus for replacing the absurd experience of questioning everything without possible respite –​which ‘leave[s]‌open such questions in me like a wound' (Bataille 2004, 46) and leads to the disruptive practice of non-​discursive language (Foucault, 1977, 39) –​with a deceptive knowledge submitted to a servile will to truth attested by a determination to speak for the (rational) purpose of properly denoting something (Bataille 2004, 46–​7).21 According to his method of meditation, ecstatic openness and indifference to one’s self entails the irreparable loss of the possible rather than its exhaustion. Camus’s absurd, i.e. the act of saying meaninglessness which entails breaking the silence to bestow a meaning that is absent,22 expresses the 20

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Bataille points out that ‘the existing State served from the outset as a frame for the entire fascist process of organic organization’ substituting ‘the principle of sovereignty of the individualised fascist formation for the old democratic principle of the sovereignty of the nation’ (Bataille, 1979, 82–​3). Along this line of argument, Lacoue-​Labarthe and Nancy detect the foundation and guarantee of the idea of Total State and of fascist ideology in the modern metaphysics of the Subject (Lacoue-​Labarthe and Nancy, 1990, 293). Bataille (1949) values Camus’s plays highly for exposing the complicity between logic, language and the totalitarian state, personified by the characters of the Plague-​Emperor and the Plague-​Officer respectively in Caligula and The State of Siege. He, therefore, rejects doctor Rieux’s commitment to give things their proper name and to preserve individual existence in Camus’s novel, The Plague. Blanchot evokes Bataille’s argument when he writes: ‘[…] Logos signifies the impossibility of the absurd. The proof is that each time I speak I tell of meaning and of value and always finally affirm, even if only to deny’. So thought echoes within itself the essence of

212 Novello human effort to find a way out of the impossible that man himself embodies, which culminates in a sovereign loss of the self in a labyrinth of aberration, horrors and torment. Developing this line of argument in his 1954 Reflections on Hell, philosopher Maurice Blanchot reads Camus’s myth Sisyphus through the lens of Bataille’s reflection on torment in Inner Experience, tracing in the hero’s absurd experience a situation of extreme suffering in which the walls that separate the ego from the other (alter-​ego) have fallen, subject and object are suppressed and the ecstatic abandonment or ‘drying up’ of the self (‘nakedness’) marks the beginning of that desert of irremediable meaninglessness or unknowing (non-​savoir) outside and beyond all rational discourse, where ‘what is suffered in common neither brings together nor isolates, only repeating the movement of an affliction that is anonymous, neither belonging to you nor making you belong to a common hope or to a common despair’. (Blanchot 1993, 173). Blanchot draws attention to a disquieting affinity between Sisyphus’s hell and Bataille’s notion of community, the latter referring to the anonymous experience in which the subject’s limited existence dissipates in the ‘oscillation without level’ (Blanchot 1993, 173) of expenditure (dépense) and the ‘torrential’ of a single isolated being is dissolved within other affective torrents in an ‘ocean’ or ‘desert’ of mimetic communication (Lawtoo 2019).23 As a matter of fact, Sisyphus bears his intolerable misery precisely because he is ‘no longer there to undergo it in the first person’ (Blanchot 1993, 173): infernal torment dissolves the sufferer’s power to relate not only to others but to himself, therefore, making it impossible for him to rebel against his situation. Thus, following Bataille’s analyses of the sacred, Blanchot situates Sisyphus outside that ‘homogeneous’ political realm governed by rational, productive and democratic principles, turning him into the emblem of an experience of ecstatic communication that makes man slide beside oneself (hors de soi) and behind –​or rather, below –​ man (Blanchot 1993, 175) in that mimetic community swayed by useless, irrational and violent affections (‘contagion of energy’) theorised by the author of Inner Experience. By saying ‘yes’ to the absurd (oc i, 304), Sisyphus who is ‘the image of this between-​two’ (being/​nothingness, thought/​unthought, said/​unsaid, lucidity/​blindness, non-​origin/​beginning) cannot represent ‘the

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the absurd which consists in wanting to remain ‘un-​thought’ and ‘un-​said’ (Blanchot 1993, 180). Camus shows to be perfectly aware of the contradictory character of the absurd in his letter to Pierre Bonnel in 1943 (oc i 321). ‘[W]‌hat makes Sisyphus interesting is this ‘light’ he casts upon what would be behind man, […] the vehemence of his effort to bring us back toward a man infinitely behind man (who nonetheless pushes and maintains him)’ (Blanchot 1993, 175).

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limit and the firm decision against death’ of the rebellious slave in Camus’s 1951 philosophical essay, The Rebel, his affirmation being ‘the flux and reflux of indecision on the basis of which nothing begins, but from which, without beginning and without end, everything begins again’, that ‘circle of enchantment’ that places irremediably the absurd man under the unavowable fascination of death (Blanchot 1993, 179). According to Blanchot, Camus is perfectly aware of the existence of an unbridgeable hiatus between the experience of hell and the experience of resistance: infernal revolt which has its point of departure at the level of a wordless region where death attains lack of measure and end –​represented by Sisyphus’s hell as a space of ex-​termination where beings have fallen below the ‘dignity of death’ –​cannot ‘take into account the protestations of those who enjoy life nobly, who have made values into what is most worth for them, and made of death itself an event that is important, pure, personal, and in a sense sanctified’ (Blanchot 1993, 181). In other words, one cannot pass from a space of dispersion and relationlessness to the political realm disclosed by revolt in the first person (Blanchot 1993, 176; oc iii, 71) –​the ‘I rebel, therefore we are’ (oc iii, 79).24 The mythical hero of Camus’s first philosophical essay represents a ‘naked man (who is not a man, but the space of nudity and empti­­ness he would produce if he had always already and as though in advance disappeared)’ (Blanchot 1993, 175). Sisyphus’ hell evokes a region where the sufferer’s affliction becomes invisible and in a sense forgotten, disappearing into a ‘space of oblivion’25 that is the very negation of the public realm (Blanchot 1993, 173; Arendt 1998, 50–​1). Like the ‘Muslim’ in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, Sisyphus is condemned to an endless and useless labor (oc i, 302) that reduces him ‘by abjection, hunger, sickness, or fear [to] what no longer has any relation to itself or to anyone: an empty neutrality, a phantom wandering in a space where nothing happens, a living being fallen below the level of need’ (Blanchot 1993, 172). In his reading of The Myth, Blanchot 24

25

Having lost ‘the power to say I’ (Blanchot 1993, 173), Sisyphus is condemned to a region of non-​origin or infinite re-​beginning where the possible is lacking (Blanchot 1993, 178). The happiness he experiences in his infernal torment resembles more Bataille’s happiness in inner experience rather than the public happiness of the revolutionaries in Western modern history (Arendt 1990). Anticipating the Arendtian analysis of bodily pain (Arendt 1998), Blanchot situates the invisible labour of the damned hero, petrified by the physical suffering he endures in rolling a stone to the top of an infernal hill, outside the political sphere in a space (‘desert’) or threshold of in-​difference where separating oneself from one’s pain or affliction, putting it down and finding rest is no longer possible (‘suffering has lost time altogether’) (Blanchot 1993, 172).

214 Novello interprets Sisyphus’ infernal desert as a heterogeneous region of non-​origin, un-​knowing and un-​said where the tragic hero is condemned to be out of himself26 (Blanchot 1993, 180). Redoubling the ‘fascination with fascism’ argument, Blanchot accuses the author of The Rebel of dissimulating the absurd’s ‘invisible labor’ at the very core of the nihilistic attitude, which he traces in both left-​wing and right-​wing totalitarian movements. Fascist ideologies make use of Sisyphus and turn him into ‘a functionary and a policeman of reason’ (Blanchot 1993, 180) by degrading the violence of death at the level of extreme baseness. Camus’s effort in The Myth to turn ‘the game of awareness […] into a rule’ or style of life is seen to transform the absurd into a kind of solution (Blanchot 2001, 57),27 thus, obliterating that space of human experience (‘hell’) where horror becomes as insignificant as ‘the act of cutting a head of cabbage or drinking a glass of water’.28 3

Absurd Patho-​logy

By incorporating Sisyphus into the genealogy of mimetic community stretching from the Nazi myth and Bataille’s Acephalus to the growling, disruptive revolt29 of contemporary precarious communities (Nancy 2016), Blanchot’s

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28

29

Illustrating ‘an action that is the opposite of action; [and symbolizing] by his work, that which is the opposite of work’, Sisyphus embodies the demented and the sacred (Blanchot 2001, 54), whose condition is beyond the master-​slave relationship. In fact, his infernal slavery consists in the very absence of the slave (‘a bondage to shadows’). Insofar as his solitude is ‘deprived of a center […], […] he is without relation to himself’, his revolt (‘this volte-​face with which everything (re)commences’) coincides with ‘the affirmation of a self that accepts being entirely outside itself, delivered over and boldly entrusted to the strangeness of the outside' represented by the ‘about-​face of the rock’, that ‘beautiful image of the “elementary” that is within him and outside him’ (Blanchot 1993, 175). Bataille dismisses Camus’s absurd ‘morality of quantity’ as a form of ‘youthful boldness’ that he considers to be the opposite of authentic freedom or autonomy, and he warns his readers against the risk of undertaking ascetic practices for the purpose of salvation, thus, submitting the mystical states to a servile, i.e. economic end (Bataille, 2004, 35–​6). ‘Camus is first of all seeking to eliminate from death this lack of measure that appears to come from its accord with the right and reason of legality, but in fact comes more profoundly from the relation that death maintains with a region that is non-​originary, and where what speaks in death is without determination and without measure’. (Blanchot 1993, 180). Lawtoo (2019) detects the echoes of Bataille’s investigations in Nancy’s understanding of revolt as a non-​discursive affective ‘torrent’(‘growl’), namely a mimetic experience in which the Subject-​Other relationship dissolves into a specular reflection of ‘phantoms’.

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argument excludes the possibility of political resistance against Fascist pathology, leading us to an impasse. But what the French philosopher omits in his acute analysis of The Myth is that, contrary to Bataille, Camus traces the sacred not in a mystical ‘communication’ (attained through crime) that dissolves the separation between the rational conscience and its object, but in a phenomenological consciousness that breaches the solipsistic boundaries of the cartesian Subject and opens the mind to the world through the bracketing (epochè) of the ‘natural attitude’ and the reduction of all systems30 –​i.e., theories of the world, expectations, values and principles of conduct –​of instrumental or teleological rationality. ‘All is well’ (ma 98) is the ‘sacred remark’ pronounced by those tragic rebels such as Oedipus, Sisyphus and Tarrou (oc ii 234) at the acme of their torment, which expresses far more than a merely observational perspective, it conveys the ‘first person actuality’ or the commitment (‘position’) of the absurd man –​‘Living as a subject (and experiencing oneself as such), even pre-​reflectively, is responding more or less adequately to the surrounding world, which presupposes neither concept mastery nor taking on propositional attitudes’ (De Monticelli 2020, 365). The absurd, as distinguished from the feeling of absurdity that triggers the process of liberation from the captivity of the ‘thoughtless’ or unconscious mind, is defined as a peculiar type of relation31 which binds the conscious human being to the world ‘as only hatred can weld human beings together’ (ms 24, oc i 234). Described as a ‘divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints’ (ms 44, oc i 253), this absurd confrontation between an irrational or meaningless world and the demand for meaning of ‘the human heart’ (ms 24), ‘this mind and this world straining against each other without being able to embrace each other’ (ms 38) may be understood as a relation of relationlessness (Rosa 2019, 178, 266–​7) initiating an alternative patho-​logy. Far from evoking the Bataillan relationless ‘communication’, in Camus’s notebooks, lyrical essays and in The Myth, ecstatic rapture, experienced in the sensual nuptials between man and nature, marks ‘this extreme point of the extreme awareness’ (oc i 96) where the inclination of the heart (love) and

30

31

Camus’s notes in April 1941 suggest a close relation between the absurd thought in his first philosophical essay and the ‘liberating plague’ around which he conceives and develops his second homonymous novel: ‘Liberating plague. Happy town. People live according to different systems. The Plague: abolishes all systems’. (nb i 193, oc ii 923). ‘The absurd depends as much on man and on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together’ (ms 24, oc i 233).

216 Novello spiritual desire (intelligence)32 merge in a mystic intuition (intuitus) culminating in glorious joy that frees thought from the determinations (‘masks’) of reason while leaving it intact (oc i 108).33 Reading Nietzsche through the lens of Scheler’s phenomenology of love and hate (Novello 2020), Camus ponders the social and political implications of affective life and mimetic pathos, and in his first philosophical essay he delineates a phenomenology of rational agency34 that lays down the conditions for resistance. In his 1945 Remarks on revolt (oc iii 329); and in The Rebel (oc iii 76), Camus traces the peculiar patho-​logy of revolt in an attitude of love (of the world) (oc iii 76) which he associates with the resisters’ capacity for open-​heartedness or sympathy (gr., sym-​pathos)35 under Nazi terror and war. While for Bataille ‘sympathy’ denotes that unconscious mimetic pathos experienced in ecstatic communication (Lawtoo 2019) which the heteroge­ neous leader turns to its own advantage in order to control the masses, Camus adopts Scheler’s definition of ‘sympathy’ as a form of understanding and living through the experience or feelings of others which is the opposite of the mimetic contagion36 experienced in its elementary mode in crowds of followers or in masses (Scheler 2003, 59). Anticipating the meditations of Bataille 32

Camus distinguishes intelligence from ‘blind reason’ (ms 23), i.e. metaphysical reason, practical or ethical, which dissolves the relation (‘enchainment’) between an unreason­ able world and the human need for explanation and meaning (ms 24). 33 In Nuptials in Tipasa Camus explicitly refers to the Eleusyan mysteries to evoke a form of contemplation which entails the awareness that ‘I shall never come close enough to the world’ (lce 68; oc i 107). 34 Camus’s inquiry into the problem of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus may be described as a phenomenology of rational agency in the acceptation of a ‘method of philosophy’ which ‘requires adopting the perspective of an agent intending to act in a certain way and thereby uncovering the factors that determine whether acts count as right or wrong, in a variety of different senses (e.g., as useful, convenient, expedient, just, elegant, appropriate). A phenomenologist adopts this perspective by putting herself ‘ideally’ in the place of such agent. To do that ‘ideally’ means to ‘bracket’ whatever is contingent for an actual subject, e.g. the particular person I am, focusing instead on whatever necessarily pertains to agency as such’ (De Monticelli 2020, 361). 35 Neglected by cartesian mechanistic investigations, sympathy is in principle utterly indifferent to value (Scheler 2003, 50), thus, it is consistent with the method of phenomenological reduction (epochè) of the absurd thought. In The Myth, Camus detects in sympathy the appropriate emotional attitude (oc i 222) for dealing with that ‘one truly serious philosophical problem’ which is suicide (ms 11). 36 In recommending to Camus the reading of Bataille’s ‘moving’ (émouvant) book, Inner Experience, in 1943 Jean Grenier lamented a certain ‘dilettantism of despair’ (Camus-​ Grenier 1981, 93). In a letter to Grenier concerning The Myth of Sisyphus dated 9 March 1943, Camus recognises in ‘factual’ dilettantism a danger of the absurd thought and detects in his petit-​blanc and Mediterranean origins what prevented him from being

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and the College of Sociology (Hollier 1988), Scheler’s pages on affective contagion, fusion (Einsfühlung) and ‘heteropathic identification’ (ecstasy) draw Camus’s attention to the social and political forms and dangers of the obliteration of affective intention regarding the joy or suffering of others (Scheler 2003, 65) which reduces all values to the lower level of élan vital and consumes the personalities of the participants in an elementary pursuit of pleasure (Scheler 2003, 68–​100).37 This nihilistic devaluation, typical of the Nietzschean modern ‘psychology of the stage-​player’, is rooted in a sentiment of hatred, i.e. an attitude of world-​closedness that neutralises the actor’s capacity to adequately respond to the surrounding world by abolishing the consciousness of his distance from it. In Camus’s reflection, the plague symbolises a dis-​orderly or pathological axiological positionality (De Monticelli 2020) which consists in not endorsing the awareness of the absurd as a ‘relation of relationlessness’, thus consenting and, directly or indirectly adding to the suffering and absurdity of existence.38 Embodying the ‘conscious’ mind in Camus’s modern rewriting of the Greek myth, Sisyphus places himself on the opposite side of the spectrum of mimetic pathology. In The Myth, the French writer distinguishes an initial moment of sorrow, boundless grief or melancholy, symbolised by the rock, from that ‘subtle moment’ when the tragic hero, returning toward his rock, ‘in that slight pivoting, […] contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death’ (ms 99, my italics). Sisyphus’s re-​volt consists etymologically in making a volte-​face in order to confront (in a face-​to-​face struggle) that impossible transparency and inhumanity of the world and of ourselves, thus, sticking to the inescapable evidence of the absurd through a decision which entails a ceaseless exercise of thinking, a ‘discipline that the mind imposes on itself’.39 Sisyphus’ contemplation that ‘silences all idols’ (ms 98) echoes Scheler’s phenomenological reduction, which breaks the spell of the Nietzschean ‘Circe of ‘possessed’ by the absurd, renunciation or poverty entailing the refusal to seek advantage from the absurd (Camus-​Grenier 1981, 89). 37 Camus develops these remarks in his analysis of nazi-​fascist movements in The Rebel (oc ii 212–​21). 38 The Emperor Caligula in the homonymous tragedy, as well as Cottard in the 1947 novel, The Plague, embody a ‘tragedy of intelligence’ (oc i 447), namely, an aborted pathological response to the mortal condition (‘captivity’) of human beings. 39 In The Plague, this rigorous will to truth is embodied by the figures of Tarrou and the resisters of the sanitary formations who risk their lives to demonstrate ‘that two and two equals four rather than the opposite’ (oc ii 125); they are said to have the same ‘heart’ of the teacher who is aware that there are moments (and regimes) in time when acting consistently with this simple evidence is punished by death.

218 Novello philosophers’, liberating the mind (‘heart’) of the ‘absurd’ type of man40 from the delusory world of the factual reality in which he is immersed (epochè) and allowing for ‘the myriad of wondering little voices of the earth to rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all faces’ welling up from a universe reduced to its inhuman non-​discursive appearance (ms 99). Sisyphus’ revolt has no other meaning than a full turning around (periagoge) of body and mind41 which does not aim at evading or concealing his torment, but marks the commencement of that consciousness of the relation (‘bond’) between the suffering human being and the world (ms 98) which phenomenologists denote as intentionality (Gallagher 2012) and which is the condition for a resonant ‘inclination’ toward the other and of the other (Adriana Cavarero 2016; Cavarero and Lawtoo 2021), namely, an ‘open-​hearted’, i.e. affective axiological re-​orientation and trans-​valuation of the world. Echoing Nietzsche’s La Naissance de la philosophie à l’époque de la tragédie grecque,42 Camus’ Sisyphus is the ancient Greek sage (sophos) who is contemplative like an artist, namely, whose thought (logos) exceeds intellectual cleverness. He illustrates a decision (oc ii 984), that is to say, an act of keenest taste and judgement which is neither convenient nor advantageous, but nonetheless feels right, thus, inaugurating a trans-​rational and emotional relation of resonance to the world (Nietzsche 1996, Rosa 2019). Reframing the ‘Nietzschean revolution’ from the perspective of a post-​metaphysical phenomenol­o­gy of emotions, The Myth of Sisyphus lays out a method of philosophy in the socratic sense43 that opens up a political space of appearance beyond contempt (Arendt 1998) by tracing in the courageous exercise of thinking the condition for resistance against (new)fascist pathology. 40

41 42

43

The ‘absurd man’ is a stranger to the resentful form of judgment which authorises capital punishment. Situating himself beyond the vertical master-​slave relationship of power, his freedom could not be more distant from the Bataillan pursuit of sovereign autonomy (Bataille 2004). ‘Spiritual conflicts become embodied and return to the abject and magnificent shelter of man’s heart’ (ms 46). The 1938 French edition of Nietzsche’s lectures on philosophy in the tragic age of the Greek is crucial source for both Camus’s essay on the absurd and his essay on revolt (oc ii 984, 986). In the first lecture, the German thinker expounds the etymological relation between the term Sisyphos (Sisyphus) and the ancient Greek verb sapio (‘to taste’), from which sophos (‘sage’), sapiens (‘he who tastes’) and saphes (the intelligible, i.e. ‘that which than be tasted’) are derived. Sisyphos designates a man of keenest taste, that is, a philosophical mind in a pre-​platonic sense, i.e. neither intellectual nor ascetic, which is endowed with sharp savouring and discrimination (Nietzsche 1996). In Camus’s notes, a correct exercise of intelligence cannot separate Nietzsche from Socrates, or Pascal from Sade (oc ii 984).

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Index Absurd 1–​27, 30–​31, 36–​54, 56, 59–​60, 62, 65–​66, 68–​70, 72–​78, 80, 88–​91, 93–​99, 102, 104, 106, 108–​110, 112–​114, 117, 128, 132, 135–​136, 138–​144, 146, 149, 153–​157, 159–​179, 183–​196, 198–​207, 209–​218 Absurdity 2, 4–​5, 8–​11, 11–​18, 22, 33, 37–​42, 45, 47, 49–​52, 56, 58, 73–​75, 77–​78, 80, 90–​91, 94, 97, 113, 115, 117, 124–​125, 128–​ 129, 133–​134, 140, 148–​149, 155, 160–​165, 167, 169, 173–​176, 187–​190, 194, 206, 208, 215, 217 Algeria 46, 96, 126, 133, 170–​171 Aristotle 63–​64, 179–​181, 185 Art 4–​5, 9, 16, 22, 50–​51, 72–​73, 75, 77–​91, 102, 154, 186, 205 Augustine, Saint 115, 126–​128, 139–​148 Bataille, Georges 12, 203, 208–​216, 218 Beckett, Samuel 10, 108–​112, 114 The Bible 141–​150, 152–​155 Caligula 10, 21, 46, 99, 102–​107, 109–​113, 129, 211, 217 Christianity 11, 139–​143, 145–​147, 152–​155 ‘Create dangerously’ 10, 72–​73, 80–​81, 87, 89, 91 Dada 76, 78–​80 ‘The desert’ 93, 95–​96, 98–​99, 101, 105, 107, 109–​114, 212–​214 Empathy 9, 31–​41, 43–​47, 49–​52, 83, 125, 130–​131 Epistemic absurd 11, 176–​177, 191, 193–​196, 198–​199, 201 Fascism 12, 82, 191, 202–​204, 206, 208–​209, 211, 214 The Fall 18, 39, 50, 98, 107, 110, 139 Freedom 4, 8–​10, 14, 25, 29–​30, 37, 43–​44, 58, 62, 70, 72–​74, 77, 80–​82, 85–​86, 88–​89, 91, 97, 101, 105, 109, 168, 182–​183, 204–​205, 209, 214, 218 Fondane, Benjamin 9, 53–​71

Heffernan, George 2, 10–​11, 33, 40–​41, 51 Heidegger, Martin 3, 9, 31, 39–​40, 56–​57, 61, 65, 67, 180–​182, 187–​188, 197–​198 Holocaust 86, 168, 174–​175 Husserl, Edmund 3, 31–​35, 40–​43, 51–​52, 60, 130, 192, 207 Kafka, Franz 19–​22, 29, 36, 56, 64, 102 Kierkegaard, Søren 8, 14, 56–​58, 62–​63, 67–​71, 147 Maman 37, 116–​117, 119, 121, 125–​126, 129–​132, 136–​137 Mark, The Gospels/​The Gospel of 11, 109, 139–​146, 148–​153, 155 Mersault, Patrice 17, 24–​25 Merton, Thomas 140 Metaphor 10, 93–​99, 101–​102, 105–​106, 108–​ 109, 111–​114 Meursault 10, 15, 27, 36, 40, 50, 100–​101, 104, 107, 110, 136, 206–​207, 211 The Misunderstanding 10, 99, 102, 106–​107, 109, 112–​114 The Myth of Sisyphus 1–​3, 5–​7, 9–​11, 14, 16–​17, 22, 25, 33–​34, 36–​54, 57, 62, 72, 72, 90, 93, 95–​96, 98–​102, 108, 110–​114, 128–​129, 138–​141, 143, 146, 149–​150, 153–​155, 157–​165, 168, 170–​173, 176–​178, 180, 183–​187, 190–​194, 198–​199, 201, 203, 208–​210, 216, 218 Nagel, Thomas 4, 187–​191 Nietzsche, Friedrich 3, 56, 59, 67, 71, 83–​84, 184, 189, 203, 205–​206, 208–​209, 211, 216–​218 The Plague 5, 39, 46, 50, 55, 98, 107, 139, 144, 189–​190, 206–​207, 211, 217 Rationality 11, 117, 137, 176, 188, 196, 215 Raymond 116, 118–​122, 125, 133, 137–​138 The Rebel 6, 16, 54–​55, 60, 91–​92, 107, 185, 187, 201, 204, 213–​214, 216–​217 Revolt 2, 5, 9, 12, 25–​26, 38, 44–​45, 53–​54, 56–​59, 62, 64–​66, 72, 74–​76, 78, 80,

Index 91–​92, 154, 159, 166–​167, 169–​170, 172, 175, 185, 190, 207, 213–​214, 216, 218 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 4, 9, 32, 47, 56–​57, 81, 97, 130, 160, 178, 181–​182, 193, 211 Scheler, Max 67, 203–​207, 216–​217 Shestov, Leo 9, 53, 55–​56, 59–​61, 67–​70 Silence 2, 11, 60, 88, 96, 10, 109–​111, 121, 133, 159, 163–​164, 169, 176, 187, 211, 217 Sisyphus 1–​2, 4–​5, 7, 9–​12, 16, 22, 25–​26, 28, 36, 69, 73, 90–​92, 155–​160, 190, 212–​215, 217–​218 Stein, Edith 9, 31–​41, 47, 49, 51–​52, 124, 131 The Stranger 9–​10, 15, 18, 20, 24, 27, 36–​37, 39, 53, 115–​119, 126, 128–​130, 133–​138, 193 Suicide 1–​2, 4–​5, 8, 13–​14, 16–​17, 29–​30, 37, 40–​46, 107, 140, 142–​143, 153–​154, 161,

233 176, 178, 182–​183, 190, 192, 200–​201, 204, 207, 210, 216 Sympathy 39–​51, 66–​67, 85, 131, 157, 189, 191, 203, 210, 216 Teleological absurd 11–​12, 176–​177, 179, 185, 187, 191, 193–​197, 199–​201, 205–​215 ‘The theatre’ 10, 93–​99, 101–​104, 106, 108, 112–​114, 194, 204 The Unhappy Consciousness 9, 53, 201 Walls 10, 27, 37, 39, 41–​42, 93, 97, 99–​101, 105–​109, 111–​114, 160, 210, 212 Weil, Simone 87–​88 Woelfel, Jim 139–​140