Albert Camus: From Absurd to Revolt
Albert Camus, born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria,
emerged as a towering figure in 20th-century literature and philosophy. Growing
up in a French settler family in Algeria, his upbringing amidst the colonial
tensions significantly influenced his worldview. Camus's early experiences of
poverty and disenfranchisement shaped his profound sense of justice and empathy
for the oppressed.
He began his career as a journalist, using his platform to
highlight the injustices faced by Algerian Muslims under French colonial rule.
Notably, Camus supported the French Popular Front's project to grant
citizenship and voting rights to Algerian Muslims, articulating a powerful
defense of their rights and condemning the systemic inequalities they endured.
Camus's political journey was marked by his membership in
the Algerian Communist Party, driven by a desire to support the working-class
Algerians. However, his unwavering support for Arab nationalist causes led to
his expulsion when the party's stance shifted under Soviet influence,
demonstrating his commitment to his principles despite political isolation.
During the Algerian War of Independence, Camus advocated for
a civil truce, aiming to reduce violence and foster dialogue, a stance that
garnered resistance from both sides but highlighted his dedication to peace and
justice. His contemporaries, including Amar Ouzegane and Albert Memmi,
recognized his sincere efforts and empathetic stance towards the Algerian
people.
Beyond his political activism, Camus's literary and
philosophical works, such as "The Myth of Sisyphus" and "The
Rebel," explore themes of absurdity, rebellion, and the search for meaning
in an indifferent universe. His vision of rebellion as a pursuit of unity and
justice, contrasted with the totalitarian impulses of Soviet ideology,
underscores his belief in balancing freedom and justice.
Albert Camus's legacy is one of a principled intellectual
and humanist, navigating the complexities of colonial and postcolonial Algeria
with empathy and integrity. His life and work continue to resonate, offering
profound insights into the struggle for justice and the human condition. Camus
passed away on January 4, 1960, but his contributions to literature and
philosophy endure, making him a seminal figure whose thoughts remain relevant
in contemporary discourse.
Camus the
Existentialist?
Many among critics and readers of Camus see him as an
existentialist or a Sartrean. And this cannot be wrong given the time of his
writings on human needs and existence. It was a time at which whoever chose to
write on human existence was considered an existentialist and particularly a
Sartrean. To read Camus in view of his ‘existentialism’, if I consider him one
of their kinds, his writings shall produce not such an enormous effect since
Camus himself admitted that he was neither a Sartrean nor an existentialist.
Interestingly, Sartre has also refused to consider Camus an existentialist in
his journalistic writings twice. In other words, to insist that an
existentialist writes on human existence and his needs then Camus says in an
interview, ‘’if one is an existentialist because one poses the problems of
human needs, then all literature, from Montaigne to Pascal’’ is the
literature of just existentialists. However, he was a critic of existentialism,
not an opponent, and proclaimed that existentialists ‘‘defy what crushes
them’’ which is the main theme in his book The Myth of Sisyphus. In a
review to Sartre’s novel Nausea, he says human find their meanings when he
finds no meaning in his life and this is the beginning of his absurdist. In other words, the absurdist in the
realization that life is absurd cannot be an end to life but just a beginning.
And this is the starting point the greatest minds have started from. This
discovery, he says, cannot lead one to controversy or to a conclusion but tries
to draws results and directions from it. One of the main reasons Camus doesn’t
align himself with existentialist is because he believes the existentialists
and Marxists have an end in point. From Marx to Hegel, history is a
transcendental value system, an absolute value that is its end and hence
history is ‘totalizing’. However, whether existentialism believes in such a
system is uncertain but Sartre who was an existentialist and later admitted
being a Marxist at the same time makes the point considerable.
Literature, therefore, suggests that Camus was not an
existentialist but an absurdist. His absurdist is the man who knows his
conditions of life and accepts his efforts in overcoming them without any
absolute point kept in mind. It is not science or metaphysics world that Camus
locates his hero in, he clearly defies the hypothesis of science and proclaims
that everything related to me and the externality that I can touch and feel
exist. He says, ‘This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it
exists. This world I can touch and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends
all my knowledge and the rest is construction’. Sartre calls his absurdism
that existence where the body nauseates and finds no external justification to
his life. However, Camus’s absurdism is not a denial of all values, it doesn’t
lead to what Camus calls nihilism or philosophical suicide like Kierkegaard.
His absurdist finds belief in faith which Camus says is false since he says we
begin claiming that the world has no meaning and then search for meaning in its
depth is a statement based on some kind of end that might justify the means of
your existence or perhaps it might not justify and one ends committing ‘philosophical
suicide’. Camus says the absurdist has meaning so far as it is not agreed to. He
is filled with scorn and suffering and this doesn’t lead him to defiance but
accepts it as such. His absurdist is Sisyphus who is wretched and is scorned by
Gods for stealing fire and has ended up in a condition of suffering in which he
moves the stone to the top of the mountain and the stone ends up falling due to
its weight. Carroll suggests that it is clear that Sisyphus accomplishes
nothing by being scorned by God and taking stone to a height but it is, in
fact, the something of art. So, at this point, Camus’s hero is happy Sisyphus,
who is scorned by Gods, rejects suicide, holds jealousy to this condition and
is committed to his fate. In other words, Camus’ Sisyphus is a happy man who is
not joining with others but accepts him as him in his own condition. But, given
the political and social conditions of 1942 and afterwards, Camus began to
engage in political commitments, for instance, joining French resistance in
1943 and becoming editor in chief of the paper Combat, suggest that Sisyphus is
Camus’s first step towards revolt that will later form a general political and
social commitment.
Moreover, Camus continues to produce writings on absurdism
by taking his hero to the next stage of his philosophy which I undoubtedly
believe is no less than a philosophical talk. His next work, The Outsider (Also
known as The Stranger in some translations) was also published in the same year
in which his The Myth of Sisyphus was printed. This book is very popular,
almost read by a good number or at least have heard about it, and it received
the Nobel Prize in Literature. This book is about which post colonialism takes
its talk on different aspects of book and mocks the author for being Eurocentric
and French-Algerian racist. For instance, Edward Said in his book Culture and
Imperialism says the fact the Meursault (the protagonist) kills an unnamed Arab
and is executed by court for showing social non-conformity on his mother’s
funeral is Camus being racist against Arabs. Now, this criticism is not so
strong given Camus’ other writings are. On the other hand, there can be a
different interpretation of the novel within view his other works include
statements or articles on Algerian people, that we will be looking at later. The
act of killing Arab takes Meursault to court where people laugh at him and the
judge makes him concerned not with the murder and the first bullet but is
interested to know why the other bullets were fired. And the prosecutor is
interested to know about his behavior on his mother’s funeral since he was
normal and unwept. This makes Camus’s work a masterpiece that is not being
racist but is a critique on French administration and her courts dealing with
Arabs. In other words, the execution of Meursault serves as a formality for
killing an Arab that is a powerful criticism of racism of French-Algerian
justice, where an individual kills an Arab and is executed for not crying on
his mother’s funeral. In addition, it
also serves as critique on state and her authority for shaping such a society
which is based on deceit and lies. Camus says, ‘‘lying is not only what is
not true. It is also, in fact, especially, saying more than is true and, in the
case of human heart, saying more than one feels’’. On the other hand,
Meursault is a man who is honest with his absurdist mind; he doesn’t want to
lie about his feelings. It is in this context we must see that the absurd does
not allow him to see good and bad and right and wrong in social contexts. When
he is asked to admit to his sin, he replies of no having such knowledge what a
sin is and says that he was informed that he is guilty and so he is paying for
it and there is nothing else that he could offer.
Furthermore, Camus’s thoughts move from nihilism to hope. In
his publication of a play, Caligula, after two years of his first books, he
tries to show using his characters, Cherea and Scipio, that the absurd does not
lead to nihilist thoughts. He questions, ‘‘what lay the difference? Simply
that you readily accepted despair and I never yielded to it’’. Camus knows
that to be aware of an absurd behavior does not mean to have hope but this is
in this hopelessness that does not lead to despair. In other words, the absurd
admits himself to a total absence of hope but unlike Kafka and Kierkegaard
Camus says this absence of hope must not lead to despair, or in his words,
‘philosophical suicide’. In a
conversation in his play, Cherea rejects what the nihilist Caliguila says, he
says Caliguila departs from the ethic of the absurd or of his book The Myth of
Sisyphus when he says ‘‘I believe that some actions are more admirable than
others’’. What Camus is trying to show that the absurd behavior must never
transform itself into nihilist thoughts where despair is valued and therefore
Cherea asks Scipio to take part in his assassination. Scipio’s father was
tortured and killed by the emperor, Caliguila, and this makes the assassination
more possible and legitimate (if I may use this word) than ever since Cherea
makes sense of the scene with these words: ‘‘Caligula has taught you to
despair. And to have instilled despair into a young heart is fouler than the
foulest crimes he has committed up to now. I assure you that alone would justify
me in killing him out of hand.’’ Using the writings that reflect back to
Camus’s thoughts, it could be concluded that his absurd is not nihilistic.
Where ‘‘nihilism is not only despair and negation but, above all, the desire
to despair and negate’’, the absurd ‘‘does not liberate, it binds. It
does not authorize all actions’’. So, nihilism, as it can be seen, is the
rejection of all human values whereas the absurd has the possibility of value.
I rebel,
therefore, we exist
Camus takes his philosophy to such a height in the rebel
where he gives the absurd a reason to revolt. This revolt shall be based on solidarity
and on communication. Communication indicts solidarity since there is
possibility of saying what is true, true in a sense it is common to all men or
I should be using Gramsci’s common sense, and listening to what others say. Therefore, Camus believes
an absurd mind must never be certain because certainty gives the hope for an
envisioned tomorrow. Based on this certainty, he gives his conclusions on
Marx’s historical particularism (though the word was used by Engels and never
by Marx himself) in the latter part of the book, The Rebel that was published
in 1948.
In Marxist analysis, communism is the end point of human
prosperity and equality. Camus says Marxism resembles like Christian Messiasim
which has a certain beginning point and definite end point. Marx, he claims
replaced Hegelian dialectics that of class consciousness with economic autonomy
and spirit with communism or a classless society. He says, ‘‘the most
eloquent eulogy of capitalism was made by its greatest enemy. Marx is only
anti-capitalist in so far as capitalism is out of date’’. However, what
Camus means is not that Marx is contradictory but that Marx puts everything at
stake in the realm of production and unlike Hegel, he also diminishes reason
and spirit for the sake of material in history. Indeed, Camus is not worried
for he dismissed reason and spirit and replaced it with economy and material,
but that he makes a certain end point of history which is directly against
historical rebellion (Historical rebellion, he argues, is rooted in the appeal
to value of freedom and justice, where freedom is driving force of all
revolutions and justice is inconceivable in the rebel’s mind). This he says on
the basis of particularly Russian communism and Lenin’s revolution. He
differentiates between fascism and Russian communism by calling former ‘‘the
exaltation of executioner by executioner’’ and latter ‘’the exaltation
of the executioner by the victims’’. Fascism tries to liberate some men and
subjugate the others while Russian communism liberated all men by enslaving
them all. He called the cornerstone of Soviet ideology ‘‘rational state
terrorism’’. Furthermore, he says that Russian communism is totally
different from that of Marx and Engel’s because Russian communism wanted a
classless society which she did not get and therefore suggested that either
Marx is wrong or the revolution has betrayed the theory on which case Lenin and
later Stalin chose the former. Lenin
believed, Says Camus, ‘’only in the revolution an in the virtues of expediency’’.
For instance, he says, ‘’One must be prepared for every sacrifice, to use if
necessary every stratagem, ruse, illegal method, to be determined to conceal
the truth, for the sole purpose of penetrating the labor unions... and of accomplishing,
despite everything, the communist task’’. According to Camus, the ends must
not justify the means and vice versa, in case that happens, that will be the
beginning of dictatorship and end of rebellion. ‘‘From of point of view, it is only nihilism
– pure movement that aims at denying everything that is not itself…The end of
history is not an exemplary or perfectionist value; it is an arbitrary and
terrorist principle’’, says Camus. The reality of Russian Revolution,
though it lays claim to be just was in fact based on ‘‘procession of
violence and injustice’’.
Camus chose rebellion over revolution because he believes
the revolution would triumph in dictatorship and would lose human values. Rebel is a person who says ‘no’, and at the
say time saying ‘yes’ to this affirmation that this would is indifferent to me
and other human beings and this indifference is the case of human condition;
therefore, I must survive in it, without being a victim of philosophical
suicide. This survival shall prove to the truth of humanity where humanity is
the community of we, whose human condition is same and must rebel against it to
overcome it without having an envisioned tomorrow in the absurdist mind. This
shall engulf the absurdist mind in nihilism if it leads to some point in end, a
definite end for which the struggle is waged. In other words, communication and unity is the
basis of rebellion whereas certainty and totality are against it. Certainty and
totality diminish the conversation between men where one passes instructions to
other without listing to him in return. ‘‘It is not Mr. Hitler who can
decide that what is true and what is not’’, he says. Only common
consciousness can serve the interest of human values and strengthen the
solidarity of the people, else whatever done in the absence of communication
and common value would result in mass killing and destruction. Camus believes
only in human terms and this is where meaning of a life is achieved. He says, ‘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 it is impossible for me just now to know
it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only
in human terms.’
In short, this understanding is possible when there is
communication and communication is truth without which neither rebel would
strive or the human condition.
Camus and
Political Violence
In the last section of the Rebel, Camus is concerned with
murder and he insists that a rebel cannot kill without being ready to die. His
violence or I should be saying he has a kind of limited intensity of violence
for his hero, the rebel. For instance, so many of us have died, so many of us
are disappeared, so many of us are homeless and are harassed on daily basis and
so much of what has been a place for our memories and happiness has been
destroyed in the name of development that is for exploitative purposes; people
had started rebelling against it from the first day because everything is not
justifiable, they say, then so must be the case with these rebellions that they
must be cautious to make everything not justifiable
on their behalf, since they started to rebel against injustice and equality. Camus
is against political violence caused by bourgeois and revolutionary because he
claims both of them justify their means for their ends. He defines ‘bourgeois’
account of political violence as the refusal to recognize the dilemma
highlighted by this violence. On the other hand, keeping in mind the book by
Merleau-Ponty’s Humanism and Terror in which the writer says, ‘’we ought to
prefer revolutionary violence because it has a future of humanism’’, Camus
says, violence is necessary, necessary on the point of making history nothing
but ‘‘a continuous violation of everything in man which protests against
injustice’’. This violence breaks the solidarity and results in unending
violence even after the revolution has taken place, or it might be one of the
pitfalls that Fanon had warned in his book, The Wretched of Earth. The rebel’s
act of killing breaks his solidarity with human condition and it becomes his
end of existence. However, Camus does not mean that there should not be
violence at any cost, there should be if it is necessary, necessary in a sense
proposed by the following conditions.
·
The victim must be a
tyrant.
·
The act must be
discriminate.
·
The assassin must accept
full responsibility of the action.
·
There is no less violent
alternative other than assassination.
Camus limits his political violence in his famous play, The
Just Assassins by the character of Kaliayev. Kaliayve waits in the Moscow Street
for the Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovitch Romanov, the Tsar’s uncle and
governor of Moscow, to throw a bomb inside his carriage when he passes. However,
when he says that the Duke is not alone, his wife and niece and nephew are also
with him, he aborts the mission. All of his associates agreed with him except
Stephen who believed a revolutionary man must never be sentimental to children
and women. But, for Camus, this would mean the end of rebellion and human
condition and solidarity. After two days, the Duke is killed and Kaliayev
stands there and accepts responsibility for the attack and death of the Duke. In
other words, Camus’s political violence can be defined as ‘life for a life
theory’ on which much criticism is based. For instance, Camus wants to strain
the blood by shedding more blood by understanding political violence to be an
eye of an eye. Phillip Tody says to suggest that all rebels must commit suicide
after their services in the name of revolution is an unwise suggestion, and ‘‘no
political organization fighting against a tyranny could possibly succeed if its
leaders follow Kaliayev’s path’’. Now, this criticism is very harsh, harsh
in a sense if Camus is not understood properly. What Camus is suggestion using
the character of Kaliayev that after the killing is done, the killer must
accept full responsibility of the action, he should be willing to die if he has
decided to kill someone and this act of killing must be a ‘personal
responsibility’ and an immediate risk. It is nicely put in words by Simone
Weil,
‘’To
keep the love of life intact within us; never to inflict death without
accepting it for ourselves. Supposing
the life of X…were linked with our own so that the two bodies had to be
simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul
we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply ‘’yes’’, then we
have the right to kill.’’
Importantly, this is not enough to kill, the admission of
killing someone because of not fearing death is not enough until the above four
conditions are not met. Therefore, murder cannot be legitimized, not at least
easily, until it is international law or a revolutionary force which fight against
unjust and dictatorship and replace the old law with new. Therefore, Camus
believes that Russian revolution changed from revolutionary violence to state
terrorism. Furthermore, Camus says, ‘‘[international] law is made and remade
by governments, that is, by the executive. We are therefore in a regime of
international dictatorship’’. In fact, rebellion and murder are
contradictory in themselves since rebellion is a protest against death and
murder of people. Therefore, Camus limits the violence of his rebel because the
latter understands human condition and is a part of it to overcome suffering
and difficulties in social disorders. In short, Camus is not so much concerned
with killings and murders of the people but the ideological manifestations or
rationalizations implied on them. Whether France and USA rationalize killing in
Vietnam or the former massacre people in the streets of Algeria is not a
phenomenon that can be defended and reasoned since it involves taking lives of
people. ‘‘I also condemn the use of terrorism which is exercised in the
streets of Algeria, for example,’’ says Camus, ‘’and which could one day
strike my mother and family’’. This is to the problem of Algeria I shall
turn to now.
Reflections
on the guillotine
‘Reflections on the guillotine’ was published in 1957 when
the French-Algerian administration was actively executing Arabs. Camus recalls
one of the memories that his father witnessed during the execution of an Arab. The
Arab had killed a complete family and was arrested and executed in front of the
people to know the consequences of acting against the state and (her people?). The
father wanted to look in the eyes of the victim since he wanted to know how it
felt like killing a family and being executed. At the time of the execution,
when his head was cut off, it was to be put in the basket but the basket remained
closed before the head was put and the father could see in the eyes of the
executed head. He saw in the eyes of the executed as if the eyes were demanding
forgiveness which had closed later without being provided some. The father
returned home and felt very depressing. This incident compelled Camus to quest
for representations and misrepresentations.
Camus says there is some innocence in every guilty person. We
get news from the media that the law has paid his debt by killing the criminal
who is, no matter who, produced by his own society. Every society has its own
criminals. The law that is used to punish those who create chaos and disorder
is based on deterrence argument and retributivism. The latter is based on
exemplary way of punishment in order to bring to the other members of the
society that people shall be punished for committing crimes, crimes that are
even not committed. It is used to create fear and chaos in the society to
follow law no matter what the consequences of its obedience mean. This law is
used to get Gramsci’s consent from the people to act on the lines of prescribed
directions provided by the state. However, the former, the law of deterrence is
as old as an eye for an eye; it is used for revenge. Both of these laws still
persist in the states that have taken shape even after the death of Camus.
In order to get better view of these laws, I am returning to
a sociologist that spoke well about it. Emile Durkheim in his book The Division
of Labour says the law might change its shape but in the end the essential
elements of the punishment remain the same, i.e. to take revenge. People who
committed crimes, crimes in a sense that hurt the beliefs and sentiments of the
people, were punished according to the intensity of public offence, for it has
tried to break the collective consciousness. For example, in modern societies,
offences such as murder are often less severely punished if it doesn’t concern
the collective representation of the people, the people being busy in their own
lives as a break between interactions with other people, hence a gap between collective
representations of the people. In simpler societies, religion played a key role
in biding people and those who went against the teachings of the religion were
killed. However, in capitalist era, the societies are differentiated and
population has grown dense, hence there grew a need of the structure that would
represent the collective consciousness of the people. This structure was the
state. Alike body where the brain guides different organs to function, in
societies, this act is performed by the state. So, any act that may perhaps
have not hurt the sentiments or collective representation of the people, the
people being unaware of it, the state considers it one and punishes the actor.
The state that was designed to represent the people is suppressing the people for
its own representation and improving its police and military. The state become
above the individual whereas it was designed to be below the people in order to
represent them rightly. Such was the case in Algeria where the French administration
took harsh steps against Arabs that though were in majority and perhaps right
in their demands. Therefore, Camus says, ‘‘our society must now defend
herself not so much as against individual as against the state’’.
Camus and
Sartre on Violence
Interesting is the time period when two friends turned
against each other intellectually. After Camus wrote and published The Rebel,
Jeanson wrote a lengthy review in one of the journals of Sartre criticizing
Camus for being Hegel’s “beautiful soul” who prefers to remain pure and
untouched by reality. In fact, Camus’s book was not so much based on historical
materialism than on rationalization of murder but Jeanson summed it up in these
words: “All evil is found in history and all good outside of it”. However,
that is not what Camus had meant but in fact the total opposite of it. He says,
“It is written there, for there who wish to read, that he who believes only
in history marches toward terror and that he who doesn’t believe in it at all
authorizes terror”. He writes to Sartre “Your colleague writes as if he
were ignorant of the fact that Marxism no more inaugurated the revolutionary
tradition than the German inaugurated philosophy”.
What Camus thinks about violence and what kind of violence
is permitted in his realm is sort of a limited one that we have already seen
briefly. Moreover, it is not easy to put overall a review of talks that Sartre
have had about violence but what will be
written is a struggle of summarization. Ronald Santoni has provided a detailed
overview of the writings of Sartre on violence beginning from their ontological
study in ‘Being and Nothingness’ to the last controversial talks in ‘Hope New
Interviews’ that were published shortly after Sartre’s death. In his other
works, importantly Critique of Dialectical Reason volume I and II and the
unpublished ‘Rome Lecture’ provide intensive understanding of Sartre’s ideas on
violence. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre identifies conflict as the “essence
of relations between consciousnesses”. It creates between I and the other a
distinction that begins recognition between actors. He says, “It is
necessary above all that I be the one who is not the Other, and it is in this
very negation…that I make myself be and the Other arises as the Other”. At
other times, he defines violence “in terms of purposive human activity
aroused by conditions of material scarcity”. Furthermore, Sartre’s system works
dialectically that is the background to CDR’s description of the dialectical
movement from individual praxis (individual working on nature to complete his
needs) to the common or group praxis (the group working to fulfill the needs)
that he calls “group-in-fusion”. Now, the individual can be the victim
of alienation in the group that is why Sartre suggests a practical device that
is an oath or pledge that “binds the group in permanence”. Sartre
declares this oath to be “a statute of violence” that finds its origin
in fear and its strength through violence. “To swear is to say, as a common
individual, I demand that you kill me if I secede [or betray the group]. And
this demand has no other goal but to establish Terror in me against the fear of
the enemy.” According to Sartre, terror far from destroying a group unites
the group in pledge. It constitutes the ‘primary unity’ of the pledged group. In CDR, violence is interpreted as the
recreation of a lost right, as a counter violence, violence against the freedom
of right that is why it presents itself justified. For Sartre, the most
legitimate violence is found only in anti-colonial violence. That is why, he
writes in the preface of The Wretched of the Earth, “A freedom fighter’s
weapon is his humanity”.
In response to Camus’ theoretical implications of violence,
Sartre says if there is only one way to save humanity and it involves means
incompatible with human world , isn’t action with humanity as its end
impossible? According to the so-called
‘scale metaphor’ where ends and means are weighted against one another in
determining whether to take an action or not, involving morality, is directly
rejected by Sartre and he says ends and means are both constitutive parts of
human world, where the end synthesizes or totalizes the means [and where] the
end does not come after the means, but “pervades their use, keeps them
together as means and even guides them”. He says “revolutionary praxis requires no
external justification” and “all means are good except those that
denature the end”.
In addition, the oath that the individual takes in order to
become part of the ‘group-in-fusion’, the individual must pretend to know
something and then unlearn that something if it creates disadvantages for the
party. In simple words, Sartre believes that the ‘collective consciousness’
that has been formed in the members’ minds, there should be no such thing as
lies that might disturb the party’s comfort. In case, there is lying in rebel’s
attitude and talks, this rebel shall create ‘a lied-to and lying mankind’.
However, on the other hand, he says in war, every revolutionary party is at
war, and therefore, the soldiers do not have to know the whole truth of what the
behind the scenes might be. Now, this is interesting, interesting in a sense
that Camus says lying is what the man tells the other man more than he can
feel. What, I believe, Sartre insists on saying is the same. A revolutionary
man cannot be told something that denatures the revolutionary end. “All
means are good except those that denature the end”, he says. Nonetheless,
he puts some conditions in order for the terror to be revolutionary voice for
justice. The following are his conditions:
·
‘If terror is used only as
a means to produce yet another exploitative system or to keep human beings in a
state of sub humanity, it must not be permitted’.
·
Terror is permissible only
‘if those who employ Terror can prelude and therefore avoid all ideologies of
Terror’.
·
Terror is permissible ‘only
if no justification of Terror is offered other than its necessity’.
·
Terror is permissible ‘only
if Terror has its ‘origins in the masses’’.
In the ‘Rome lecture’, Sartre declared that his violence is
based on ‘socialist morality’. This is morality that “is a set of guidelines
for securing conditions of concrete freedom that will make moral conduct on such
a universal standard possible” at some point in the future.
Interestingly, The Just Assassins that we have seen in the
paragraphs above was in fact a response of a play that Sartre had written a
year before Camus’ play was published. It was Sartre’s Dirty Hands in 1948 that
compelled Camus to write his play or perhaps it can be one of the factors. In
an interview, Sartre says “politics requires us to get our hands dirty”.
One of the characters in Dirty Hands, Hoederer says that revolution “is not
a question of virtue but of effectiveness”. He further says:
“How you
cling to your purity, young man! How afraid you are to soil your hands! All
right, stay pure! What good will you
do? Why did you join us? Purity is an idea for a yogi or a monk. You intellectuals and bourgeois
anarchists use it as pretext for doing nothing. To do anything, to remain motionless, arms at your
sides, wearing kid gloves. Well, I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I have plunged them in filth
and blood. But what do you hope? Do you think you can govern innocently?”
One of the examples in which Hoederer gets his hands dirty is
a conversation with the other character, Hugo. Hugo when joining the (Communist)
Proletarian Party says, “for the first time I saw men who didn’t lie to
other men”. In contrast, Hoedered says “we have always told lies, just
like any other party…I’ll lie when I must…I wasn’t the one who invented lying.
It grew out of a society divided into classes, and each one of us has inherited
it from birth. We shall not abolish lying by refusing to tell lies, but by using
every means at had to abolish classes”. Although Sartre was not against
communists and wrote on their behalf but most communists considered this work
as anti-communist. In an interview with Sartre, Paola Caruso says Sartre chose
Hoederer as his revolutionary type by saying Hoederer “is the man I’d like to
be if I were a revolutionary”. In contrast to Camus, who believes in
sticking to principles and refusing to lie for it is the same as respecting and
loving people, for Sartre acting on principle dictated being true to long-term
ends. Sartre believes that Camus chose idealism over realism by choosing ‘clean
hands’ and showcasing himself what Jeanson has called ‘beautiful soul’. What in
fact Camus’ clean hands is, is entering into war without actually desiring it.
For example, France did not start World War II and it was Germans that started
occupying France, so the latter had no option but to kill and protect them.
However, this cannot be called ‘defensive strategy’.
Lastly, both Sartre and Camus had different perspectives on
between morality and politics. Sartre blames Camus for locating his morality
outside history and says: “You became violent and terrorist when
History-which you rejected- rejected you in turn…Your morality first changed
into moralism. Today, it is only literature. Tomorrow perhaps it will be
immorality”. The difference between the both is Sartre subordinated
morality into politics while Camus subordinated politics into morality. Sartre
clearly spoke about his rejection of moralism by admitting that “you do it
because it works, and…you evaluate it according to its efficacity rather than
some vague notions having to do with morality, which would only slow things up”.
He says although Marxism had a morality long before but “it’s Mao who
clarified it and gave it flesh”. The latter point is clarified in the below
passage quoted from Sartre’s writings:
‘For the
Maoists…everywhere that revolutionary violence is born among the masses, it is immediately and profoundly moral. This is
because the workers, who have up to the point been the objects of capitalist authoritarianism, become the
subjects of their own history, even if only for
a moment…Yet even though the economic and political motives of the
exploitations of popular
violence are obvious, the explosions cannot be explained except by the fact
that these motives were morally
appreciated by the masses. That is, the economic and political motives helped the masses to understands
what is the highest immorality-the exploitation of man by man. So when the bourgeois claims that his
conduct is guided by a ‘humanistic’ morality-work, family, nation-he is only disguising his deep-seated
immorality and trying to alienate the workers:
he will never be moral. Whereas the workers and the country people, when they revolt, are completely moral because they are
not exploiting anyone.’
Memi’s Well-meaning Coloniser
The attitude of Albert Camus in regards to Algerian war of
independence and French occupation is very controversial. It is not
controversial in a sense that the both sides were not clear in their stance, controversial
because for Camus’ background lies in the Algerian land. Camus was born there
and his parents and two of his grandparents lived there. Hence, Camus was culturally
pied-noir which means the presence of Mediterranean European cultures in
Algeria affected him in a great degree. And Camus’ conception of Mediterranean
culture is one that which is based on internationalism and humanist ‘principle’
of ‘man’. However, postcolonial criticism rejects the notion of this culture
and criticizes Camus for being ‘Eurocentric’. One of such critics is Cruise
O’Brien who says:
‘…This
truth of a Mediterranean culture exists and manifests itself on every point:
unity, facility of learning one Latin
language when one knows another; two, unity of origin, prodigious collectivism of the Middle Ages, order of
knights, order of religious feudalities, etc.’
Camus claims in a lecture that the Mediterranean is based on
Hellenic rather than Roman and as a result of his misconception, O’ Brien says
majority of the inhabitants in Algeria are Arab-speaking people and treats
Camus’s lecture as a consequence of having a Western point of view. In fact, it
is stated that post colonialism treat Camus’s work based on some textual
selectivity while ignoring the other that had been written on behalf of
Algeria. For instance, in December, 1936, the French Popular Front published a
project in order to provide French citizenship and voting rights to 20,000
Algeria Muslims. However, the bill got cancelled before even reaching at the
chambers of the deputies because most of the members of the Parliament threatened
to resign if the bill was to pass. As a result of this, Camus published a
manifesto defending the plan by claiming that “culture could not live where
dignity was dying, and a civilization could not flourish under laws which crush
it…One cannot speak of culture in a country where 900,000 inhabitants were
denied schools, or of civilization, when it is a question of a people weakened
by unprecedented poverty and destitution and bullied by emergency legislation
and inhuman regulations”. In
addition, he says the only way to restore the dignity of Muslim masses was to
allow expressing themselves. Although the plan was an attempt to assimilate
Arab inhabitants but Camus’s support in shape of his written manifesto is a
call for the rights of the Arabs.
In addition, postcolonial criticism also ignores Camus
expulsion from Algerian Communist Party. Camus had joined the party in 1935 in
order to be close with working class of Algerian people for whose cause the
party worked. He insisted that his role was that of ‘recruiting Arab Militants
and having them join a nationalist organization’ which was Messali Hadj’s
Etoile Nord Africain (ENA). However, PCA stopped supporting the pro-Arab
militancy when it was instructed by Moscow. In a short time, the comrades of the ENA were
arrested by French government as a policy designed and forwarded by the
communist party. Camus objected to this policy and as a result of which he was
summoned to headquarters in order to change his position. Instead, Camus said, “observing
that the party had been right to support Muslim nationalists earlier and it did
not have the right to discredit them now, thereby playing into the hands of the
colonialists”. Camus was expelled
from the party and in his after-party days, he did not join any other political
party.
Contrary to postcolonial critics, particularly Edward Said
and O’Brien, if we discuss Camus with his contemporaries, Amar Ouzegance and
Albert Memmi, we get very positive compliments expressing Camus’ attitude to
Algerian occupation and French suppression. Amar Ouzegance, who was the
Secretary General of PCA at the time of expulsion of Camus, and a senior member
of FLN during the war of Algeria against France, believed Camus to be “like
the Arabised Europeans who had accepted and identified themselves with Arab,
with Algerian”. He regarded Camus to be more revolutionary and
clear-sighted than his peers that were active in trying to assimilate Arab
people. Furthermore, Albert Memmi in his canonical text, The Colonizer and the
Colonized, regards Camus as being “the colonizer who refuses” and “the
colonizer of good will”. However, it is not clear what he meant by this
long before he described Camus’ attitude in an article. In the article, he
says:
‘It must
be understood that his position is hardly easy: it is difficult, both
emotionally and intellectually, to
have one’s entire on the side being morally condemned. One might regret, perhaps, that Camus was unable to really go
beyond the clan, to place himself from the outset on the level of the universal. But I should add immediately
that had he done so, it would not have
ended there: he would have been even more hated by his own community. In fact, Camus’s situation is such that it was
guaranteed to reap the suspicions of the colonized, the indignation of the left-wing metropolitan French and the anger
of his own community. From this springs
his silence, or semi-silence, for one is dealing here with a false impression:
Camus has spoken [on Algeria],
and more frequently than many others. But his situation is such that he can only succeed in angering
everybody. Camus embodies, quite accurately, what I have called the colonizer of good-will. It is an ambiguous
role, but I must stress that it is neither comic nor contemptible.‘
Clearly, Memmi disagreed with Camus’s version of justice for
the Algerian people but he understood the paradoxical location of him. For
example, he declared in 1985 that Sartre who had written the preface of his
book, The Colonizer and the Colonized, “had really understood, or rather
felt, our problems’’, “with Camus, I had the sense of being immediately
on the same emotional and sentimental register’’.
Furthermore, it is common for masses to hold protests during
the war of independence in order to record their suffering and plea to the
people to hear them. Such was an accident in the towns of Serif and Guelma
where the Algerian people turned into protests and riots began as a result of
which one hundred Europeans were killed. As a reaction or perhaps as a revenge
of these violent protests, the French Army killed thousands of Muslims (some
estimate that at least seventy-five thousand) were killed. Some critics of Algerian war of independence
mark this incident as the beginning of the insurrection against French
occupation. For example, the Berber poet Kateb Yacine observed “I was
sixteen years old and I have never forgotten the shock of that merciless
butchery which took thousands of Muslim lives. There at Serif the iron of
nationalism entered my soul”. The media remained silent over it and people
like Sartre never brought it in print until his publication of the preface to
Fanon’s The Wretched of Earth. However, Camus had just returned from Algeria
spending two weeks there covering 1500 miles of the country and almost
recording everything that were later published in a series of articles in
Combat beginning on 13 May.
In these articles, Camus accuses French administration for
being ignorant about the people of Algeria and says for French, Algeria might
not exist but for the later the former exists. He writes about humanitarian,
economic and political crisis in Algeria, of the continued failure of the
French to address and resolve the issues of Algerian people and without
realization of the government that “most Algerians are experiencing a
famine”. France needs to be conquered again so that it doesn’t feel low in
helping its people by realizing that “people are suffering from hunger and
demanding justice. We cannot remain indifferent to their suffering because’’,
alluding to Nazi occupation, “we have experienced it ourselves’’. Although Camus did not create a fictionalized
Algeria where the French justice had already existed, O’ Brian accuses Camus
for remaining such an author; beside, what Camus wanted was justice to be
provided to Algerian people, he asked and pressed the French administration to
not remain indifferent to their pleas.
Moreover, one of the other articles that is very popular in
respect of the time and the demands it tries to meet from French and FLN was ‘Call
for a Civil Truce’. Camus wrote this article as a manifesto since Charles
Poncet and his former comrade in the PCA, Amar Ouzegane asked him to write one.
This meeting was conducted on 22 January, 1956 at which Camus was the keynote
speaker. Camus’s speech contained what he had been writing in newspapers. He
said a civil truce is necessary since it will lessen the amount of combatants
being killed on both sides and create a healthy environment for discussion for
the solution of Algerian problem.
On the contrary, when Camus visits Algeria, he is ‘barracked
by the Europeans’ and ‘largely ignored by Muslims’. Camus considered the only solution to the
problem of Algeria was a ‘civil truce’ which was rejected and ignored by
postcolonial critics though it was an effort of great appraisal. People like
Sartre and Simon Beauvoir mocked Camus for being apolitical and presenting such
a useless solution. In fact, Camus’s solution was possible. When Germaine
Tillion, an ethnologist who started working in Algeria from 1930s to 1958, said
that she met the FLN leader, Saadi Yacef, and the leader told her that she
promised that she would stop targeting civilians if the French ceased killing
imprisoned Algerian ‘patriots’. Camus stopped working for the future of Algeria
from that moment on when he saw the reaction of the people after being
convinced that the people hated him for presenting such a truce proposal. He told his friends Jean Daniel and Mouloud
Feroun that:
‘’The
repression by the French is without justification, without excuses…it is
necessary to say the same thing,
if we are fighting for justice, about the methods of the FLN who see in every
French Individual living in Algeria a
representation of French colonial oppression…It I necessary to fight for the truce, for the end to the
massacre of innocent individuals, in order to establish the political and moral conditions which will
finally permit dialogue. And if we no longer have influence over either side, perhaps it is necessary to
remain silent for a while.
When two
of our brothers engage in a fight without mercy, it is criminal madness to
excite one or the other of them. Between
wisdom reduced to silence and madness which shouts itself hoarse, I prefer the virtues of silence.
Yes when speech managers to dispose without remorse of the existence of others, to remain silent is not a negative
attitude.’’
Unity and
totality
The rebellion is based on the condition that it is based on
unity. Without unity, the rebel loses its authentic form and transforms into
dictatorship. The idea of ‘unity’ comes from Hegel which is ‘’in effect nothing
other than the ancient dream of unity common to both believers and rebels, but
projected horizontally onto an earth deprived of God’’. Furthermore, Camus says
it is a risk to concentrate everything for a history that might be based on
false destinies. History can only be observed from outside and therefore it can
only be measured and calculated through the lens of the God.
Now, the idea of ‘totality’ is very scattered whenever we
study or hear someone say something about Soviet ideology and Russian
revolution. In fact, Marx scholar Kevin Anderson (1995) suggests that it was
Lenin who introduced the idea of ‘totality’ into Marxist discourse. Similarly,
Camus is exactly claiming the same to be true when he says that it is not
communism that contains the idea of totality but the Soviet ideology that has
spread it into Marxism. Before industrialism emerged, man was subjected to
divinity and the revolutionary tradition then subjected man into historical
evolution where he takes residue in the party. Rebellion “in its original
authenticity’’ does not justify “any purely historical concept’’.
Its “demand is unity’’, whereas “historical revolution’s demand is
totality’’. “Historical revolution starts from an absolute negation and
condemns itself to every form of servitude in order to fabricate an affirmation
which it then postpones until the end of time’’. Therefore, Camus claims it
is completely nihilistic for Russian revolution to stop man do anything but
follow in the footsteps of the history in order to meet the ends. The legacy of the Russian revolution is maintained,
says Camus, only by “denying, to the advantage of history, both nature and
beauty and by depriving man of the power of passion, doubt, happiness, and
imaginative invention-in a word, of his greatness’’. The most interesting word
in this sentence is ‘’doubt’’. Because unity encourage doubt and ensures
that there is possibility of error, hence the word ‘doubt’’ supposes unity. On
the other hand, totality finishes the doubt of the word ‘doubt’ for it supposes
that everything is going in a historical condition and there is no possibility
of error. Beside, when we look at the condition of rebellion, it is based on solidarity
and solidarity encourages communication while this communication is based on
doubt. There is no certainty and people are encouraged to work, cooperate and
hear others towards the overcoming of an unwanted situation. However, this doubt shall pave the path for
the work to be done; it doesn’t stop the rebel acting on behalf of the people
and their human condition. Camus’s character, Kaliayev, who is ‘the purest
image of rebellion’ is doubtful of his action but yet takes responsibility of
his actions and completes the mission. In the absence of doubt, the Russian
revolution changed its form into what Christian faith defined by St Ignatius in
his Spiritual Exercises say: “We should always be prepared, so never to err,
to believe that what I see as white is black, if the hierarchic Church defines
it thus’’.
In addition, Camus says if rebellion had found a philosophy,
it would be based on “philosophy of limits”. For instance, the rebel
stands up against injustice, it does not mean that he has an idea of eternal
justice, but because he wants to break that hostility that encourages silence
between the oppressor and the oppressed. Similarly and yet in contrast, the Russian
revolution does not bear indifference to the human condition, it wants its
advantages over the common sense of every member of his nation, although
denying the fact that the human condition or perhaps the national condition
might not be same for every member and considers the later the rivalry of their
interests. A legitimate revolutionary act says Camus, is uncomprising since its
means are concerned but yet accepts its limit. The errors of contemporary
revolution “are first of all explained by the ignorance or systematic
misconception of that limit’’ which is revealed by rebellion.
Absolute freedom denies justice and absolute justice denies
freedom, it becomes, however, fruitful for both if they find in each the limit
of the other. Camusian believe that this
reconciliation between justice and freedom take Camus the Greek concept of
sophrosyene. This is one of the four cardinal virtues defined by Plato in his
book, The Republic, which means ‘’moderation’’ or ‘’temperance’’.
It relates to interpret all kinds of experience-whether moral, political,
aesthetic, physical or metaphysical-in terms of harmony and proportion. In Homer, it is associated with modesty and
consciousness of one’s limitations, in Theognis of Megara, it is related to the
absence of overbearing pride and presumption, and in Aeschylean tragedy, it is
linked with a set of desirable qualities, including justice and freedom and is
opposed to hubris. In the same way, in his book, The Rebel, Camus replaces his
Sisyphus with Aeschylus’s Prometheus. Camus says the myth of Prometheus is not
defined by hubris, not “of a universal struggle between good and evil’’ but
is “a dispute about what is good’’. And Prometheus being the hero of Camus’s
rebellion finds its validity in its insistence upon limits and these limits
that are put upon the consequence of the absurd: “The Absurd’’, Camus
notes in Myth of Sisyphus, is “lucid reason noting its limits’’.
Summing
Up Camus
In conclusion, Albert Camus’s nuanced stance on the Algerian War
of Independence reflects a profound tension between his identity as a pied-noir
and his commitment to justice and human dignity. Born in Algeria and deeply
influenced by its Mediterranean culture, Camus found himself in a paradoxical
position, advocating for the rights of Algerians while being part of the
European community often seen as the oppressors. Despite this, he maintained a
steadfast dedication to a humanist vision that sought to transcend cultural and
political boundaries, grounded in his belief in the principles of
internationalism and the inherent dignity of man.
Camus’s efforts to advocate for the Algerian people were
multifaceted and courageous. He supported the extension of French citizenship
and voting rights to Algerian Muslims and condemned the systemic injustices
they faced under French rule. His manifesto, denouncing the crushing poverty
and lack of education among Algerians, highlighted his deep empathy and
commitment to their cause. This was not merely a call for assimilation but a
genuine plea for the recognition and restoration of the dignity of the Arab
masses.
His expulsion from the Algerian Communist Party further
illustrates his complex position. Camus’s support for pro-Arab militants and
his subsequent fallout with the party, when it ceased backing these militants
under Soviet directives, demonstrate his unwillingness to compromise on his
principles, even at the cost of political isolation. His critique of the French
administration’s ignorance and neglect, and his call for a civil truce to
reduce the bloodshed, underscore his consistent push for a humanitarian
solution to the conflict.
Contrary to postcolonial critics like Edward Said and Cruise
O’Brien, Camus’s contemporaries, such as Amar Ouzegane and Albert Memmi, recognized
his unique and empathetic stance. Memmi, in particular, appreciated the
difficult position Camus found himself in—caught between the suspicions of the
colonized, the indignation of left-wing French intellectuals, and the anger of
his own community. Memmi’s characterization of Camus as the "colonizer of
good will" captures the inherent ambiguity and moral complexity of his
role.
Camus’s vision for Algeria was rooted in the principles of
rebellion and unity, as opposed to the totalitarianism he saw in the Soviet
model. He argued that rebellion should be based on solidarity and
communication, acknowledging doubt and error as part of the process, rather
than the absolute certainty demanded by totality. His call for a civil truce
was a pragmatic approach aimed at creating conditions for dialogue and reducing
the violence that plagued both sides of the conflict.
Ultimately, Camus’s legacy is not that of a simple colonizer or a
detached intellectual, but of a deeply empathetic and principled figure
navigating the intricate realities of colonial and postcolonial Algeria. His
work and life exemplify the struggle to balance personal identity with
universal human rights, making his contributions to the discourse on justice
and rebellion profoundly relevant. Camus’s call for a balance between justice
and freedom, embodied in the Greek concept of sophrosyne, remains a powerful
reminder of the importance of moderation, empathy, and principled action in the
pursuit of a just society.
