9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 02:55PM Page i camus Camus. David Sherman © 2009 David Sherman. ISBN: 978-1-405-15930-2 9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 02:55PM Page ii The Blackwell Great Mindsseries gives readers a strong sense e b d l of the fundamental views of the great western thinkers and it a e c captures the relevance of these figures to the way we think d k b w and live today. y Stev ell g 1 Kantby Allen W. Wood e r n e 2 Augustineby Gareth B. Matthews N a 3 Descartesby André Gombay ad t m 4 Sartreby Katherine J. Morris ler in 5 Charles Darwinby Michael Ruse d s 6 Schopenhauerby Robert Wicks 7 Camusby David Sherman Forthcoming Aristotleby Jennifer Whiting Nietzscheby Richard Schacht Platoby Paul Woodruff Spinozaby Don Garrett Wittgensteinby Hans Sluga Heideggerby Taylor Carman Maimonidesby Tamar Rudavsky Berkeleyby Margaret Atherton Leibnizby Christa Mercer Shakespeareby David Bevington Humeby Stephen Buckle Kierkegaardby M. Jamie Ferreira Millby Wendy Donner and Richard Fumerton Socratesby George H. Rudebusch Hobbesby Edwin Curley Lockeby Samuel Rickless 9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 02:55PM Page iii b l a c k w e l l g r e a t m i n d s camus David Sherman A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication 9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 02:55PM Page iv This edition first published 2009 © 2009 by David Sherman Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of David Sherman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sherman, David, 1958– Camus / David Sherman. p. cm. — (Blackwell great minds ; 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-5930-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4051-5931-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Camus, Albert, 1913–1960. I. Title. B2430.C354S54 2009 194—dc22 2008018540 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 9.5/12pt Trump Medieval by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Singapore by Utopia Press Pte Ltd 1 2009 9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 02:55PM Page v In Memory of my Teacher and Friend, Robert C. Solomon 9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 10:25 AM Page vii contents acknowledgments viii list of abbreviations ix introduction: situating camus 1 1 camus’s life 10 2 the absurd 21 3 life 56 4 scorn 86 5 solidarity 106 6 rebellion 136 7 realpolitik 173 8 exile and rebirth 194 9 epilogue 207 index 211 9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 10:25 AM Page viii acknowledgments Much of this book was produced in Austin, Texas, where I had the opportunity to work by virtue of the kindness of Dean Jerry Fetz, who granted me a well-timed sabbatical in the fall of 2006. To him, as well as my colleagues in the philosophy department at the University of Montana, I owe a debt of gratitude. I would like to express my appreciation to our dear friends, Nesha and Russ Haldeman, who open both their hearts and their home to Nancy and me every time that we return to Austin. So, too, good friends such as Don Becker, Sherry Blum, Janet Cooper, and Delbert Henderson help to make Austin a very nice place to be. I would also like to express my appreciation to my in-laws, Martha Bollier, Bill Bollier, and Jane Krause, as well as their families, who make our excursions to South Texas enjoy- able ones. Most of all, however, I would like to express my affection and gratitude to Kathy Higgins and Bob Solomon. Their warmth and support have helped to sustain me for many years, and our many get-togethers in the fall of 2006 are now especially treasured, as Bob passed away shortly thereafter. Aside from the fact that Bob was a wonderful philosopher, whose work in European philosophy did much to illuminate and whose work on the philosophy of emotions was nothing short of groundbreaking, he was a wonderful teacher and friend, and I am surely not alone when I say that I miss him very much. Bob, for more reasons than I can say here, this one’s for you. Finally, I would like to express my love and gratitude to Nancy, my “without which not.” 9781405159302_1_pre.qxd 04/07/2008 10:25 AM Page ix abbreviations The abbreviations used in citations refer to the following works: CTOPCaligula and Three Other Plays, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1958) EK Exile and the Kingdom, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) FThe Fall, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) FM The First Man, trans. David Hapgood (New York: Vintage Books, 1996) HDA Happy Death, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) LCE Lyrical and Critical Essays, trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) MSThe Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) PThe Plague, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) RThe Rebel, trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) RRD Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) SThe Stranger, trans. Matthew Ward (New York: Vintage Books, 1989) 9781405159302_4_000.qxd 04/07/2008 10:26 AM Page 1 introduction: situating camus I am not a philosopher, because I don’t believe in reason enough to believe in a system. What interests me is knowing how we must behave, and more precisely, how to behave when one does not believe in God or reason. I am not an existentialist, although of course critics are obliged to make categories. I got my first philosophical impressions from the Greeks, not from nineteenth-century Germany, whose philosophy is the basis for today’s French existentialism. I’m not sure I’m an intellectual, and as for the rest, I support the left wing in spite of myself and in spite of itself. Albert Camus1 With these disclaimers, Albert Camus disavows virtually every conventional characterization of him. If Camus was not the “philosopher of the Absurd,” one of the fundamental pillars of post-War French existentialism, and, more generally, an intellectual who was in many ways the moral conscience of his generation, what was he? What’s more, after rejecting these characterizations, which seem to be plainly applicable, how could he then characterize himself as a supporter of the left wing, especially given his attacks on Soviet com- munism and the Algerian national liberation movement, not to mention his estrangement from the left-wing French intellectual establishment. Still, albeit with certain qualifications, Camus was all of these things. He was a philosopher of sorts, although surely not in the professional sense; he was an existentialist, once we get clear on what we mean, and he meant, by this expression; he was, without any qualification whatso- ever, an intellectual, and, indeed, precisely the sort of intellectual that is tragically all but disappearing in the world today; and, finally, he was a left-winger, whose unrepentant anti-totalitarian views are now generally recognized to be part and parcel of any left-wing position that is worth its salt. Camus. David Sherman © 2009 David Sherman. ISBN: 978-1-405-15930-2 9781405159302_4_000.qxd 04/07/2008 10:26 AM Page 2 Although Camus was trained in philosophy, his finest works were, without a doubt, his novels. Crucially, however, according to Camus, there are no hard and fast distinctions between philosophy and good literature. In one of his two philosophical works, The Myth of Sisyphus (the other is The Rebel), Camus declares that “the great novelists are phi- losophical novelists” (MS, p. 101), and, in a review of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical novel Nausea, he offers a basis for distinguishing amongst philosophical novels: “A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images. But the philosophy need only spill over into the charac- ters and action for it to stick out like a sore thumb, the plot to lose its authenticity, and the novel its life” (LCE, p. 199). Conversely, for Camus, just as philosophy disappears into the images of a good novel, which are themselves expressions of some aspect of our experience and, ultimately, our concrete form of life, in a good philosophy the images of the novel disappear into the concepts. Strikingly, then, if Camus’s statement of the novel’s relation to philosophy is inverted, the resulting statement of phi- losophy’s relation to the concrete images that constitute the novel is one that he would similarly endorse: “A philosophy is never anything but a novel (a concrete expression of our life experiences) expressed in concepts. And in a good philosophy the novel (the concrete expression of our life experiences) has disappeared into the concepts.” So far so good. But if in a lifeless novel the philosophy spills over into the characters and action, in a lifeless philosophy the novel’s (i.e., life’s) characters and action are driven from (rather than incorporated into) the concepts: “But the novel (the concrete expression of our life experiences) need only be driven out by the philosophy for the concepts to lose their authenticity, and the phi- losophy its life.” This is why Camus approves of Aristotle’s Ethics, which, “in one of its aspects, is but a long and reasoned personal confession. Abstract thought at last returns to its prop of flesh” (MS, pp. 100–101). What this suggests is that Camus was working at the margins of philosophy, attempting to rehabilitate the interests of flesh-and-blood human beings, which had been all but driven from philosophy by virtue of its overweening proclivity for systematic reason. Such an endeavor falls squarely within a highly respectable line of philosophical inquiry, and, indeed, it may well be the impulse that motivates what is best in philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, Camus’s philosophical hero, did not “believe in reason enough to believe in a system,” but very few philo- sophers would maintain that he was not a philosopher of the first rank. (Unfortunately, however, there are more than a few philosophers who would maintain that he did have a “system,” which says more about these philosophers and the philosophical temperament of our times than it does about Nietzsche.) So, too, the more recent French poststructuralist movement, which owed more to its existentialist predecessors than it 2 introduction: situating camus