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Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity

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Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity ALBERT CAMUS' CRITIQUE OF MODER;NITY ALBERT CAMUS' CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY By RONALD D. SRIGLEY, B.A., M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Ronald D. Srigley, November 2008 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2008) McMaster University (Religious Studies) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity AUTHOR: Ronald D. Srigley, B.A., M.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Professor Zdravko Planinc NUMBER OF PAGES: v, 383 ii ABSTRACT The aim of my study of Camus is twofold. The first aspect concerns the content of his books, the second their formal structure or organization. In contrast to much current scholarship, which interprets Camus' primary concerns as modern and even post-modern, I argue that his ambition runs in the opposite direction historically: Camus' principal aim is to articulate a Greek anthropology and political philosophy. This positive ambition has a critical component as well. Camus's Hellenism is formulated in part through a critical engagement with modernity and an exploration of its Christian origins. The second aim of my study is to explore the structure of Camus' corpus. The fact that Camus organized his books into several different stages or "cycles" is well known and often discussed by commentators in the context of other interpretive matters. However, it is rarely examined in its own right and almost never interpreted in detail. The most common way that it is understood is as straight autobiography. In this view the absurd, rebellion, and love - the guiding themes of the three principal cycles of Camus' books - are understood as stages in his personal philosophical development. The account contradicts Camus' own explicit statements about the allegedly autobiographical character of his work and skirts the fundamental question of interpretation by assuming that it has already been answered. Contrary to this account I argue that the organization of Camus' books is an intentional literary device that contributes significantly to our understanding of the content of his work. My study amounts to new interpretation of Camus that hopefully will open up new and fruitful avenues of research regarding his accomplishments as a philosopher and writer. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A hearty thanks to Dr. Zdravko Planinc for his supervision of this dissertation. His magnanimity and keen insight were instrumental in its completion and decisive for its content. Thanks also go to Dr. Dana Hollander for her careful reading of the text and the engaging questions she raised concerning its argument. Thanks to Dr. Louis Greenspan for his constant encouragement and his willingness to join the committee in difficult circumstances. I also owe a big thanks to my sister, Susan Srigley, for her generous efforts on my behalf My mother has been unfailing in her support over the years, never complaining, never doubting. And my sister Elizabeth admirably fulfilled her role as eldest sibling by scolding me on occasion when I truly needed it. To my father let me say that perhaps now we can finally change the subject. Many thanks to the guys - William and Elliott - for being fun even when I wasn't and for making it all worthwhile. My best thanks go to Kate. We trundled up this difficult hill together, darling. Now from its height I see many fine and wonderful things ahead. Shall we? IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Notes 48 PART ONE: THE HISTORICAL ESSAYS Introduction 62 Notes 66 Chapter One: The Absurd Man 67 Notes 118 Chapter Two: A History of Rebellion 127 Notes 180 PART TWO: TWO WORKS OF FICTION Introduction 194 Notes 197 Chapter Three: Modernity in its Fullest Expression 198 Notes 287 Chapter Four: Before the Fall 307 Notes 350 Conclusion 363 Notes 374 Bibliography 376 v Ph.D. Thesis - R. Srigley McMaster - Religious Studies INTRODUCTION In the fall of 194 7 Albert Camus wrote in his Notebooks: ''If, to outgrow nihilism, one must return to Christianity, one may well follow the impulse and outgrow Christianity in Hellenism."1 A few years later Camus restated the matter more forcefully and in a way that cleared up any lingering ambiguity about where the line should be drawn between the ancients and the modems: "Go back to the passage from Hellenism to Christianity, the true and only turning point in history. "2 Camus acknowledges a difference between Christianity and modernity at the same time that he implicates Christianity in the modem project. He also makes it clear that for him the Greeks alone possess an account that is free of the limitations of both traditions. In 1957 Camus goes farther. He now states openly that Christianity is complicit in the modem project and announces his opposition to both as a central feature of his proposed third philosophical essay, The Myth ofNemesis: "Nemesis: The profound complicity between Marxism and Christianity (to develop). That is why I am against them both."3 A year later, in April 1958, he states his own positive ambition in these terms: "The world marches toward paganism, but again it rejects pagan values. We must restore them. We must paganize belief, grecesize the Christ and restore balance. "4 These bold claims indicate a direction in Camus's thought that was first articulated and explored in Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism and is apparent in 1 Ph.D. Thesis - R. Srigley McMaster - Religious Studies every major work he has written since. That direction entails two central features. These features form the heart of Camus' philosophical project as I have been able to understand it. The first is a critique of modernity and an explanation of Christianity's complicity in the modern project. As early as The Myth ofSisyphus Camus argued that there is nothing to choose between Christianity and modernity, because despite their phenomenal differences and in comparison with his own Greek account, their manner of interpreting and responding to the basic character of life is structurally the same. He adds to the argument and further develops it in The Rebel, where he explores the origins of all developmental accounts of history and explains the nature and consequences of the modern political movements that were their logical successors. The Fall rounds out the critical analysis with Camus' best account of the nature of modernity. In this book Camus bypasses the more common versions of the modern world - rebellion, absurdity - and goes right to the heart of the matter. The madness and violence of modernity is a consequence of an erotic disturbance that has insinuated itself into virtually every aspect of the contemporary world. For Camus that disturbance received its fullest expression in modern totalitarianism. However, it is also a basic feature of Western liberal democratic regimes committed to science and technology and the rational control of nature. Indeed Camus argues that in this regard and on the economic plane liberal regimes and totalitarian regimes form "one world." 5 The persuasiveness of Camus' account is due precisely to its Greek character and its freedom from modem and Christian assumptions. 2 Ph.D. Thesis - R. Srigley McMaster- Religious Studies In all these works Camus patiently refines his critique of modernity. The second feature of Camus' project concerns an interpretation of the Greeks and an explanation of why we should prefer them to Christianity and modernity. The Greeks were the very foundation of Camus' thinking and a source to which he turned early and often in his attempt to make sense of his own experience and of the world in which he lived. His early observation that perhaps the whole meaning of the Odyssey lay in Odysseus' refusal ofKalypso's offer of immortality is typical in this regard.6 Though slightly reductive as interpretation, it is a stunning insight and quite illuminating regarding Camus' analysis of the apocalyptic movements of his time. Camus' earliest notebooks are filled with such discussions of ancient political and literary works and of their relevance for his assessment of modernity. 7 Camus developed these insights into sustained arguments in his published works. The very structure of his oeuvre was designed as a mediation in the medium of the Greek myth.8 Each of the three stages that constitute the well-known cyclical structure of Camus' books is organized around a central Greek myth: the absurd: the myth of Sisyphus; rebellion: the myth of Prometheus; and love: the myth ofNemesis.9 Each successive stage of Camus' attempt to understand the nature of modernity was simultaneously a movement toward the very heart of the Greek world. The Greeks were for Camus both the measure for his critical analysis and an object of study, the aim of his positive effort to discover a genuine alternative to the Christian and modern traditions 3 Ph.D. Thesis - R. Srigley McMaster - Religious Studies with which he was confronted. The overwhelming importance of the Greeks for Camus' project is immediately apparent to anyone who reads his books. So too is his interpretation of the relationship between modernity and Christianity and his critical assessment of both traditions. Yet these features of Catnus' work are little understood and rarely discussed by commentators. How are we to explain this neglect? If we examine its character closely, certain patterns of interpretation emerge. Camus' philosophical commentators divide naturally into two basic groups: Christians and modems. Of course there are non-partisans who do not fit neatly into . either of these camps. There was a wave of excellent readers in the '60s and '70s who were primary sources in their own right and who began to appreciate the depth of Camus' critique of modernity and its compatibility with their own work. 10 But their interpretations were as brief as they were insightful and their influence did not last.
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