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JARED L. SMITH, M.A. MAY 2020

FROM ONE TO ALL: THE EVOLUTION OF CAMUS’S (83 pp.)

Thesis Advisor: Benjamin Berger

In this thesis, I argue that there is a metaphysical shift in ’s philosophy which allows him to build an of revolt in his later work out of his earlier, individual-focused account of absurdism. Against Herbert Hochberg and scholars who argue that Camus’s later work is inconsistent with his earlier work, this thesis tracks the progression of Camus’s thought in order to demonstrate that his ethics does not constitute a rupture with his past work but a consistent evolution of it. First dealing with the problem of suicide covered in the

Sisyphean cycle, the thesis goes on to examine the ethics of rebellion in the Promethean cycle and concludes with a speculative consideration of the third, incomplete cycle on love. Taken together, these chapters show that the consistent evolution of Camus’s absurdism argues the reaction to the absurd that one ought to have is that of agape: the recognition of humanity’s innate power to create as a transcendental structure of consciousness. FROM ONE TO ALL: THE EVOLUTION OF CAMUS’ ABSURDISM

A thesis submitted

To Kent State University in partial

Fulfillment of the requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

by

Jared L. Smith

May 2020

© Copyright

All reserved

Except for previously published materials Thesis written by

Jared L. Smith

B.A., Marian University, 2018

M.A., Kent State University, 2020

Approved by

Benjamin Berger ______, Advisor

Michael Byron ______, Chair, Department of Philosophy

James Blank ______, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences TABLE OF CONTENTS------iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS------vi

CHAPTERS

I. INTRODUCTION ------1

II. THE SISYPHEAN CYCLE ------5

1. INTRODUCTION ------5

2. WHAT IS THE ABSURD? ------7

3. PHILOSOPHICAL SUICIDE ------14

4. MEURSAULT AS THE UNIVERSE: REIMAGINING THE STRANGER --- 19

5. A PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH ------31

III. THE PROMETHEAN CYCLE ------38

1. INTRODUCTION ------38

2. AGAINST : THE QUESTION OF MURDER ------40

3. SLAVE AGAINST MASTER: “ALL OR ” ------48

4. FROM ONE TO ALL: AGAINST THE STRANGER ------54

5. I AS AN OTHER ------58

6. THE JUST ASSASSIN: THE ETHICS OF IN ACTION ------62

IV. A ? ------66

1. INTRODUCTION ------66

2. GRECIAN LOVE ------67

3. AGAPE IS THE RECOGNITION OF A STRUCTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

------73

iv 4. CAMUS’S TURN TO AGAPE ------77

BIBLIOGRAPHY ------81

v Acknowledgements

I would like to express my special gratitude to a number of different individuals and institutions.

The first of these is my amazing wife Sam as without her continuous love and support this project (as well as my Masters as a whole) would have never been possible. I would next like to thank my thesis committee of Dr. Berger, Dr. Barnbaum, and Dr. Garchar. In addition to this I would like to specially thank Dr. Aldea who helped me with the project that turned into the beginning of this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Zavota, Dr. Kim, Dr. Deb, and Dr. Ryan.

In addition to those professors, I would also like to take the to thank Nicholas Charles and

Griffin Werner who have, after listening to me pitch a number of different variations of this thesis over the course of two years still call me a colleague and friend. I also wish to thank Tirza,

Hyo Won, Colin, Hyeon, Joe, Cara, Matt, and Brant. Finally, I would like to thank Dr.

Reuter, Dr. Malone, and Dr. Nichols along with the rest of the philosophy and faculty at

Saint Joseph’s College that helped to instill the love of philosophy in me.

vi Chapter One: Introduction

“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” (Myth, 3). This is how Camus begins The Myth of . By the end of the work, he has ruled that suicide, both physical and “philosophical”, is something from which one should always turn away. And yet, less than a decade later, in the play “” and the philosophical essay, , Camus seems to take a very different position. He concludes in the former that the assassin not only should but must kill himself. When stated like this, it would appear that Camus has contradicted himself, turned his back on his earlier work, and this leads to a disjointed picture of the . Herbert Hochberg has gone so far to say that, given this apparent inconsistency, Camus’s work is “incoherent” (Hochberg, 100). However, this could not be further from the . In this thesis, I argue that Camus’s thought is coherent, but this can only be seen if we understand it as an evolution of thought, a development that begins with the

Sisyphean cycle and builds into the more complicated ethics of the Promethean cycle. I also argue that this consistent evolution continues into the unwritten Nemesis cycle, in which Camus was on his way to concluding that the reaction to the absurd that one ought to have is that of agape: the recognition of humanity’s innate power to create value as a transcendental structure of consciousness.

James Feibleman writes of Camus that,

1 He was neither a great novelist nor a great dramatist; his work is too non- specific and undramatic. For the most part, he was rational but at the same time superficial, often reasoning closely about what hardly matters, pages which sometimes give off the appearance of philosophy but deal with trivial generalities, the finished work amounting only to weak philosophical essays and glimpses of plans for fiction. It is difficult to see anything of permanent worth in all of this if we confine our judgment strictly to his writings in their proper categories. Camus did not advance the cause of either the novel or philosophy, and these are the two fields to which he devoted most of his attention. And yet there is a tremendous value in Camus which is worth recognizing and saving (Feibleman, 281-2).

While I disagree with Feibleman’s claims about Camus’s philosophy and novels, I do agree with his conclusion of a hidden value that we must recognize and save. It is the work of this thesis to recognize this hidden value, which I argue is the development of love into agape.

Thus, in the final chapter of this thesis, I will argue that the development of Camus’s corresponds to a development in his understanding of love, from eros to and finally to agape. This interpretation is accomplished, in part, by combining the literature and philosophical treatise of the cycles focusing on both, not only focusing on the main themes of each cycle but also highlighting the evolution of the concept of love for Camus. It is important to note that this thesis will grant equal weight to both the treatises and the literature that Camus has written to fully flesh out Camus’s philosophy, as to leave out either would not paint a complete picture. That is to say, in the body of this thesis I will directly disagree with Feibleman’s understanding of Camus both as a philosopher and as a , demonstrating the value that comes from combining them both to highlight the important, dramatic underpinnings of both.

The second chapter of this work will deal with the above problem of suicide, briefly explicating the absurd and highlighting the fact that for Camus it is a relational phenomenon; the world is not absurd for Camus, but the relationship between the human and the world yields

2 absurdity. I will then consider Camus’s taxonomy of classical responses to the absurd—all of which are forms of escapism—in a discussion of philosophical and physical suicide. The former will consider religion and other such as Kierkegaard and Husserl, while the latter will be expanded into a broader “philosophy of death”; however, both will in turn be criticized by Camus. I will then offer an in-depth and novel analysis of Camus’s The Stranger, in which I argue that Meursault should not be read, as he ordinarily is, as the questioning human grappling with the absurdity of , but rather the silent universe against which the other characters rebel. The chapter will then conclude with a discussion of , in which we find that solipsistic rebellion against our deaths in order to create is the only way we ought to respond to the absurd.

The third chapter will pick up on this conclusion looking more fully into the concept of rebellion, asking what it is and what makes it genuine. To accomplish this, The Rebel is first historically situated and nihilism, the intellectual opponent of , is defined and discussed. I then focus on the concept of rebellion, noting that, for Camus, a rebel is one whose

“no” is more than a simple negation. It is also an affirmation. In the discussion of rebellion, I analyze Camus’s extended metaphor of the master and slave present throughout The Rebel, highlighting how the metaphor best illustrates Camus’s of “All or Nothing”, which is the basis for values that extend past the self, I.e., values that extend to and for the other. In this way, we move out of the apparent of the Sisyphean cycle and into an absurdist ethics of solidarity. The chapter then ends with a literary analysis of The Plague and how it is set apart from The Stranger, not only in content and tone, but also in narrative structure and character development.

3 The fourth and final chapter considers the unwritten Nemesis cycle of Camus’s work, which, I argue would have concluded that solidarity through rebellion is not the final aim of an absurdist ethics. To make this , I return to the discussions of the earlier cycles, however, and I consider how the development from one cycle to the next can be read as a passage through different conceptions of love. I ultimately conclude that, for Camus, the way one ought to deal with the relational absurd is with agape, and that this can truly unite all of humanity. It is in this way that we truly move from one to all in Camus’s thought, beginning first in solipsism and finishing with agape as the recognition of the structure of human existence, a form of love that allows us to see the other as what I call the “same different”.

4 Chapter Two: The Sisyphean Cycle

Introduction

As explained in the previous chapter, in order to best argue that there is a consistent evolution in Camus’s thought, in this thesis we will focus primarily on four main texts in

Camus’s corpus: an essay and novella from each of the first two “cycles” of Camus’s thought.

This second chapter will cover what is known as the Sisyphean cycle in Camus’s work, comprised of the philosophical treatise The Myth of Sisyphus along with the novella The

Stranger.1 These two have been paired together for several which Cruickshank notes, most notably that the two “appeared within a few months of one another, and it was soon clear that the novel could be interpreted as the application to an imaginary individual of the expounded in the essay” (Cruickshank, 143). As noted in the introduction to this thesis, The Myth of Sisyphus primarily seeks to answer the “question of suicide”, i.e., it explores to what extent suicide—literal and philosophical—should be viewed as an adequate solution to the absurdity of existence. Camus is unequivocal in stating that suicide of either sort is to be viewed as an attempt to avoid the of the absurd. In order to explain this, however—and in order to unpack the problem that this presents when thought alongside Camus’s later conception of revolt—it is necessary to begin by elucidating his more basic understanding of the absurd condition.

1 While there is a robust and contemporary debate about what a philosophical text is in terms of inclusion and exclusion of literature, I will not be addressing this in this thesis as I do not find it necessary for a thinker such as Camus. It is very clear to me based upon Camus’s comments about Kafka (125), Dostoevsky (104-12), and literature in general (7) made in the The Myth of Sisyphus that he there is no meaningful between literature and treatise. This doubles even more so for this project as it is about his on the , and his literature is even more so reflective of his views on this.

5 The Myth of Sisyphus is unambiguous in its claim that suicide of both kinds ultimately is an unacceptable response to the absurd. However, for the purposes of both this chapter and this thesis, we will take Camus’s refutation of physical suicide as a broader philosophy of death. That is to say, it is a philosophy concerned with the results that death has on the human condition.

The reasons for this are primarily threefold. Understanding it as such allows us to better incorporate the implicit philosophy of death contained in the pages of The Stranger. In addition to this, it will allow us to set up the argument of the second chapter here so that the arguments presented in The Rebel are not as jarring. Finally, Camus himself interchanges the words frequently in The Myth of Sisyphus later stating the central question of the work as “does the absurd dictate death?” (Myth, 8-9). As such I feel as though we are permitted to do the same.

However, before we begin to tackle the problem of suicide as it appears in both works we must first address perhaps the most important part of Camus’s philosophy of the human condition.

Camus begins The Myth of Sisyphus by noting “the absurd, hitherto taken as a conclusion, is considered in this essay as a starting-point”; the essay therefore aims only to demonstrate the result that the absurd has upon the human condition (Myth, 2). But what is the absurd? As noted above, this is a necessary question, since The Myth of Sisyphus concerns the “relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd” (Myth, 6). It stands to that, before we are able to investigate the extent to which suicide is a “solution” to the absurd, we must first investigate the “problem” posed by the absurd.

This chapter is therefore divided into two sections. In the first section, I will explicate what

6 Camus means by “the absurd” and how it differs from other ways of conceiving absurdity.2 The second section will consider one of the possible “escapes" from the absurd, namely philosophical suicide. Thirdly, I will offer a novel reading of The Stranger. One that does not interpret

Meursault as the tragic hero; rather, it views him as the silent universe. Finally I will cover a

Camusian interpretation of death, a necessary if not defining feature of the human condition. As a result, this chapter as a whole will cover the implications of Camus's conception of the absurd for his conception of suicide and, more broadly, death.3

What Is the Absurd?

One of Camus’s first formulations regarding the of the absurd is that it is “the divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting” (Myth, 6). I wish to highlight the concept that Camus chose to employ here: “divorce”. Why choose divorce? A quick search through a thesaurus yields several other possible verbs such as severance, dissolution, separation, split, division, and rupture. I stress the use of the concept of divorce because I believe that it was a meticulous decision, one that highlights a primary aspect of the absurd for Camusian existentialism. For Camus, the absurd is to be understood as a relationship. More specifically,

2 I again wish to stress here that as the overall explication of the absurd will be brief, my argument for how it differs from other conceptions will accordingly be incredibly short and punchy. I feel as though I must mention this here so I may clearly state what this work is not. This work is not an argument for Camus over other thinkers; rather, it is a defense of the coherency of Camus’s corpus of work. As such, any critiques of other thinkers is not to place Camus above them, but rather it is to demonstrate the difference between their work and his for the purpose of further supporting the argument that Camus’s corpus demonstrates a consistent evolution of thought that argus for a distinct picture of the human condition. Namely, that we are in an unceasing struggle with the relational absurd and as such we love, suffer, and die.

3 I would like to stress here the brief nature of the explication of the absurd that I will be offering. A full explanation, offering not only a defense and , but also a complete explication of the differences between the different conceptions of the absurd would fill the pages of a book (if not several books) that I am neither qualified nor able to write at this time. However, I will be offering small portions of each of these in the pages to follow.

7 “the absurd” names a relationship between humanity and the universe. However, it is not just any human accompanied by any understanding of the universe. The religious individual who, when staring at the universe, “finds” proof of a creator is not partaking in the absurd relationship.

It requires a distinct understanding of the universe accompanied by a reflective individual. As

Camus writes, “At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world” (Myth, 28).

Thus, the language of divorce is not only helpful in demonstrating the Camusian of the absurd, but it is in fact required for us to be able to best illustrate the absurd. Perhaps this is best shown via the rejection of the other synonyms. The options listed above all contain necessary implications of and intent. Taking severance as an example, we find that one severs something in two, leaving parts of what used to be whole. Rather, when one is divorced from something, one retains their individuality; they remain at all a whole. In the case of the absurd then, we find that it most clearly mirrors the concept of divorce. Camus and his existentialist peers do not argue that the universe used to have inherent meaning and now it does not, which is what severance would imply. Rather, they argue that meaning was imposed upon the universe and taken as inherent. On this view, we have imagined something that simply did not exist; we deluded ourselves into believing our lies. As Cruickshank notes, “the [absurdist attitude] examined […]by Camus is one that can make no contact with absolute and values” (Cruickshank, 43). Also, I must stress that the absurd is not immediate cause for celebration. Divorce is the only verb listed above that adequately captures the sense of longing humanity has for meaning, just as a scorned lover may long for the comfort of a past marriage.

8 This highlights a necessary aspect of understanding the absurd as a relationship, one that will be a hinge piece for Camus’s arguments, both in The Myth of Sisyphus and later in The

Rebel. The absurd is a relationship. Relationships only exist when there are at least two parties engaging in them, in this case a questioning humanity and a silent universe. The common understanding of absurdist philosophy which describes the universe or world as inherently absurd is therefore a misunderstanding. For Camus, nothing could be further from the truth. It is the relationship that is absurd, not the actor nor the stage on which they perform. As Camus writes, “[the absurd] lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. In this particular case and on the plane of , I can therefore say that the Absurd is not in man (if such a metaphor could have meaning) nor in the world, but in their presence together.

For the moment it is the only bond uniting them” (Myth, 30).

Furthermore, as Caraway notes, this absurd relationship is one that is best described through the language of divorce, and its antonym, marriage. He writes, “this is the absurd situation in which man finds himself, a situation which is clarified by the metaphor of marriage and divorce. On the one hand, man is wed to the world; if he has , his being must be experienced in the world. There is no other arena. If the relation between man and the world were reasonable, then the world in which man has to live would fulfill his fundamental needs. On the other hand, however, the world does not fulfill his basic needs. Hence, he is divorced from the world to which by ontological necessity he is wed. It certainly makes sense to be wed to someone, and it makes sense to be divorced from someone. But to be both wed and divorced to the same person simultaneously is patently absurd. This is the situation in which man finds himself in relation to the world” (Caraway, 126). This language highlights the contradictions that

9 make up the absurd, it seems to both necessitate our escape, and yet also our rebellion. We will touch on this further below in the sections on philosophical and physical suicide; however, for now it suffices to say that we must understand the absurd as a marriage to the world and a divorce from its contents.

Furthermore, as Caraway continues, “According to Camus, the ontological relation between man and the world gives rise to the most significant question in philosophy, namely, can man find life absurd and still go on living?” (Caraway, 127). We can rephrase this central question that arises out of this relation as: can we accept the meaningless universe and still seek meaning. It is then natural for one to ask what it means to seek meaning in the meaningless universe. We may begin to wonder if this position does not lead to an anti-scientific worldview, one that would claim that investigation of the laws and order of nature is fruitless. Let me stress that this is not the case. There are certainly laws of nature that can be discovered and help us to learn how the world operates. However, such scientific never yields a sense of meaning in terms of purpose. Likewise, we learn from medicine how we are alive but not why we are alive. Therefore, when Camus claims that the human being questions the silent universe for meaning he means that we demand some sort of absolute truth, some infinite to permanently satiate our desire.

Without this sense of absolute truth or an infinite, one can first begin to confront the absurd. Camus writes that feelings of absurdity can strike one anywhere. “It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, 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 - this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the

10 “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. “Begins” - this is important. 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.

What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening” (Myth, 13).

As Camus writes, “If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this world to which I am now opposed by my whole consciousness and my whole insistence upon familiarity. This reason is what sets me in opposition to all creation” (Myth, 51).

Here Camus is clearly alluding to the human condition being the primary reason for the absurd condition. As Das writes, “man is the only living creation who has been endowed with thinking ability and it is because of this ability that he frantically looks for a reason beyond his and tries to add logic to every act of or injustice inflicted upon him” (Das, 26). Taking this even further, Hall writes that, for Camus, the absurd is referring to "the whole scandalous of the human condition” (Hall, 26) Paradoxically then, the absurd is both a cause of the human condition and the totality of its . It is our ability to think that both drives us towards meaning and allows us to create it all the same (Das, 26). This becomes more clear as we see that the meaningless of the world does not bother the tree or the non-human animals for these things do not desire meaning in the way that humans necessarily do. Plant life is certainly non-intelligent and the basic calls of biology are enough for the non-human animals.

Again, I wish to highlight the concept of opposition in the above quote from The Myth of

Sisyphus. I argue that this concept was intentionally chosen, as it best showcases the confrontational nature of the absurd. Sagi highlights this confrontation noting that for Camus

11 “human are not part of the world, they face it” (Sagi, 67). This of course means that, should humanity not question the universe and demand meaning, or should the universe actually provide meaning, then the absurd would not exist. This disjunction highlights an interesting point about the absurd. Camus argues that every man, woman, and child exists in the absurd; however, one can be unaware of the absurdity of such existence. Or rather, I should say that every human alive has the potential to experience the absurd, despite the fact that they may never actualize their experience of absurdity. Presumably, throughout the course of human history, there have been groups of people who did not question the universe for meaning along with groups of people who falsely attributed meaning to the universe when there was none to be found. As a result, these groups of people would have never experienced the absurd as they did not forge a relationship with the silent universe.

As a result of the relational absurd, Camus argues that any foray into understanding the human condition must begin with a complete understanding of the absurd (Myth, 31). Sagi notes that “Camus approaches the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus as the sum total of human existence”

(Sagi, 43). But, what does it mean to have a complete understanding of the absurd, or that the absurd is the totality of human existence? Camus writes that “Its first distinguishing feature in this regard is that it cannot be divided. To destroy one of its terms is to destroy the whole. There can be no absurd outside the human mind” (Myth, 30). I wish to focus on the last sentence of this quote as it will help us to more fully develop our picture of the absurd. Because the absurd exists within the human mind, at this point in Camus’s philosophical career the absurd concerns a relationship between the world and an individual. This further is reinforced by Camus stating,

“thus, like everything else, the absurd ends with death” (Myth, 30). If the absurd involves more

12 than the individual and their world, then how could it possibly make sense to say that it “ends with death”? We could read into death to make it work should we be so inclined, making it read,

‘the absurd ends with death, the death of all possible questioning humans.’ However, I feel as though it will be rather uncontroversial to claim that this is reading far too much into the word death, leaving the death of the individual a far more palatable reading.

Perhaps a better way to phrase the above is that the absurd is an isolating experience. It does not arise from all of humanity collectively questioning the universe, and it does not arise from the universe’s silent response to this group inquiry. Rather, it comes from the individual’s inquiry and the universe’s lack of response, and because of this one can become aware of the absurd while every other individual that one encounters fails to also become aware of the absurd.4

Furthermore, the absurd often leads to and depression. This is in part due to the isolation one often faces; we need look no further than stories of children disowned from their families for rejecting some traditionally held values for proof of this. However, this is not the only reason that these feelings arise from the absurd. In fact, Camus argues that these feelings are in some way integral to the absurd. As he writes, once one comes to grasp the absurd “man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. This must not be forgotten” (Myth, 28). It is through this point that perhaps

4 One may then ask how an individual could come to such a different conclusion than others. However, we may in return ask why they would find this odd. Invariably throughout the course of human history individuals have come to earth-shatteringly different conclusions than others they were in contact with: Galileo’s realization about the universe, John Brown’s realization about the American south, and Darwin’s understanding of the natural world. Each of these revolutionary ideas was met not only with ardent , but often with violence and other forms of persecution despite being correct.

13 the most important aspect of Camus’s relational absurd comes to light. The absurd does not disappear once it is encountered. This could not possibly be, as humans will continue to search for meaning and continue to fail in this search; it is an unceasing struggle for meaning. This, accompanied by the strong feelings of angst and depression may best represent why The Myth of

Sisyphus engages with the question of suicide. It would seem prima facie that such a relationship necessitates some form of escapism to cope with it. However, this is the exact opposite of what

Camus will in fact argue.

Unceasing struggle in this context means that the absurd is something that must be confronted; we cannot accept it. Simply accepting the absurd would therefore strip us of any possible avenue for meaning creation. As Camus writes, “The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to” (Myth, 31). But what does it mean to not agree to the absurd? Does Camus not “agree” to the absurd by presenting it as the of the human condition? We must define what is meant by agreement with the absurd. Let me first say that it is not the acknowledgment of its reality, as any existential philosophy could not be developed, nor any work that posits the primacy of the absurd. Rather, to “agree” to the absurd is to evade its significance by acknowledging it. To state this another way, to agree to the absurd is to give up, to be defeated, to cease to struggle for meaning, thus ending the unceasing struggle.

Philosophical Suicide

The Myth of Sisyphus, therefore, does not only place the absurd at the root of all human experience, but it prescribes that we do not evade it. This then requires us to investigate evasion

14 by asking what actions and attitudes would constitute evasion. As Cruickshank writes, “It may seem at first as though there are at least two possible ways of solving the [absurd] - suicide or the ” (Cruickshank, 44). In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus offers us two helpful examples of evasion, the first of these being hope. As Camus writes, it is “hope of another life one must

“deserve” or trickery of those who live not for life itself but for some great that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning and betray it” (Myth, 8). The second of these is suicide, which, for Camus, can occur in two different ways — physical and philosophical suicide.

Physical suicide, when one literally kills themselves, is clear enough, but what are we to make of philosophical suicide?

Philosophical suicide can be thought of as a sort of self-delusion or the act of lying to oneself. It is important to note that this is not simply the act of lying to oneself about anything.

The obese man who looks in the mirror and says he is thin is certainly lying to himself. However, he is not committing philosophical suicide, while the man who confronts the absurd and chooses to accept it does. The difference between the two scenarios is the foreclosure of further inquiry.

The first man may make himself happier with his lie momentarily continuing to not exercise and overeat; however, he may still choose to exercise and eat a balanced diet, up until the point of his death. The second man will not continue to struggle against the absurd once he accepts it, for why would he? Once he fixes his worldview in a way that it cannot be challenged, he has foreclosed future inquiry about the world. As Camus writes, “it is natural to give a clear view of the world after accepting the idea that it must be clear” (Myth, 42). No one conducts inquiry into a topic they find settled. As stated in a passage cited above, philosophical suicide is to confront the absurd and choose a return to the chain opposed to the definitive awakening. As Sagi writes,

15 “the question is whether they choose to renounce the rift that their consciousness has exposed and, if so, what is the meaning of this renunciation” (Sagi, 67).

Along these lines, perhaps it would be helpful to think about an unceasing struggle and acceptance through a lens of possibility. After all, of what is advice that one must not assent to the absurd if there is no other option. Preempting this, Camus strives to give us a third option as an answer to the question, “Does absurdity require one to escape it through hope or suicide” (Myth, 8). This third answer is the unceasing struggle, devoid of hope against the absurd. But what does this look like? As previously stated, humans desire meaning above all else, specifically, meaning that will transcend us. However, the absurd will not allow any such meaning to exist, meaning that to assent to any such meaning would be to escape the absurd through hope or suicide. It appears then that in order to demonstrate unceasing struggle, we must first elucidate ceased struggle, i.e., philosophical suicide and hope, through example. Allow me then to demonstrate this with a traditional source of transcendent meaning, the Christian faith.

The Christian God is an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient creator. He is said to have created humans in his image, and have placed them in charge of everything else. In addition to this, God is supposed to have spoken to on Mt. Sinai and given him a codex for life in the form of the Ten Commandments. Frequently throughout the Christian Bible it is said that God knows all things that have happened and will happen, going as far as to say that

“not a single sparrow will fall to the ground without your Father knowing it” (Matthew 10:29).

From at least a certain perspective, then, the Christian God has a plan for every created being. As

God tells the prophet Jeremiah not to worry, informing him “I know the plans I have for you” (Jeremiah 29:11).

16 Should one encounter the absurd and then turn to the Christian God to imbue the universe with an inherent purpose for them, Camus would argue they are evading the the absurd through hope and philosophical suicide, both methods of ceasing the struggle, of denying the absurd. In the case of the Ten Commandments, the Christian individual has derived from a nonexistent transcendent meaning. They are guilty of hope, depriving themselves of base human urges such as desiring sexual intercourse with those they find attractive, in hopes that they will be rewarded in a future life. In this case, the future life is the positive Christian , namely

Heaven, a supposed eternity in paradise. This of course, can lead the Christian in this life to deny their freedom and accept grave injustices, tricking themselves into not living for life itself.

Likewise, the Christian who believes that God has a plan for them has committed philosophical suicide. They have foreclosed the possibility of further inquiry into the universe as they have lied to themselves that there is a meaningful universe,5 namely the universe that their God has created and of which he has placed them as steward.

However, the Christian faith is certainly not the only way that one commits philosophical suicide. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus takes issue with Søren Kierkegaard’s understanding of the absurd,6 accusing him of dismissing the absurd—an action, as previously noted, akin to philosophical suicide, which cannot be reconciled for Camus. Camus notes that in

5 While the majority of this subsection certainly decries the dangers of the Christian faith for absurdism, I wish to stress that Camus’s critique of is founded in a different reason than that of his counterparts such as . As Camus writes, “Let us note this carefully in conclusion: what contradicts the absurd in that work is not its Christian character, but rather its announcing a future life. It is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life” (Myth, 112).

6 It is important to note that in this section I will not be critiquing the figures presented (Søren Kierkegaard here and later) further than Camus critiques them. This section should be seen as primarily explanatory rather than argumentative. The purpose of bringing up these critiques from The Myth of Sisyphus is twofold. First and foremost to better explain through Camus’s examples what is meant by philosophical suicide and second to help position the work in the history of philosophy, illustrating the difference between Camusian existentialism and other schools of proto-existentialist and proto-absurdist philosophy.

17 Kierkegaardian philosophy, the absurd is explained away as “the criterion of the other world, whereas it is simply a residue of the experience of this world” (Myth, 38). The other world in this sense is the world of God. While this makes Kierkegaard’s absurd inherently isolating and therefore reminiscent of Camus's conception of the absurd, we must note that it is a different sense of isolation, which will have drastic implications for the conclusion of each philosopher’s conception of the absurd. The isolation involved in the Kierkegaardian absurd arises from the divorce between humans and their creator, which he posits as the true source of meaning, not humans and their situation. Because of this divorce, one must take the leap of faith into

Christianity, so as to best avoid the despair that Kierkegaard argues is the resting state of life in the absurd (Myth, 37). The leap avoids despair by giving meaning to the meaningless, in this case death. As Kierkegaard notes, “for the Christian death is certainly not the end of everything and it implies infinitely more hope than life implies for us, even when that life is overflowing with health and vigor” (Myth, 39). As evident in these passages, for Camus, Kierkegaard is not only guilty of philosophical suicide in the face of the absurd; he champions it!

While both of the examples of philosophical suicide presented thus far have been, at their core, religious, I must note that not all examples must be. Later in The Myth of Sisyphus Camus also critiques the non-religious phenomenological work of Edmund Husserl in the same vein.

Camus first notes that “phenomenology declines to explain the world, it wants to be merely a description of actual experience” (Myth, 43). He praises this as “it confirms absurd thought in its initial assertion that there is not truth, but merely truths” (Myth, 43). However, as Husserl begins to speak of “extra-temporal brought to light by the ”, Camus argues that he begins to sound like (Myth, 44). Since these essences are knowable through intention, it

18 would appear that Husserl has now contradicted the initial assertion that there is no underlying truth of reality. Camus argues that just as “Kierkegaard was swallowed up in his God,” Husserl’s phenomenology “hurls itself into an abstract ” of essences (Myth, 45).

For Camus, this is enough to decry that both are guilty of philosophical suicide. Both philosophers at first boldly assert the truth of the absurdist worldview before championing the complete negation of one of the terms through some ‘internal logic.’ As Cruickshank writes,

“Camus criticizes the attempts by these different to suppress the absurd by rejecting reason and cultivating their own individual forms of what he holds to be irrationality” (Cruickshank, 45). Henke notes that for Kierkegaard, "when the believer has faith

(a higher form of hope) for immortality, and acts with blind faith, (the leap) then, consequently, the Absurd [sic.] no longer serves as an absurdity” (Absurdity, 130). Thus we see the negation of the absurd through internal logic after the recognition of tis reality. Perhaps a better way of understanding philosophical suicide is to bastardize the very phrase “leap of faith” from

Kierkegaard. To commit philosophical suicide is to understand the truth of the absurd, and to instead of confront and continuously grapple with its harsh reality, choose to “take a leap of faith” and negate the absurd. As we have seen through the three main examples presented in this section, philosophical suicide takes many different forms, all sharing a denial of the absurd. It is as Camus notes, “there are many ways of leaping, the essential being to leap” (Myth, 42).7

Meursault as the Universe: Reimagining The Stranger

7 We must understand that philosophical suicide is only one form of escapism or suicide that we will cover. A more robust discussion of physical suicide will be found later in this chapter, but for now let me say that physical suicide is also a form of leaping, albeit a bit more permanent than philosophical suicide.

19

According to Camus, it is incredibly easy to be guilty of philosophical suicide or hope.

Confronting the absurd is never easy, since it is, quite frankly, an absurd experience. It is nearly always easier to ascribe to grand narratives promising inherent meaning and purpose as they assuage the eternal frustration we have in confronting the silent universe. This is to say that confronting the absurd is certainly difficult; however, such a confrontation is necessary if we are to have any chance at a meaningful life , i.e. a fulfilling, full, or authentic8 life. As Camus writes,

“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully” (Myth, 53). But what does it mean to accept a fate fully? How is this acceptance not philosophical suicide? I argue that

Camus’s The Stranger is an argument for this claim, that the best life is the life lived that accepts the radical conclusion of the absurd fully. However, as I will argue below, in order for this to be best seen, The Stranger and its main character must be read in a new way.

“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know” (Stranger, 3). These are the words that greet us when we first open The Stranger. They are the inciting incident for

Meursault’s hero’s journey through Camus’s absurdist work. At least, this is how the novella is ordinarily interpreted, and understandably so. On the surface, the text seems to provide an account of the way a person confronts the absurd and realizes the inherent meaninglessness of the universe. Such a view often suggests that Meursault is the “hero of authenticity”, or that

8 Authentic here should be taken in the Sartrean sense, i.e., the combination of historicity and transcendence in a freedom affirming statement. While the two disagreed about some aspects in their , this is not one of them. For further scholarship on this issue refer to Golomb’s “Camus's of Authentic Life” and Aronson’s “Camus Versus Sartre: The Unresolved Conflict”.

20 Meursault “dissect[s], confront[s], and resolve[s] the Absurd [sic.]” through his actions, or even further that is the hedonistic honest man and it is the view that has dominated the literature

(Golomb, 270; Absurdity, 127; Duff, 119).9 On my view, however, the work can be read in another way. By emphasizing the relational character of the absurd, it is possible to interpret

Meursault not as the tragic hero of the work who would have the qualities of what Camus will later call the lucid man. Remembering how we have a relational understanding of the absurd, this reading of him as the lucid man or tragic hero would make him the questioning human.10 While this may seem like a natural interpretation at first, as said above, I argue this is incorrect.

In what follows, then, I consider what follows if we consider the possibility that

Meursault represents the silent universe, and the absurd emerges from the interactions between this silent universe (Meursault) and the other characters of the novella. As I will attempt to demonstrate, on this interpretation, the necessarily relational aspect of the absurd is more fully expressed if it is indeed the case the Meursault is equated with the world itself. As Lazere notes,

Camus himself championed the idea that there were at least “ten other possible conclusions,” to the work, or ways to interpret it and its characters (Lazere, 151). As such, I wish to add this conclusion to the “four book-length studies, [] 250 page collection of essays, and hundreds of articles in journals and chapters in books, to which every year sees many additions” that Lazere notes exist on The Stranger (Lazere, 151).

As stated above, the novella begins with Meursault’s revelation that his mother has died.

While this would normally cause a child to have feelings of depression or anger, Meursault does

9 Note that these are just a few specific examples of such a reading. Further examples include, but are not limited to, Sprintzen’s notion of the lucid man and Lazere's notion of the human Meursault (Sprintzen; Lazere, 152).

10 See again Sprintzen, Henke, Golomb, and company for this view.

21 not react like this. In fact, he does not react at all; he is incredibly bored and inconvenienced by having to attend his mother’s wake. While these feelings are certainly unusual for the situation, I highlight them because they are evidence for the interpretation for which I am arguing. While it seems unnatural for a son to not grieve the passing of his mother, even if only for a moment, it is not unnatural for the universe to be perfectly apathetic to the passing of a human.

If Meursault is an extended metaphor for the silent universe, and if the novella is a demonstration of the absurd, then Maman must be nothing more than a plot point. Since she has died, she can no longer interact with Meursault (i.e. the universe) to create the absurd. Following her death, therefore, we glimpse the meaninglessness of the world through the indifference of

Meursault. As Camus writes in The Myth of Sisyphus, “the absurd ends with death” (Myth, 30).

This interpretation of Meursault as the silent universe is further supported by his interactions with his friends and neighbors. The first of these that I wish to focus upon is Marie. Meursault meets her the day after his mother is buried when he goes for a swim in the public beach (which is, of course, further evidence of his complete lack of concern or care about his mother’s passing). He remarks that he has a casual knowledge of Marie as she was a “former typist in

[their] office whom [he’d] had a thing for at the time,” before remarking that she had a thing for him as well; however, she left the company before they could date (Stranger, 19).

During their serendipitous encounter at the beach, the two engage physically, with

Meursault “brush[ing] against her breasts” in the water and let[ting his] head fall back and rest on her stomach” before deciding to go see a later that evening (Stranger, 19-20). Their physical affection continues throughout their movie date, after which she spends the night at his place (Stranger, 20). During this first date, Meursault casually informs Marie that his mother had

22 died yesterday, and while she is surprised by his attitude, “by that evening [she] had forgotten all about it” (Stranger, 20). I wish to highlight this last statement as it is potentially the most interesting. Marie accepts Meursault’s utter indifference, and yet she still forms a meaningful relationship with him.

It is important to to note that Marie does not simply accept his noncommittal and outlandish behavior; to do so would be akin to committing philosophical suicide. One such example is her continual questioning of Meursault about love and marriage. At one point, she asks him if he loves her, to which he responds that “it didn’t mean anything but that [he] didn’t think so” (Stranger, 35). As with Maman, were Meursault a real person this would be a potentially relationship-ending scenario, one that at the very least would cause long term sadness in Marie. And while he notes that this made Marie look sad, in moments she forgets about it and engages physically with Meursault again. At this point we have two interpretations of such a scene. Looking first at the traditional interpretation of Meursault, as some sort of tragic hero, we find this scene perhaps uninteresting, albeit a bit odd. In most writings on The Stranger we find that this scene, and at times Marie's whole character, is skipped over.

In defense of such a radical claim, I wish to briefly cover two noteworthy examples.

Starting with Lazere's entire section on The Stranger, we find that Marie never comes up.

Instead, the majority of the 20 page section is spent covering the sun and the trial of Meursault, with some time left over to cover his mother, his neighbor Salamano, and the Arab (Lazere,

151-72). We should not be surprised by such a revelation. Since most scholars agree that the novella is a demonstration of the relational absurd, Meursault must be in conflict with something, in this case the novella's background in the form of the environment and processes. In his

23 analysis of the text, Lazere highlights how Meursault's relationship to the sun and his trial are absurd (Lazere, 157-161). Looking then at Henke, we find an emphasis placed on the entirety of the court system (Absurdity, 133). Then in a later article Henke focuses, much like Lazere, on the sun and the role that it plays in the creation of the absurd as Meursault stands in opposition to it

((Anti)-Archetypal, 119-130). Again, this is so that Meursault can be the questioning human against some silent background or, in this case, indiscriminate process. Such a view, i.e., that

Meursault is the tragic hero or questioning human, necessitates that we focus on these scenes in the novella while ignoring his more frequent and richer interactions with individuals.

However, when we engage with the scene of Meursault and Marie on the view that

Meursault is actually the silent universe, then not only can we talk about Marie and their relationship, but as seen by her response, we can discuss how she is admirable! The silent universe does not love us, does not care that we exist, nor will it mourn our passing (as represented in the passing of Maman). However, rather than be crushed by this truth, Marie chooses to allow the discomfort to pass and engage in activities she finds fulfilling in her relationship with the absurd. In this way, she stays true to the relational aspect of the absurd, choosing to remain in the relationship while also not committing philosophical suicide by insisting that the universe conform to values created by human beings, such as love. Likewise, she is not guilty of hope: while she would prefer the universe be a certain way, she remains in the relationship knowing that it will not change.

While Marie’s relationship with Meursault portrays one of the ways in which humans should interact with the absurdity of their relationship to the world, there are several examples in

The Stranger that act as foils to hers. The relationship between Meursault and his neighbor,

24 Raymond, provides us with one example. Raymond is described to us as someone who “lives off women,” is “not very popular,” and lies about his occupation, leaving us to deduce that he is someone of ill repute (Stranger, 28). In spite of all this, Meursault engages with him primarily because “[he doesn’t] have any reason not to talk to him,” which highlights an incredibly important aspect of the absurd. As previously mentioned, absurdity arises out of the fact that the silent universe fails to answer a human being’s search for meaning. As a result, one of the things that the universe is silent about is morality. Since there is no inherent purpose or meaning to things in the universe, no discernible order or way things ought to be, there is no moral absolute in the absurd.11 As Meursault is an extended metaphor for the amoral universe, he too is amoral, and he is without reason to judge Raymond for those actions that many would evaluate as morally blameworthy.

However, it is important to note that Meursault is amoral not immoral. While he does partake in actions that most would traditionally find immoral, he does not do these things in any moral sense. That is to say, he does not pursue these actions with any intent to act against the moral law. Even in the climax of the first section of The Stranger, when Meursault shoots “the

Arab”12 on the beach, he does not do so with malicious intent or a desire to murder. As he states multiple times in the second half of the novella, he shoots the Arab simply because it was hot and the sun was in his eyes (Stranger, 59). He neither seeks out the wrong course of action to derive

11 These claims are merely stated in The Myth of Sisyphus and showcased in The Stranger. In the next chapter of the thesis, I defend them as it is in the Promethean cycle that Camus deals with morality in the absurd, striving to answer the question, ‘Can there be an ethics of the absurd?’

12 This is the way the character is referred to in in the novella; Camus does not provide us with a proper name. The novella takes place in French Algiers, where Arabs were treated as second-class citizens, and the text takes this political background for granted. It is also important to note that Camus objected to the treatment of Algerian Arabs by the French colonizers and is the of many of his essays and plays such as “Summer in Algiers”. For further discussion refer to the aforementioned Aronson piece as a beginning point.

25 some good, nor does he choose to take actions that he understands to be wrong because they are morally wrong. His actions are not predicated on any code other than some sort of general indifference or propensity towards comfort. This conclusion shouldn’t surprise us. How could the universe be anything other than amoral? Morality requires some sort of conscious component, something a silent universe does not have. This is reflected in the lack of thought of Meursault’s actions; everything is simply done, not consciously done. As a result, he can not make the conscious decisions required for normative claims and value statements. Quite simply, he is not a moral agent.

In light of Meursault’s amoral nature, Raymond commits philosophical suicide by deriving meaning from it. He quickly explains that his mistress was cheating on him with another man and in response, “he’d beaten her till she bled” (Myth, 31). Raymond then goes on to explain that he feels as though she has still not “gotten what she has coming,” and asks

Meursault if he will help him exact more revenge upon his mistress (Myth, 31). Meursault helps him by writing a letter to lure the woman into Raymond’s room so that he may partially engage in sexual intercourse with her before stopping, spitting on her, and throwing her out into the hall.

I argue that Raymond is committing philosophical suicide by succumbing to .13 He takes the amoral nature of Meursault and accepts it as a universal moral imperative, or rather an absolute lack thereof. Every time Raymond is going to do something, he looks to Meursault for moral grounding and, finding none, believes that everything is permissible. This is philosophical suicide, because he has deluded himself into seeing meaning where there is none. While taking a vastly different shape than the Israelites' Ten Commandments, Raymond's derived moral

13 I currently mention this only as an example of philosophical suicide. In the next chapter I will go over Camus’s rejection of nihilism (of any kind).

26 permissibility is again an instance of philosophical suicide, a denial of the absurd in favor of an easy .

Raymond is not the only character who can be interpreted as having committed philosophical suicide in response to Meursault’s lack of moral . The first time that we meet the magistrate, he has summoned Meursault for questioning about his previously mentioned murder of the Arab. While it begins cordially, their meeting takes an interesting turn as Meursault describes how, in the face of his own uninspiring answers to the magistrate’s questions,

Suddenly [the magistrate] stood up, strode over to a far corner of his office, and pulled out a drawer in a file cabinet. He took out a silver crucifix which he brandished as he came toward me. And in a completely different, almost cracked voice, he shouted, “Do you know what this is?” I said, “Yes, of course.” Speaking very quickly and passionately, he told me that he believed in God, that it was his conviction that no man was so guilty that God would not forgive him, but in order for that to happen a man must repent and in so doing become like a child whose heart is open and ready to embrace all. He was waving his crucifix almost directly over my head. To tell the truth, I had found it very hard to follow his reasoning, first because I was hot and there were big flies in his office that kept landing on my face, and also because he was scaring me a little. At the same time I knew that that was ridiculous because, after all, I was the criminal. He went on anyway. I vaguely understood that to his mind there was just one thing that wasn’t clear in my confession, the fact that I had hesitated before I fired my second shot. The rest was fine, but that part he couldn’t understand. I was about to tell him he was wrong to dwell on it, because it really didn’t . But he cut me off and urged me one last time, drawing himself up to his full height and asking me if I believed in God. I said no. He sat down indignantly. He said it was impossible; all men believed in God, even those who turn their backs on him. That was his belief, and if he were ever to doubt it, his life would become meaningless. “Do you want my life to be meaningless?” He shouted. As far as I could see, it didn’t have anything to do with me, and I told him so. But from across the tale he had already thrust the crucifix in my face and was screaming irrationally, “I am a Christian. I ask Him to forgive you your sins. How can you not believe that He suffered for you?” I was struck by how sincere he seemed, but I had had enough. It was getting hotter and hotter. As always, whenever I want to get rid of someone I’m not really listening to, I made it appear as if I agreed. To my surprise, he acted triumphant. “You see, you see!” He said. “You do believe, don’t you, and you’re going to place your in

27 Him, aren’t you?” Obviously, I again said no. He fell back in his chair (Stranger, 68-9). This conversation may be one of the best examples provided by Camus in any text of the steps taken toward philosophical suicide.

The magistrate first brings his religion up in their conversation in response to his exasperation with Meursault’s answers. That is to say, on our interpretation, the questioning magistrate is angered by the universe’s lack of answers. The Magistrate then commits philosophical suicide and leaps to a Christian lens with which to understand Meursault. As the magistrate continues to explain the tenets and import of his Christian faith, Meursault remarks that it was hard for him to follow the magistrate’s reasoning. This highlights how the universe does not, or rather cannot, understand our logic. While the absurd is a relationship, it is not a reciprocal and equal relationship. Humans question the universe and the universe is silent; the universe does not question humans and kowtow to our logic and desires. Meursault is thus unable to comprehend the magistrate’s faith just as the universe is unable to comprehend the logic that has been mapped upon it by rationalist philosophers.

Meursault’s confusion further infuriates the magistrate, who in return doubles down on his Christianity, again brandishing his crucifix and standing as tall as he can to ask Meursault if he believes in God. Of course, Meursault responds in the negative, to which the magistrate gives an answer that further supports the interpretation of the novella I am putting forward in this section. The magistrate asks why Meursault does not believe, informing him that the latter’s lack of belief endangers the meaning of his life. This would be an overreaction to say the least if

Meursault were merely another person. After all, religious people do not typically feel as though their lives are meaningless simply because atheists happen to exist. However, if Meursault

28 represents the silent universe, his refusal to recognize the magistrate’s faith as valid does call into question the magistrate’s life’s meaning. How could one continue to be Christian if the universe did not conform to their worldview?

The magistrate’s actions in this conversation must be considered philosophical suicide.

This is highlighted by his feelings of victory when Meursault lies to him that he does believe in

God. In this hollow victory, the magistrate has plainly deluded himself into thinking he has convinced the universe of the validity of the Christian faith, and in doing so has derived a false meaning that he believes to be true. It is incredibly telling that when Meursault clarifies his position with his final “no”, the magistrate slumps in his chair and removes himself from the conversation. This should be understood as a metaphor for physical suicide, as the magistrate has destroyed the absurd via removing himself from the relationship, cutting off all real contact with

Meursault.

As seen before with the examples of the Christian faith, Kierkegaard, and Husserl, philosophical suicide takes many different forms. While both fall into this category, the actions of Raymond and the magistrate are only similar in that they are akin to philosophical suicide and as such, for Camus, never permissible. Both have confronted the absurd and denied it, negating one of its terms. Raymond deluded himself into finding morality through permissibility where only the amoral universe sat. He mistook Meursault's inability to stop him for an unwillingness to stop him. Likewise, the magistrate, despite the universe not conforming to his religion, decided not that he was wrong is asserting this worldview, but that the universe must be withdrawn from.

29 Finally we reach the end of the novella where Camus offers what is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence for the interpretation of the text that is under consideration. As stated above,

Camus has noted that the most common approach the absurd seems to dictate is escape of some kind. This escape takes the form of either suicide (philosophical or physical) or some kind or a denial of absurdity in favor of hope. However, he argues that there is another way that humans can, and in fact should, deal with the absurd - a way of acting that is not escapist. He notes that,

“our aim is to shed light upon the step taken by the mind when, starting from a philosophy of the world’s lack of meaning, it ends up by finding a meaning and depth in it” (Myth, 42). This seems to suggest the possibility, as previously mentioned, of a continuous struggle with the absurd in which we rebel against the meaninglessness of the world to create a meaning in it.14 Camus even goes as far as to equate rebellion and living. He writes that, “the theme of permanent is thus carried into individual experience. Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it” (Myth, 54). It is then interesting to note that the closing sentence of

The Stranger echoes this sentiment of struggle and rebellion, not against the world or the situation as presented in the work, but against Meursault.

At this point in the work, Meursault is sitting in jail awaiting his execution. He has gone through his trial and received a guilty verdict for the crime of killing the Arab and not loving

Maman. He has been sentenced to death and had his appeal denied. However, rather than anxiously fear his upcoming murder at the hands of the state or go over any potential regrets that he has, Meursault is at peace. While I will touch on the nature of this peace in the next section, I

14 I mention this only in passing here as it reflects the style of Camus’s corpus. At this point in the work, rebellion is championed as the attitude that humans must have towards the absurd; however, not much more is said other than this. His arguments for rebellion and what it subsequently should look like dominate much of the Promethean cycle which I will cover extensively in Chapter Three: The Promethean Cycle.

30 bring this up so that we may reflect on his final wish. Rather than wishing that the guillotine fails or that he will be granted a stay of execution, Meursault notes that, “I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate” (Stranger, 123). This is an incredibly odd passage, particularly on a standard reading of the novella. Why would Meursault want spectators at his execution, much less spectators that hate him? Throughout the work, he has been a relatively self-contained individual, not going out of his way to attract attention, and it seems that his desire for spectators at the moment of his death flies in the face of this more general attitude. However, if Meursault does embody the silent universe, then Camus’s point is no longer puzzling. Here Camus is reinforcing what is perhaps his one and only maxim: we must rebel in the face of the silent universe while still recognizing it as meaningless, to do anything otherwise would destroy the absurd, which would be akin to giving up life. The spectators greet Meursault with cries of hate, not because of what he has done, but because of what he has not.

A Philosophy of Death

As stated before, for Camus, a necessary and integral aspect of the human condition is the absurd. However, there is a secondary and perhaps equally important aspect and that is a broader philosophy of death. We have thus far in this chapter covered two of the forms of escapism, hope and philosophical suicide, extensively. However, as noted above, one of the primary questions that this cycle of work seeks to answer is “does the absurd dictate death” (Myth, 9). Now that we have a better grasp of the Camusian absurd, we can parse the first half of this question, and we

31 have contended with the other forms of escapism. We must now develop a broader philosophy of death to fully understand why death in any capacity is an unpalatable solution to the absurd in order to reject the final form of escapism. Notice that we have above referred to death with the phrase “death in any capacity” which was certainly intentional. In order to not be misunderstood, when I speak of death in this context, I mean a number of things; however, we may simplify these as anything that would forever destroy the absurd for an individual. Understanding this simplified definition inadvertently helps to develop the arguments presented earlier in this chapter about the problems of philosophical suicide and hope.

We are defining death as the permanent destruction of the absurd (as it is a relationship requiring two parts) and in this chapter we will stress that — while death is the natural end of the human condition — it is not to be sought out, as it forever destroys the absurd. Coupled with the earlier arguments for the refutation of hope and philosophical suicide, we begin to see the nuance of rebelling against the absurd in ways that do not foreclose the possibility of unceasingly questioning the silent universe. This of course covers the death of the body but, as we have argued in this chapter but now make clear, it covers the other forms of escapism as well.

Philosophical suicide is still a form of suicide, despite not literally killing the body. The philosophy of death covered in this section refers to any way that further inquiry of the absurd is permanently ceased, through hope, philosophical suicide, and even physical suicide. The absurd must be confronted in a life affirming way. While we have noted that this notion of confrontation is central to the Promethean cycle we may begin to wonder what it looks like in this cycle.

Let us begin our inquiry as Camus does, by noting the truism that humans are mortal. As the tried and true example goes: is a man; all men are mortal; thus, Socrates is mortal.

32 Every mature adult knows that they, just like every other human, are a mortal being.

Paradoxically though, it seems equally as clear that not everyone truly knows that they are mortal. As Camus writes, “I know [a] truism: it tells me that man is mortal. One can nevertheless count the minds that have deduced the extreme conclusions from it. It is essential to consider as a constant point of reference in this essay the regular hiatus between what we fancy we know and what we really know, practical assent and simulated ignorance which allows us to live with ideas which, if we truly put them to the test, ought to upset our whole life” (Myth, 18). Thus we see the difference between knowing, which Camus refers to as what we fancy we know, and knowing, or what we actually know. This divide between “knowing" and “knowing” is where we must begin to look into the broader philosophy of death, as the divide's existence is integral to the human condition and the absurd according to Camus.

As noted many times in the prior sections, the absurd is a relationship and, like all relationships, when one of the components is removed, the relationship falls apart. It is in this way that death forever destroys the absurd for the individual as they can no longer demand answers from the silent universe. However, this is not the only relationship that one encounters in the absurd. Camus refers to what he calls the revolt of the flesh that occurs when an acknowledgement of death is included in the human condition. He writes, “Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the Absurd” (Myth, 13-4).

33 This revolt of the flesh is where we most often encounter the absurd, as our minds clearly desire life and yet our body slowly trudges towards the inevitability of death. Cruickshank highlights this revolt as one of the central themes that Camus wishes to address in The Myth of

Sisyphus. He writes, “Thus [Camus’s] purpose is to discuss what the individual should do when, consciously or unconsciously, he , disappointment, a sense of estrangement and horror of death” (Cruickshank, 44). Here we clearly see that death is to be understood but not accepted. We must rebel against our deaths, so that we may find some sense of meaning to empower our lives.

However, there is something else we must address in our philosophy of death. Camus writes, “I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that find them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying)” (Myth, 4). The meaningless of life has both empowered some to create meaning for themselves and driven some to take their own life in response. This is why Camus argues that one must confront their own mortality in addition to the absurd. As he writes, “[we] have never seen anyone die for the ”; however, we have seen a multitude of people die either for their or the inherent meaninglessness (Myth, 3). We find this agreeable. I have yet to hear of anyone who died for metaphysical ; however, we can easily name examples of individuals throughout history who have died for the meaning of life.

It is imperative for Camusian absurdism that we understand ourselves as necessarily temporal creatures. In fact, it can be said that it is only when one fully understands and accepts their mortality that they are truly able to live, truly able to give some sense of meaning to their

34 lives. But what does it mean to accept one's own mortality? It is of integral importance that we nail this down, as it is not only the main source of Camus's argument against suicide of any kind, but it will set the stage for the transition into the Promethean cycle and beyond. Looking then at the first claim, we find evidence for it in the section on absurd creation in The Myth of Sisyphus.

Camus writes, “There is thus a metaphysical honor in enduring the world’s absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance” (Myth, 93).

Unpacking this quote, we first find several ways that Camus recommends dealing with the world's absurdity, a task that is of utmost honor. While rebel will join this list in the next cycle, here we find conqueror, actor, and seducer. Rebel must be left off the list at this point, as

Camus’s metaphysics was not developed past the point of solipsism yet. We see then, the thing that unites them, the thing that makes them best suited to combat the absurd without succumbing to suicide of any kind, is their pre-commitment to their temporal situation. By this I am referring to their knowledge of their “inevitable defeat”, as Camus refers to it. The conqueror knows that inevitably their conquest will end; they will be defeated. The actor plies their craft on the stage every night in a performance that they know will inevitably end. The seducer, engaging in necessarily short term romantic trysts, knows that the time with their partner will inevitably end.

Likewise, I argue that Camus is saying a true confrontation of the absurd, the true way to bear that “metaphysical honor”, is to live life fully, all the while knowing that it will inevitably end. We understand that the conqueror does not want to be defeated; despite knowing that they eventually will. They still attempt to conquer fully. The actor does not desire the end of the play; rather they fully live their role making us believe their lie. The seducer fully engages with the

35 other despite knowing that it will inevitably end; anything else would be inauthentic. To commit suicide of any kind would be just as illogical as a conqueror who does not conquer, an actor who does not act, and a seducer who does not seduce.

It is in each profession's knowledge of their defeat that they are able to define themselves.

Likewise, humanity is defined by our necessarily temporal nature. It is the knowledge of our inevitable death that defines us, that allows us to create meaning. The only way to combat the absurd while avoiding suicide of any kind is to live fully, never running towards death despite knowing of its inevitability. It is in this manner we rebel against death. Thus, committing any form of suicide is to turn one’s back on the one moral imperative that we have, namely, to continue to struggle for meaning in an absurd situation as finite beings

This conclusion should not surprise us, as it is again explicated in the conclusion of The

Myth of Sisyphus, in which meaning can only be created through confrontation of both the absurd and death. As Camus writes, “we must imagine Sisyphus happy” despite the horrible punishment that he finds himself locked in for eternity (Myth, 123). The Sisyphus that Camus writes of here is the one from Greek mythology, where he was a king in ancient Greece. One day Death came to take him to the underworld; however, Sisyphus rebelled against him locking him away and continuing to rule and fight heroic battles. Death was finally freed and took Sisyphus, and as punishment Sisyphus was forced to roll a boulder up a hill forever. However, once the boulder reached the top of the hill it would roll back down and Sisyphus would have to begin again.

We should find it poetic that the works titular character is literally one who rebels against death to the point of imprisoning him. As a result of this rebellion, and subsequent punishment, we must imagine him happy. But what does this mean “imagine him happy”? What would

36 happiness even look like in the face of such a punishment? Even though Sisyphus must continuously roll the boulder, making no sustainable progress, he can still decide to create meaning in the struggle. Perhaps he enjoys the walks back down the hill before he begins to roll the rock back up the hill. Or maybe he vows to become the best boulder pusher possible, or any other possible avenues with which one could create meaning. When we imagine Sisyphus happy, he truly becomes the absurd hero, Camus’s lucid man, that Meursault never could be. Through his rebellion against both death and the absurd, he is able to create meaning for his life. All that matters is that we rebel — that we continue the unceasing struggle.

37 Chapter Three: The Promethean Cycle

Introduction

As I concluded in chapter two of this work: when confronting the absurd, one should never commit suicide of any kind nor assent to hope, since this amounts to a denial of absurdity and therefore the reality of the human condition in which a “meaningful life” is possible. In order to create this “meaningful life” as stated previously, we ought to always rebel against the absurd in order to create meaning for ourselves. However, at the end of the Sisyphean cycle we are left wanting in terms of a concrete definition regarding what this rebellion against death and the absurd looks like. How are we to know what separates an act of authentic rebellion from that of philosophical suicide? How does one rebel against the absurd without negating the absurd? What is to stop a Kierkegaardian from declaring their leap of faith is a rebellion against the absurd and not the turn from reality that Camus calls it? Just what is it about Sisyphus’s happiness that is rebellious? Furthermore, we wonder how this imagined happiness is a satisfying response to the absurd situation in which we find ourselves.

In this chapter, I will first be discussing Camus’s conception of rebellion and his eventual grounding of ethics upon it, first by elucidating the arguments that he presents in The Rebel.

Once we have an understanding of what is meant by rebellion against the absurd, I will present

Camus’s arguments for the communal value of life. This communal value of life is the lynchpin of Camus's move from the apparently solipsistic, anti-suicidal ethics of the individual to the

38 emancipatory and potentially universalist ethics of community. I argue that this move does not represent Camus turning his back on the work presented in The Myth of Sisyphus nor does it make his philosophy inconsistent. Rather, I will demonstrate how there is a single and consistent development from the Sisyphean cycle to the Promethean cycle.

In addition to this, it is also important to note Camus’s motivation for writing The Rebel.

As noted in the second chapter of this work, The Myth of Sisyphus’ guiding question is that of suicide, that is, when is the act justified if not necessitated and what are the different forms that it can take. As we saw above, Camus’s answer to this question is that, although we can distinguish between philosophical and physical suicide, suicide writ large is never justified as a response to the absurd condition. The texts in the second cycle of Camus’s thought can likewise be thought to continue or expand upon the theme of philosophical suicide and its lack of justification.

However, it is important to note that the version of philosophical suicide argued against in The

Myth of Sisyphus is different from that presented in both The Rebel and The Plague. While The

Myth of Sisyphus primarily presented philosophical suicide similar to a Kierkegaardian leap taken by those desperate for a metaphysics that can explain away the absurd, in the Promethean cycle it is presented as philosophical and moral nihilism. Similar to the second chapter, this

39 chapter will then primarily be framed with the central tension15 of The Rebel, namely the one between nihilism and rebellion, in mind.

Against Nihilism: The Question of Murder

In order to best understand what is meant by Camusian rebellion, we must first discuss nihilism and its different forms, which I will refer to as philosophical and moral nihilism.

Beginning with philosophical nihilism, we see in The Rebel that Camus defines it as a position that suppresses, “every of hope,” and, “rejects the idea of any limit” (Rebel, 282). To quote the German nihilists as they threaten the Dude in 1998 Coen Brother’s film The Big

Lebowski, “We’re nihilists. We believe in nothing Lebowski. Nothing!” While this is certainly a comical representation of the position, it none the less represents what is perhaps the base of philosophical nihilism. It is important to note, especially in a project such as this, that Camus and other existentialist philosophers, along with proto-existentialists like Friedrich Nietzsche, are often falsely accused of engaging in philosophical nihilism.

15 While I will be framing this chapter around this central tension of rebellion, primarily against nihilism, both philosophical and moral nihilism, I will note in this footnote that this is not the only tension that exists in The Rebel. The work can also be seen as a rebuttal to the arguments presented by Sartre about the Soviet Union once the revelations and conditions of their gulags came to light — Sartre falling on the side that leftists must still support the Soviets in spite of these camps in order to advance the cause of leftism globally. Camus, on the other hand, revoked his support for the Soviet Union claiming that the camps were clear human rights abuses, and in order to best support the cause of global leftism we must distance ourselves from the Soviet Union. Camus makes references to these camps and the actions of the Soviet Union in The Rebel in sections where he notes that he will be arguing against “slave camps under the flag of freedom,” and “massacres justified by philanthropy” (Rebel, 4). In addition to this, he alludes to Stalin and his regime as a who has corrupted philosophy (referring here to as Camus was a noted Marxist) to allow murderers to become the judges of the their crimes (Rebel, 1). For a fuller explication of this divide, see Ronald Aronson, “Camus versus Sartre: The Unresolved Conflict” in which a majority of these claims appear. It is also important to note that while this specific political disagreement was the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back, it is not the only source of division between Camus and Sartre in terms of, as Aronson puts it, “political violence” (302). In addition to the question of gulags, Camus also stood opposed to political violence of any kind, advancing a position of strict pacifism, opposed to Sartre’s support of violent opposition to capitalism and colonization.

40 Perhaps it is easy to see why this is. After all, Camus himself argues that there is no transcendent meaning or absolute truth, and he defines philosophical nihilism as a position that abandons hope and rejects limits. This certainly appears prima facie similar to the arguments proposed by Camus for the absurdist logic that is developed in The Myth of Sisyphus. However, in actuality, Camus argues the opposite in that work: rather than simply believing in nothing, as the nihilist does, we are urged to recognize the power of our agency to create values in the face of the absurd a la Sisyphus or The Stranger’s Marie. Again, as noted at the start of this chapter, this is no easy task. Also, in keeping with the logic and terminology of The Myth of Sisyphus, we find that nihilism is most clearly philosophical suicide. Philosophical nihilism dictates a complete abandonment of all rebellion; why should we rebel against something, if nothing matters? Gone is any sense of rebellion against our death or the inherent meaninglessness of the world. We find that one neither risks anything nor expends effort when they do not believe in anything. The change of rebellion is only possible via those who believe in the rebellion’s goal.

It is important to note that while I will be defining the two forms separately at first, both when Camus references nihilism in The Rebel and when it appears in our daily lives, it is often muddled between the two. One is almost always accompanied by the other for reasons that will soon become apparent. While philosophical nihilism holds that nothing matters, that there are no transcendent absolutes, moral nihilism holds the same but with regards to morality. If there are no absolutes, nothing that truly matters, then— according to the moral nihilist—how can one possibly have faith in a moral system? While the utilitarian holds that we must in every action maximize utility, the moral nihilist contends that utility should not be privileged over other things, they are all equally worthless. Likewise, there can be no Kantian good will, as there is no

41 reason to believe in anything, let alone a kingdom of rational self-legislators. I run through the position quickly and purposefully as I will more fully explicate the arguments of the nihilist

(coupling philosophical and moral nihilism together as Camus does) presented in The Rebel later in this chapter.

Perhaps we can then think of the purpose of The Rebel as more than simply to define rebellion in the face of the absurd. It also presents arguments for why we should believe in something, even if that something is simply the power of human agency. Or as Camus will conclude in The Rebel before reinforcing in The Plague, we should believe in the communal value of human life, the value that becomes the basis of his ethics of absurdity or the ethics of humanity in revolt. In this case, the ethics of absurdity, based on this communal value of human life, becomes other-oriented in a way that was not present in the solipsistic refutation of suicide.

Therefore, if one is to take the main question of The Myth of Sisyphus as being whether or not one should commit suicide in the face of absurdity, then as Camus writes in The Rebel, “murder is the problem today,” as Camus writes (Rebel, 4). Or as Camus later states, the issue is that

“every action today leads to murder, direct or indirect,” so “we cannot act until we know whether or why we have to right to kill” (Rebel, 5).

This is because, as he writes, “in the age of negation, it was of some avail to examine one’s position concerning suicide,” referencing the work done in The Myth of Sisyphus; however, he continues, “in the age of , we must examine our positions in relation to murder” (Rebel, 4). The age of negation that Camus speaks of refers to two different aspects of the time period. Philosophically, it was the period directly following the proto-existentialists, especially Nietzsche, who informed us of God’s death. Historically, it was the period directly

42 after the second world war in which the entirety of the world witnessed some of the most atrocious actions propagated by groups of humans onto other groups of humans. It seemed as though all prior understandings of law, order, and morality had been permanently negated and the utter absurdity of the human condition was on full display. The transition into the age of ideologies then is again one that is historically grounded. With the rise of the Soviet Union and the subsequent Cold War, ideologies became of the utmost importance, seemingly replacing prior commitments to concepts such as nationality.

However, what does this mean? How and why have we transitioned from talk of suicide to talk of murder? Camus argues that it is a socio-cultural move, writing that “thirty years ago, before reaching a decision to kill, people denied many things, to the point of denying themselves by suicide;” however, due to , I no longer deny myself, I deny the other, “who alone bear[s] the responsibility of deceit” (Rebel, 4). Here we begin to see the first move Camus makes out of the solipsistic thinking of the Sisyphean cycle. Whereas before there was only myself against the silent universe, I now stand opposed to another. As Cruickshank notes, the transition between the two cycles is in part motivated by the lack of “real consciousness of other people” in the “self-centered nature” of The Myth of Sisyphus (Cruickshank, 88). He takes special care to note that we are investigating the act of murder to see if it has “rational foundations”; rational here referring back to the absurdist logic that stood defiant against suicide in the Sisyphean cycle

(Rebel, 4). Knowing then that it is impermissible for the absurdist to logically conclude suicide is acceptable, what can be said of the ending of the other’s life?

What does it mean to say that every action today leads to murder? This certainly seems like it may be an exaggeration. Again, to best answer this question, as with the Sisyphean cycle,

43 it is important that we turn to the history surrounding the philosophy’s development. Aronson writes of Camus’s open commitment to both leftist politics and pacifism, which Aronson notes stems from Camus’s childhood in French controlled Algeria where he routinely saw the persecution of the native population at the hands of the French colonizers16 as well as the burgeoning Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union at the time of publication of The Rebel (Aronson, 303-4).

As always, but perhaps even more so in such a political climate, inaction is an action.

Most simply it is the agent taking the action of not taking an action, often times displaying a large amount of privilege to do so. This is perhaps best demonstrated by Martin Niemöller’s famous poem First They Came in which the Nazi’s came for the communists in Germany and the speaker did nothing “as [they] were not a communist.” (Niemöller). The speaker chose to not act in the world and as a result, their action of inaction both condemned the communists to death and tacitly condoned the actions of the Nazis, further emboldening them to "come for” the rest of the people listed in Niemöller’s work. The poem is a historical account of the growth of the Nazi party in Germany, which, empowered by the Night of the Long Knives, increased the oppressions of socialists, Jews, members of the LGBTQ community, and the intellectually disabled. The poem thus reflects both the steady growth of the party as a result of the speaker's action of inaction and the privilege of those who are able to “do nothing” in the face of such atrocities.

16 Camus himself writes of the impact that his childhood in Algeria had on him both as a philosopher and as a person in his essay “Summer in Algiers.” In addition to this the entirety of The Stranger takes place in Algeria under French rule where Paris is only spoken of by Meursault and Marie as a foreign place that he should not like to live. Furthermore, Camus, who by living in Algeria would be well aware of the socio-cultural acceptance of the wrongful persecution of Muslims, has the magistrate and company take Meursault’s crime of murdering The Arab seriously. This of course further highlights the absurdity of Meursault and his interactions with others as such a crime would have been taken about as seriously as the lynchings in the American Jim Crow South.

44 The examples thus far have been rooted in the history of the period when Camus was writing; however, we need not only look to the past as if it were some unique period, entirely alien from our own. We also live in a socio-cultural climate in which every action and inaction leads to either the direct or indirect murder of others. Take, for example, contemporary debates about healthcare in the United States. The status quo in the United States in terms of healthcare is a for-profit system in which people pay insurers premiums in order to have some of the costs of coverage paid for the insured by their insurers. Healthcare is thus a business, which, like all other capital ventures, is driven to maximize profits for shareholders. This means that when drug prices rise millions of Americans go underinsured, because they cannot afford high premiums for adequate coverage. In addition, when a person is found to be too great a risk for a company to insure (e.g., in terminally ill) that person is dropped from their insurance and reaches a state of financial crisis. Thus, by either supporting candidates who support the status quo or choosing to be inactive and thus supporting the status quo, one is condoning the grotesque health insurance system and therefore condemning people to death.

This example best illustrates what Camus means when he writes that, “we shall know nothing until we know whether we have the right to kill our fellow men, or the right to let them be killed. In that every action today leads to murder, direct or indirect, we cannot act until we know whether or why we have the right to kill” (Rebel, 4). While it would perhaps be unfair of us to claim that Niemöller’s speaker directly killed the abducted communists—after all, they did not pull the trigger, refuse them food and medical care, or work them to death—it is certainly justifiable for us to hold that they indirectly killed them. While this distinction seems to be of great importance to us today, Camus here is arguing that it is an arbitrary one. Refer back to the

45 example of the supporters of the American healthcare system; do they too not betray the same sense of privilege as Niemöller’s speaker?

As a result of this, Camus claims that the nihilist correctly centers their qualms about morality around the action of murder. His absurdist ethics, then, must make the question of murder its Archimedean point, to steal the Cartesian term. Camus first argues that, prima facie, it appears that the nihilists have a strong case, for any talk of ethics in an absurd world “leads only to a contradiction” (Rebel, 5). This apparent contradiction arises from the awareness of the absurd: murder seems to be at the same time impermissible and yet inescapable. Our absurdist logic performed well enough in The Myth of Sisyphus to refute suicide; however, speaking broadly of morality, it seems as though we have no basis to claim that murder of the other is immoral. After all, as Camus writes, “if we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning17 and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance” (Rebel, 5).

Quite simply to both the nihilist and prima facie absurdist, there can be neither good nor bad. No progress or regress, as nothing matters there is no way to make positive or negative value statements. Our earlier stand against suicide is still logically coherent to the nihilist as the nihilist has no motivation towards suicide. After all, why should the nihilist, the experiencing creature, take their own life in the face of the absurd? The lack of the universe’s meaning is neither appalling nor comforting to them, it simply is. There is nothing to rebel against, as that would require some sort value judgment to judge conditions. In such a world, words such as

17 Here we see Camus collapsing the distinction I made earlier between philosophical nihilism and moral nihilism respectively. From this point forward in both The Rebel and this project, the term “nihilism” will refer to the two forms intertwined, unless otherwise noted.

46 “ and are mere chance or caprice” rather than cornerstones of our moral theory (Rebel,

5). Thus, it would appear that the nihilist is correct and morality is unsalvageable.

While even the most staunch nihilist would agree that just because murder has become an action of moral indifference in this view of the absurd, the average person is not going to begin to exercise their newly reasoned abilities. It still takes a certain disposition to be able to end a life, morality aside; however, the ramifications of the loss of morality are much farther reaching than this. Our conception of the absurd still holds as a way for humans to create value not based on transcendent absolutes; perhaps this is how we will bring morality back into the fold. However, for the nihilist picture of the absurd, these values are not binding, for mankind is just as “free to stoke the crematory fires” as we are “to devote ourselves to the care of lepers”; simply choosing a value for oneself is not enough to will others to follow the same code (Rebel,

5). It seems as though, “if we claim to adopt the absurdist attitude, we must prepare ourselves to commit murder,” or, at the very least, to allow others to commit murder through our of inaction, as nihilism seems to be the next logical step (Rebel, 5). The solipsistic ethics of the one, developed in the Sisyphean cycle, is unable to answer this charge. Or, as Cruickshank notes that while The Myth of Sisyphus painted a picture of revolt and rebellion, by the end of the work

“[Camus] has still not made clear the kind of moral conduct to which he thinks such revolt should give rise” (Cruickshank, 88). Thus, in order to elucidate such conduct, we will need to create a new ethics, one based on a community and a better understanding of rebellion.

Furthermore, according to the nihilist, the absurdists’ worldview is one where the only true moral principle that can guide human action is ‘’. After all, as Camus writes, since “we have no higher values to guide our behavior, our aim will be immediate

47 efficacy” (Rebel, 5). One need only peruse through the annals of history to find that over the course of human existence it would appear that shows of strength and violence are certainly the most efficient once common morality is removed from the equation. For Camus this means that rather than the world being “divided into the just and the unjust” as we traditionally think it is, we are now nothing more than “masters and slaves” (Rebel, 5). Masters, of course, being those who can exert some ‘might18’ into the world to make their actions ‘right,’ and slaves being those lacking the ‘might’ to change their relationship. A dreary picture indeed.

Slave Against Master: “All or Nothing”

Camus will ultimately argue that there is something upon which we can base our ethics: the communal value of life which arises from rebellion. It is fitting that our communal value should come from rebellion as, after all, the refutation of suicide arose from a personal value of life justified by a private rebellion against death and the absurd. As Camus moves from the solipsistic thinking of “I” to the communal language of “we”, so too does our rebellion grow.

However, we still wonder: what is rebellion? How are we to do it? Put quite simply, our question is “what is a rebel?” Camus writes that a rebel is one “who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation” (Rebel, 14). But what does this mean? How can one’s “no” mean anything other than renunciation?

18 Any sense of ‘might’ here works although strength and violence are by far the most evocative examples. However, we need not limit our understanding of the concept to this one sphere. Corresponding with the Marxist tradition we can certainly picture ‘might’ as any form of capital that can be expended to affect change. Understanding ‘might’ as capital may afford us more contemporary examples. Social capital spent by a “beloved” children’s book author to have fans look past transphobic comments made on social media is certainly a modern day example of might makes right. Monetary capital spent by a credit reporting company to “apologize” for one of the largest data breaches in modern history is another. Such examples could fill the remainder of this project.

48 The rebel’s “no” must be more than a simple renunciation of a statement; it is also an assertion of some kind. This assertion most frequently is the assertion of a borderline or some kind of boundary with which the rebel feels that one has crossed. The rebels’s “no” is a simultaneous “I will not do this” and “I should not have to do this”. The latter could also be phrased as, “you have no right to force me to do this”. As Camus writes, “it is in this way that the rebel slave says yes and no simultaneously. He affirms that there are limits and also that he suspects — and wishes to preserve — the existence of certain things on this side of the borderline” (Rebel, 13). Furthermore, in his rebellion the rebel “demonstrates, with obstinacy, that there is something in him19 which “is worthwhile…” and which must be taken into consideration” (Rebel, 13). This of course seems to map onto our historical understanding of rebellion where the oppressed group both acknowledges with their “no” that this has been how things have operated in the past, but that they will not operate this way any longer in the future.

To illustrate the meaning of rebellion— and to begin to elucidate the relationship between the rebel and other people—Camus employs the extended metaphor of a master and a slave. We can imagine the master giving the slave an order and we can imagine that, in a certain respect, this act of ordering has come to be normalized in their relationship. According to Camus, we can therefore further imagine that the slave responds to the master’s order with servitude, granting

19 Camus’s idea that “something inside [the rebel]” is significant in accounting for their worth as a person has become the source of recent debate. From a certain perspective, Camus seems to be suggesting that the rebel possess an inner of dignity simply by virtue of being human. Suzy Killmister, for example, has argued a la Kant that human dignity is an inherent, intrinsic that all humans have by virtue of their possession of the rational, good will, and as such guarantees certain human rights (Killmister, 160). Against this view, Ruth Macklin has argued that “dignity is a useless concept” and as a result it “can be eliminated without any loss of content (Macklin, 1419-20). We can think of these two positions acting as bookends for the arguments about human dignity as there are several more nuanced middle positions that various authors have taken up in the debate. However, this project, along with the whole of Camus’s project, is less geared towards speculation about what human dignity is and what it guarantees us in terms of rights and privileges, and more about how the rebel asserts their worth through the act of their rebellion, and later how this rebellion asserts every creatures worth. Chapter 4 of this thesis will deal more closely with this idea of inner worth and recognition, placing it not on the human dignity understanding, but rather as the recognition of a universal structure of consciousness, namely that which creates and destroys values.

49 the master their request. If we go on to consider the case of rebellion, then, something shifts: the slave puts their foot down and refuses the order, shocking the master (Rebel, 13). It is easy to imagine then that the master, in turn, does not take kindly to the slave’s refusal and orders them again, to which the slave again responds “no”. The master, refusing to take no for an answer, demands the act of the slave repeatedly, each time threatening something worse—perhaps beginning with insults and escalating to the point of threatening the slave with murder. Still though, the slave resists, not giving in to the master’s demands despite the obvious and immediate danger that they face (Rebel, 15).

In the example of the master and the slave we can first clearly see the slave become the rebel, offering a “no” that is not a simple renunciation. Their “no” has, of course, acknowledged the history of their relationship, and has yet insisted that some action is beneath them, or that it crosses some boundary that they now assert. We can even imagine that the master has demanded a task that the slave has completed without hesitation in the past. Still their “no” should be understood as “up to this point yes, beyond it no” (Rebel, 13). Their “no” has drawn a line in the sand, where the slave has now recognized some value that they believe they have. This is important to note, because as Camus writes, “every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value” (Rebel, 14). It is this value, the one that the slave did not see in themselves before they began their revolt, that they will place, “above everything else,” proclaiming it to be, “the supreme good,” even superseding for themselves, the communal value of life (Rebel, 15).

This is the second thing that our example of master and slave affords us, the claim that the rebel’s new boundary is one that is privileged above even the rebel’s own life. When the slave is finally threatened with death for not performing the task that their master has required of

50 them, they have invested their action with a value that exceeds even their own life. And it is here that, according to Camus, we find the true attitude of the rebellion, the attitude of “All or

Nothing” (Rebel, 15). However, before we can grasp the complex understanding of “All or

Nothing,” there is an earlier version of “all or nothing” that rebellion first resembles, one we will differentiate from the final version by leaving them uncapitalized. In this earlier version all the rebel has knowledge of is “an ‘all’ that is still rather obscure and of a ‘nothing’ that proclaims the possibility of sacrificing the rebel to this ‘All’” (Rebel, 15).

Camus notes that by rebelling against their master, the slave at first seeks to be all, which in this sense is “to identify [themselves] completely with this good of which [they] have suddenly become aware” (Rebel, 15). In the example of slave and master, this is when the slave asserts their worth and an uncrossable boundary with their “no”. In doing so they demonstrate their burning desire to have both their worth and their new boundary be understood and accepted by the master, thus unifying the slave with the obscure “all”. However, when the master refuses to accept the worth of the slave and purposefully tramples across the proclaimed boundary, and when the slave still refuses, the latter chooses to be nothing rather than compromise. True rebellion cannot compromise. If it is not possible to be unified with “all” then the slave must choose to be nothing. And as Camus writes, to choose to be nothing is “to be completely destroyed by the force that dominates [them]. As a last resort, [they are] willing to accept the final defeat, which is death, rather than be deprived of the personal sacrament […]. Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees” (Rebel, 15).

Thus far, Camus has not moved past his earlier attempt at ethics in The Myth of Sisyphus in the form of our absurdist logic; however, a more nuanced understanding of “All or Nothing”

51 will move us out of solipsism, and into solidarity in one continuous move. Thus, it is here in the underdeveloped notion of all or nothing we find the same solipsistic reasoning present in The

Myth of Sisyphus. An individual rebels against the absurd and death and, in so doing, creates a life of value. However, just as one’s created values do not in actuality survive contact with the silent universe, the slave’s values do not survive contact with the brutal slave master. While it may seem a stretch to say, I claim that both scenarios demonstrate early absurdism’s necessary inability to deal with the other. The Myth of Sisyphus was a refutation of philosophical and physical suicide, perhaps the most solitary action one can perform, and up to this point in The

Rebel, we have focused on the individual’s rebellion against personal injustice to develop a naive picture of "all or nothing”. However, we need not remain in such a position. Now that we have a grasp on the importance of personal rebellion—against the absurd, against death, and against any personal injustice—we can begin to move out of solipsism as Camus does. We can move into an ethics of rebellion that is not merely one of personal rebellion— against the absurd or against one’s own oppression— but an ethics of rebellion against injustices done to others, i.e. an ethics that demands solidarity between every human. This happens as we develop “all or nothing” into

“All or Nothing”.

By choosing “nothing” when all is denied to the slave they are broadcasting the reality that the value of “all” supersedes their life. After all it must, for what sense would it make for one to choose a lesser value when the consequences of one’s choice are this extreme? Should the slave’s life be more valuable to them than “all”, the denial of “all” would not necessitate the choice of “nothing”. Were this the case, then they could still be united with their most desired value. Furthermore, this choice of “nothing” when “all” is denied can only make sense when it is

52 developed into the full understanding of “All or Nothing”. By understanding this we find that the slave has placed the new value above their own life.

In doing this, one is simultaneously moving out of the solipsism present in both The Myth of Sisyphus and henceforth in the slave’s rebellion, while also placing themselves in solidarity with the newly recognized other. This should not come as a surprise to us as the value that the slave is seeking to be recognized must not be unique to the individual. If it were a value unique to the individual, then their willingness to die for their cause would contradict this desire. One’s death must be thought of as a total and complete separation between the rebel and the value.

Thus, the willingness to risk death presupposes that this newly recognized value must be more important than the individual, that it must be for all people, including the oppressor (Rebel, 16).

Caraway notes that this transition from “all or nothing” to “All or Nothing” betrays the dialectical structure of Camus’s work, noting that it is at all times centered around the rebel’s negation being more than a simple negation (Caraway, 130). In rebellion, we take the Sisphyean negation and add an affirmation, seemingly saying both at all times.

Paradoxically then, when the slave revolts, they do so in a way that unites both the slave and the master, metaphysically, for the value the slave has recognized is common to all, “even the man who insults and oppresses him,” forming a, “natural community” (Rebel, 16). This community is the result of the solidarity of the human race in the face of the silent universe, a solidarity that results directly from the slave’s revolt against the master and establishes a new value that trumps even the value of life itself. Thus, in answer to the nihilist’s aforementioned charge of the unavoidability of murder, Camus writes, “We have, then, the right to say that any rebellion which claims the right to deny or destroy this solidarity loses simultaneously its right to

53 be called rebellion and becomes in reality an acquiescence in murder” (Rebel, 22). That is to say, we have found an action that does not lead to murder, direct or indirect. That action is genuine rebellion, i.e., rebellion that establishes the value of the other. Just as the Cartesian ‘Cogito’ sought to ground the sureness of the existence of the self, Camus’s work in The Rebel grounds the sureness of the existence of the other. As Camus writes, “I rebel - therefore we exist,” when describing his life affirming ethic of revolt (Rebel, 22).

From One to All: The Plague Against The Stranger

The move from solipsism to solidarity can likewise be traced in the novel from the

Promethean cycle, The Plague. In this section I will be focusing not only on the content of the novel, but also the style and form of the work, specifically as it contrasts with The Stranger (the novel from the Sisyphean cycle). The novel opens with a description of the town of Oran, located in French-controlled Algeria, and it is noted primarily that Oran’s “ordinariness is what strikes one first,” and how unusual then it is that the events of the novel will unfold there (Plague, 3).

We may take this description of Oran’s extreme ordinariness to reinforce the themes of the second chapter of this thesis about the absurd. Absurdity strikes out to every man, woman, and child despite the backdrop.20

We are then given a description of the citizens of Oran and their daily routine from which they very rarely, if ever, stray. This routine can be summed up as, “simply doing business” during the weekdays, and then on the weekends allowing themselves to enjoy simpler pleasures such as

20 Even more so, perhaps ordinariness of the extreme variety is more susceptible to feelings of absurdity as Camus writes that “at any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face” (Myth, 4).

54 “love-making, sea-bathing,” and “going to the pictures” (Plague, 4). The citizens of Oran are living a simple, monotonous life, one that does not deviate from daily activities—much like the

The Stranger’s Meursault in the first act. However, the inciting incident in The Plague, when contrasted with that of The Stranger, offers us one piece of evidence for our thesis that the

Promethean cycle is best categorized by the transition from solipsism to solidarity via revolt.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the inciting incident of The Stranger occurs when

Meursault receives news that his maman has died. While the death of a parent is surely tragic, we can note that it is primarily a personal or private form of tragedy. With some exceptions, when one passes, only those closest to them are deeply impacted, and often times there are only a small number of such mourners. Despite the fact that most people will at some point in their life experience the death of a loved one, it can be one of the most isolating incidents. Compare this then to the inciting incident of The Plague, the discovery of a multitude of dead rats, first found on the floors of factories one morning, discovered in batches in the daylight, swaying helplessly before performing “a sort of pirouette” and falling dead “at the feet of the horrified onlookers” (Plague, 15). As those familiar with medieval history know, this is a sign of the coming troubles in the aptly titled novel. While plagues in general do not command solidarity between their victims, such an attitude is perhaps the only means through which one may combat them. Thus, the differences in the inciting incidents highlight not only the direction the plot of the work will go, but also the thematic underpinnings of the novels.

“The second section [of the work] begins with the town of Oran being quarantined from the surrounding areas, isolating and separating friends and family from each other. This section introduces to the reader a range of new characters such as the so-called victim, the journalist

55 Raymond Rambert, the town priest Father Paneloux and the visitor and outsider Jean

Tarrou” (Binny, 90). Note the three characters that Binny has quickly summarized. While the appearance of other characters is certainly no different than The Stranger, it is when we focus on the role that the supporting characters play in the novel that our argument becomes clearer. As argued previously, the supporting characters in The Stranger serve only as foils to Meursault. At no point do the characters’ motivations change nor do they become anything more than one dimensional caricatures of different positions one may have when encountering the silent universe. Even the most dynamic of the group, Marie, never really changes her motivations or actions despite being met with resistance and obstacles in the form of Meursault's uncaring nature and prison-cell respectively. Furthermore, they exist in no capacity outside of their relationship with Meursault, a conscious literary decision.

Contrast this with the role that the four characters play in the The Plague. As Binny notes,

“Owing to the quarantine Rambert is not permitted to return to his young wife waiting for him in

France. Father Paneloux, as is true of the priests of the era, believed that the plague was an of the divine justice of God brought down on the citizens of Oran as a consequence of their evil natures and deeds. Jean Tarrou is a visitor to the French occupied Algerian city Oran and the narrative of The Plague follows his journal entries for the time he spent in the desert town.” (Binny, 90). Each one of the characters has motivations and problems that are fully fleshed out, and as a result the characters become two and three dimensional as opposed to The

Stranger’s “supporting cast”. Furthermore, as noted, Father Paneloux first takes a stance that the plague is a moral good, some divine punishment for sinners; however, after witnessing a child

56 die from the illness, he delivers a second sermon in which, “he questions his beliefs and faith in his God” (Binny, 91).

Binny highlights the priest’s questioning of belief for a similar reason that I wish to. It demonstrates that the character is not merely a static character, placed in the work to be a foil to some other; rather, he is a dynamic character who, through his actions and reactions, drives the plot. The difference between this and The Stranger is important to highlight, as it corresponds to the turn from solipsism to solidarity in Camus’s philosophical texts. Not only does the later novel describe complex, evolving characters who relate to one another in significant ways, but the change that takes place in Father Paneloux is primarily motivated by rebellion, in this case rebellion against the death of others. While he is at first able to damn the sick with righteous fury, after witnessing firsthand the death of an innocent child, he begins to question his prima facie morals and thoughts on mortality (Binny, 91). Paneloux has moved away from his more solipsistic morality—which motivated his fire and brimstone religiosity— and turned towards the other person.

Father Paneloux’s quasi-rebellion against the death of others is not the only rebellion that occurs in the novel. The main rebellion of The Plague, the one that provides the most evidence for our claim about the move from solipsism to solidarity in the absurd, concerns the narrative presented in Jean Tarrou’s notebooks. Reflected within Tarrou’s journal, Binny notes that “he comes across as a character of high moral standards and tries to do and convince others to help the victims of the plague by initiating the making of sanitation squads as a shot at preventing the further spread of the disease” (Binny, 90). These sanitation squads most closely mirror Camusian rebellion as we presented it in the section above. The members of the squads are voluntarily

57 tasked with sanitizing the homes of plague victims after they have been evacuated or go bury or burn the recently deceased plague victims. As Binny argues, these actions then reflect the awakening of some newly recognized value by the members, one which the plague and its accompanying promise of death threaten (Binny, 95-6).

Furthermore, just as the slave rebels against a master who threatens untold physical violence, the members of the squads willingly risk death to propagate their rebellion against the plague. We again find here that the risk of death must mean that combating the plague is more valuable than life itself. It has become the squads’ “All”. As Tarrou notes in his journal, each of the members knew that “work of this kind may prove fatal to the worker,” thus the value must not be unique to those in the squad (Plague, 125). It is also important to note the symbolism of

Tarrou beginning the rebellion against the plague in Oran. As noted above, Tarrou is not a native citizen of Oran; in fact, he was staying in a hotel on vacation when the city was finally quarantined by the plague. This, coupled with his actions, maps onto our understanding of rebellion in a very interesting manner. The primary function of Camusian rebellion in the

Promethean cycle is to accomplish the transition from solipsism to solidarity. We have up to this point defined these two positions as a lack of awareness of the other for the former and as a recognition of the other as having a sameness to oneself for the latter. What better person then to begin the rebellion in Oran than the other?

I As an Other

58 I argue that the character of Jean Tarrou demonstrates not only that the other exists in the same capacity that I exist, but also that I am at all times in, addition to myself, the other’s other.

Thus, when the other revolts, they establish my humanity just as I establish theirs through my revolt. In The Plague, we find a secondary character driving the plot forward and imparting the moral philosophy of the work onto the reader, a task normally reserved for the main character.

Contrast this with the secondary characters of The Stranger, who at times border on the realm of becoming tertiary characters. All actions taken in The Stranger are either taken by or under the direction of Meursault. This culminates in the final third of the novel in which Meursault is alone only with his thoughts and the sureness of his own existence. The literary style of the two novels reflects the philosophical themes of the cycle within which they were written.

The final character I wish to cover in this section is the first that Binny referenced, the journalist Raymond Rambert. Throughout the novel, Rambert, stuck in the quarantined Oran, tries desperately to leave the city and reunite with his wife who was in their home city of .

Rambert, as opposed to Tarrou, did not come to Oran on vacation but rather work, and as a result, does not care about the people of Oran or their problems. On my view, we should understand Rambert as a sort of ethical solipsist. He recognizes that people around him are ; however, why should he care? As Binny notes, he is the novel’s “so-called victim,” suffering the separation from his spouse (Binny, 90). Despite the obvious risk that escaping the quarantine would pose to the rest of the world, Rambert still spends the majority of the work scheming about how to escape Oran (Plague, 86). However, when the time comes and Rambert has his opportunity to escape, he can not bring himself to do it, instead choosing to join the sanitation squads, rebelling against the plague (Plague, 209).

59 Through Rambert, Camus presents us with a different viewpoint of rebellion. While we have seen through both Father Paneloux and Tarrou that through the act of rebellion one is able to move past solipsism to solidarity, Rambert demonstrates how witnessing rebellion can do the very same. Furthermore, every rebellion needs Ramberts in order to successfully make the transition. While those who formed the original sanitation squads and rebelled against the plague certainly see the danger the plague possesses, these actions would all be for naught if others, such as Rambert, were to leave Oran and spread the disease elsewhere. Likewise, even if the rebel forms solidarity with the other through their rebellion, if the other does not see the recognized value then what does the rebellion accomplish? The other must also recognize the recognized value if our rebellion is to succeed. To fully realize universal solidarity we must convince Rambert that we are not merely the inaccessible other, we are a sharer of some recognized value.

That is to say, we must convince Rambert that the value of our rebellion extends from us to him and beyond. We must make him what I will call the “different same” through our rebellion. In rebelling, one has created a value that transcends their individual life, and is granted to the previously inaccessible other. While the other remains different from the rebel, they have in a sense unified them around their created value. The rebel’s other is at first different from the rebel, but also the quasi same as the rebel, in the name of the created value. To convince Rambert of the value of our rebellion, to stop him from leaving the town, is analogous to convincing him that he is the different same. We must convince him that he too partakes in our created value, that he shares in this instance of the rebellions creation. It is important to note that this must be framed as an instance of creation. At this point in Camus’s philosophy, it is not the ability to

60 create values that is highlighted but rather the individual acts of creation and their contents. As

Cruickshank notes, in describing the acts of creation as they relate to rebellion, Camus frequently likens the rebel to an artist as they rebel with each act of creation (Cruickshank, 127-8).

These aspects of the novel express Camus’s fundamental metaphysical and ethical orientation of the period, and in this way they help us to understand the evolution of his thought from the first to the second cycle. The Plague could have easily been written in the same style as

The Stranger with only one main character that drives the plot forward, and internally reflects on the situation of the town around him. Or could it have been? The Plague is impactful for the same reason The Stranger is, despite their literary differences. Both rely on a developed philosophy to accompany their cast of characters’ actions, which in turn demonstrates a deeper meaning about metaphysics and morality. Meursault’s forefront and puzzling nature best showcases the relational understanding of the absurd just as the actions of the secondary characters in The Plague best demonstrate rebellion. Furthermore, the move to solidarity that occurs in the plot of The Plague is more easily seen when we are able to contrast it with the solipsistic Meursault of The Stranger.

Likewise, we are also able to take our more developed understanding of rebellion and return to the picture of Sisyphus, punished eternally for his rebellion against death. We may claim then that Sisyphus revolted in a solipsistic way. It was not in light of some shared, communal value for all others; rather, it was against his death, not death as such. Compare this then to the titular character of this cycle, Prometheus. Again, we find a Hellenistic mythological figure punished for their rebellion. However, in Prometheus’ case, he revolted to establish the other as the “different same”. In stealing fire from the to give to humans, he sought to

61 equate the two groups, both in knowledge and in worth. Thus we may say in answer to the questions that began this chapter, that Camusian rebellion, true authentic rebellion, is the one that establishes the other as the “different same” through our revolt, one that creates a sense of solidarity in light of a newly recognized value, one that truly moves past solipsism.

The Just Assassin: The Ethics of Absurdity in Action

Phrased in such a manner, we begin to see this change in Camus’s metaphysics, not as some drastic turning away from his earlier position, but rather what I argue is a consistent evolution. Just as with biological evolution, we find that his position adapted to its surroundings

— first necessarily answering the question of suicide in the aforementioned age of negation, before it was then able to turn to murder in the age of ideology. As a result, we had to spend the first cycle in a state of solipsistic reasoning. As covered above, awareness of the absurd can be one of the most isolating incidents, shaking all beliefs to the core. Among these beliefs is the sureness of the other. As one struggles to survive in light of their relation to the absurd, how is one to contend with the idea of the other? It is only once we find rebellion against the absurd to be the only permissible answer in our absurdist logic that we may begin to investigate rebellion and its accompanying other.

However, there are those who argue the opposite. Those who argue that the work presented in the Promethean cycle (specifically The Rebel) contradicts the very conclusions of

The Myth of Sisyphus rather than building upon them. One such view is that of Herbert Hochberg who, in his article “Albert Camus and the Ethic of Absurdity,” centers his critique around the

62 idea of a “no win scenario” that can occur in rebellion, arguing that the entire ethic of rebellion is wholly unusable. The critique centers around the move from solipsism to solidarity in rebellion wherein Camus describes rebellion as “not only the slave against the master, but also man against the world of master and slave” and as such the rebel cannot will themselves “to destroy the existence and the freedom of others” (Rebel, 284). While Hochberg grants that this is novel and intriguing, we are certainly able to conceive of a situation where in our rebellion “we will be faced with choosing between murder or slavery” - both of which are inconsistent with our communal value of life and solidarity (Hochberg, 100).

Hochberg is right to a certain degree. It is conceivable that in our rebellion we encounter a situation in which we only have two bad options. For example, we can imagine the case in which one must either kill the oppressor, freeing the victims from their oppression but destroying the existence of an other, or choose inaction, propagating oppression and destroying the freedom of others, all while ensuring the existence of an other. We are faced with the Kobayashi Maru, and yet we cannot reprogram the simulation to reach a satisfying conclusion21. Camus, preempting this line of inquiry, presents such a scenario in his play The Just Assassin, where an assassin is faced with such a choice. As Hochberg notes, in the play the assassin ultimately chooses to murder and save others from the oppression of the tyrant (Hochberg, 100). However, the just assassin does not end here; they then go one step further. They have killed, violating their own by destroying an other. Camus notes that they must then be ready to sacrifice their own life, killing themselves and finally accepting death (The Rebel, 286). It is on this

21 The Kobayashi Maru refers to a test in Star Trek canon that is famous for being a no win scenario. Captain Kirk is the only person to defeat it, and did so by reprogramming the simulation in order to save the threatened ships. It has since reached a level of colloquial notoriety that to be faced with the Kobayashi Maru is synonymous with being presented a no win scenario or Catch-22.

63 apparent contradiction that Hochberg draws his conclusion that our ethics of humans in revolt is unactionable and that this contradiction is, “symptomatic of a desperately inadequate consideration of, and proposed solution to, the problems of ethics,” as in Camus’s own answer,

“he himself has lost track of his of life” (Hochberg, 100-1).

However, Hochberg has misunderstood something fundamental about rebellion, something which we discussed above with reference to the logic of “All or Nothing”. The rebel desires “All”; they want to not only immerse themselves entirely in the newfound value, but the agent wants the value for all of mankind. Indeed, the slave seeks to include the master, the rebel seeks to include the oppressor, as part of the meaningful world. When the rebel decides to kill the oppressor, they have not achieved “All”; their value is not reflected in the rebel’s and, as a result, the value has not been secured for all of their fellow humans. Since the assassin has made a choice that removes all possibility of “All”, they must then be forced to become nothing, which applied to our practical sense, calls for the assassin to take his own life.

The assassin, “knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil,” as we are, “not always able not to kill, either directly or indirectly,” however, we can place our, “conviction and passion to work at diminishing the chances of murder” in our world (Rebel, 285-6). Thus the assassin choosing to become nothing, does not deny that life is, “an absolute value,” as Hochberg charges (Hochberg, 100). Rather, it is this willingness to die that affirms this communal value of life and solidarity. If choosing murder when no other choice is available is to break the bonds of solidarity and value between all of mankind, as there exists a new oppressor in the assassin who has forever silenced a voice from questioning the universe, then it likewise must be the case that

64 when the assassin removes him or herself from existence, becoming “nothing”, that mankind is rejoined in solidarity and value, fixing the contradiction.

Note here that becoming “Nothing”, while traditionally accomplished through suicide, is not to be rejected on the same grounds presented in The Myth of Sisyphus. Here the rebel becomes “Nothing” so that the “All” may prevail. They do not commit philosophical or physical suicide in order to cope with the despair of the absurd. Both forms of suicide in The Myth of

Sisyphus are simple forms of negation or cessation of something. Philosophical suicide signaling the cessation of absurdist logic and , while physical suicide is the final negation of existence. The rebel’s suicide is synonymous with their “no” — something that is more than just a negation. As presented in The Just Assassin, the rebel’s suicide is both a negation of their being and an affirmation of universal solidarity. Through their choice of “Nothing”, mankind can be unified with “All”.

65 Chapter Four: A Philosophy of Love?

Introduction

As we conclude the Promethean cycle of Camus’s work, we are left with an understanding of rebellion: what it is and what it aims to secure for all of humankind. In this chapter, I wish to offer a critique regarding rebellion, the speculative answer to which will look beyond both the Sisyphean and Promethean cycles towards Camus’s incomplete third cycle of literary and philosophical work. It is important to note that, while I will be looking beyond the aforementioned cycles, I will still be critically engaging with the previous works in this chapter so as to continue to present a grounded, holistic picture of Camus’s work and the transition in his thought over the course of his career.

The question that motivates this concluding chapter is the following: is solidarity enough? In The Rebel, it certainly seems that the phenomenon of solidarity grounds an absurdist ethics, since it secures one’s knowledge of the other person as the “different same” and consequently allows one to assert a common value of life for all people (that value being whatever it is that those in solidarity with one another rebel in the name of). However, while solidarity may be achieved through rebellion and thus establish the value of the other for me, the other is still only established through me. That is to say, the other only takes on the value that I claim all people have because of my attribution of that value through my act of rebellion; had I not rebelled, the other would not have this value. Thus, while the Promethean concept of

66 solidarity surpasses the supposed solipsism of Camus’s earlier, Sisyphean logic—and, in so doing, makes explicit the centrality of intersubjectivity in absurdist ethics—solidarity has its ultimate source in the self.

While rebellion has moved past the problem of my created values existing only for me, it has now created the problem that the communal value is a result of my will. That is to say, in rebelling for the other, I am in a sense dominating them under a value of my creation, almost requiring them to bend their knee to me in acceptance of the new “communal value”. In this chapter, I will explore this critique before ultimately concluding that solidarity is in fact not enough to develop a robust ethics of absurdity. I will argue that, in the third and incomplete cycle, Camus himself was on his way to surpassing an ethics of mere solidarity. Following other scholars, I understand this third period to be focused on the concept of love, and I suggest that it is an absurdist philosophy of love that demonstrates the full ethical significance of Camus’s thought. Moreover, I seek to demonstrate that we can trace the development of this philosophy of love in Camus’s development from the first and second cycles to the (projected) third cycle.

Grecian Love

The concept of love interested Camus throughout his philosophical career. I argue that we can trace the development of Camus’s metaphysics, i.e., the turn from solipsism to solidarity and beyond, by looking at his usage of love in earlier works. However, in order to accomplish this goal, we must elucidate the word “love”. The word “love” is notoriously ambiguous and at times incredibly hollow. I love both my wife Samantha and the members of my graduate cohort, and it

67 seems almost trivial to point out that I do not love them in the same way. In addition to this, I tell members of my extended family “I love you” as I leave their homes in the holiday season, despite finding their politics and personalities reprehensible, simply because it is what is expected of me as a member of a family. As a result, I submit that the word “love” is so context- dependent that any attempt to track Camus’s usage of the word would necessarily be accompanied by at times overbearing contextual clarifications, differentiating one usage of love from another. Thus, in tracking Camus’s usage of the word, I will use the Ancient Greek version of the word rather than the English, as there are a number of different words for the concept of love in Ancient Greek. We may, in fact, find this ironically fitting, as each of the cycles are named after famous Greek literary figures used to illustrate the themes of the works within them.

Furthermore, while the use of the Ancient Greek will avoid any potential confusion via equivocation of the word love, it will also more fully illustrate Camus’s transition from one to all, as is the goal of this thesis.

One of the first and perhaps easiest conceptions of love to understand in Camus is eros, first presented in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus writes that “the lover, the actor, or the adventurer plays the absurd” (Myth, 90). The lover in this context refers to Don Juan, the fictitious character known for his ability to seduce anyone. Camus argues that “Don Juanism”, that is, the act of engaging in frequent, unattached romantic love, is one way that humans can combat the absurd.

As he puts it, “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” (Myth, 60). But what does “most living” mean in this context? Should we equate most living with living as long as possible? Against this, Anthony Villanova argues that, for Camus, love is how we

68 “spontaneously and instantly situate[ our] place in the world as someone possible of creation and passion” (Villanova, 190).

This would then mean that each relationship22 would repeatedly situate us against the absurd as an agent of creation capable of asserting value. Given the fact that Camus discusses the value of such love from within the context of his refutation of suicide, the values created by erotic love would be solipsistic, i.e., reasons for the individual to continue living. Thus, Don

Juan, by engaging in numerous sexual exploits, lives more than others — becoming and remaining a larger agent of creation than his fellow humans. We see then that Camus’s conception of eros is incredibly solipsistic, which is fitting for the first cycle, as it views love as the way that one can assert their place against the absurd, the sexual other here becoming a tool to accomplish this end.

We can refer back to Meursault’s treatment of Marie in The Stranger for further proof of this concept. Shying away from pronouncing his love for her, coupled with his outright rejection of the institution of matrimony, can be read as privileging eros above any other conception of love. Furthermore, in the second act of the book, Meursault understands and accepts that Marie has moved on and potentially forgotten him only when he himself accepts that he is going to be put to death (Stranger, 115). I argue that, in Meursault’s mind, he was already partially dead, as he is no longer a sexual agent capable of asserting his place against the absurd as an agent of creation. Every aspect of his life in prison is completely out of his control, from his inability to leave to the powerlessness he feels when he is denied a cigarette (Stranger, 78).

22 Relationship here should be read in the loosest sense possible, as Camus at this point is arguing for eros love, which is synonymous with pure sexual passion and desire.

69 As Sagi notes, in both “[The Stranger] and The Myth of Sisyphus, which represent the first stage of Camus’s thought, neither compassion nor the ethics of suffering are mentioned at all” (Sagi, 167). Although there is a consideration of “love” in the first cycle, there is no discussion of compassion (i.e., solidarity) or an ethics of suffering (i.e., rebellion). Sagi’s use of the term “compassion” is interesting, as it is closely associated with another conception of love, one that goes beyond the eros of Don Juan. Sagi notes, as we have above, that the lack of such language in the Sisyphean cycle should not be surprising to us, writing that “the absurd here of

The Myth of Sisyphus is not a compassionate figure, nor is the ethics of suffering his guiding principle” as he “is the traditional Cartesian hero living in a solipsistic framework” (Sagi, 167).

As noted in the second chapter of this thesis, Sagi also concludes that “the early Camus accepts this world picture, and his hero is therefore the individual;” however, as he moves out of the

Sisyphean cycle and into the Promethean, a more robust conception of love accompanies him

(Sagi, 168). Thus, as we shift cycles, we begin to see this different conception of love, one that most closely mirrors the conceptions of love as philia, which is a committed, compassionate, brotherly love that inspires an individual to fight for the object of their love’s well-being. This conception of love is most similar to the love we would consider close friends to share, and I argue that it is the conceptions of love that dominates the majority of the Promethean cycle.

It is interesting to note that, while this conception of love is perhaps most fleshed out in this cycle, it does appear at the end of The Myth of Sisyphus. As Camus is reflecting on the motivations of Kirilov’s reasoning for suicide in Dostoevsky’s , he writes that

“Kirilov’s pistol shot will be the signal for the last revolution. Thus, it is not despair that urges him to death, but love of his neighbor for his own sake” (Myth, 109). Here we see Camus with

70 an early version of the logic of The Just Assassin, which we covered at the end of the last chapter. While this thesis has followed the academic classifications of Camus’s work, the distinctions between the cycles are not as rigid and clear-cut as they may seem at first presentation, contra the above Sagi passage. Furthermore, a more nuanced understanding of the cycles will in turn support my thesis that the cycles are not drastic changes in Camus’s thought in which he turns his back on earlier work or argues for contradictory positions, as some critics allege (Hochberg, 99). Rather, each cycle further developed Camus’s thought in a coherent and transitory manner as his metaphysics expanded and became more nuanced.

Thus, Camus already hints at the importance of brotherly love in The Myth of Sisyphus.

And yet, it is in the Promethean cycle where this conception of brotherly love takes on its full significance. Beginning with The Plague, we find Camus referring to how the sickness had killed off all love in Oran: “there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments” (Plague, 150). The plague has driven out all philia in Oran, leaving people more isolated and individualized than we find in the Sisyphean cycle.

Sagi notes that it is “against this backdrop, [that] Camus draws characters such as Rieux,

Tarrou, and even Paneloux, who captured the Augenblick, the unique situation that demanded from them compassion and an ethics of suffering” (Sagi, 169). We can interpret this in the context of this chapter, then, to argue that it is the characters’ rebellion against isolation and death that creates the bonds of solidarity and returns Oran to its healthy and happy state.

However, it must be noted that such a rebellion, one capable of producing solidarity, can only

71 arise from a feeling of compassion, i.e., philia. Sagi seems to support such an interpretation, noting that “in terse sentences describing Rieux, Camus turns him into the epitome of compassion and its deriving ethics” (Sagi, 169).

Turning then to The Rebel, we again see not only this conception of philia, but also its centrality in any rebellion. Seemingly echoing the above stated motivations of The Plague’s Dr.

Rieux, Camus writes that we must “understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love,” a love that empowers us "who find no rest in God or in history” to refuse and rebuke injustice (Rebel, 260). In reference to this passage, Villanova writes that “the absurd man in revolt finds himself acting with love for the man of the present and by creating, he works towards a more harmonious, material future” (Villanova, 194).

In addition to pointing out the connection between philia and rebellion for Camus, this passage from The Rebel also indicates the inadequacy of an ethics of solidarity. To best illustrate this charge about the inadequacy of solidarity, it may be helpful to consider Che Guevara’s “Man and in Cuba”. Guevara writes, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality” (Guevara, 398). While this quote appears to be incredibly similar to Camus’s claims about love and solidarity in The Rebel, I argue that the two are different in an important manner—and that Camus himself was aware of this difference and the inadequacy of solidarity.

We note in Villanova’s analysis of Camus, he concludes that the rebel acts as a result of his love for the individual of the present, a requirement of philia. As concluded in the third chapter of this thesis, this allows the rebel to break free from the problem of solipsism and see

72 the other as the “different same”. It is also what allows human solidarity to exist. However, solidarity, hinging on my rebellion for my contemporary, is a necessarily shallow and quasi- narcissistic value, one that is ultimately inadequate, as it privileges the other who is of my time and not the other of a future which is not mine. Contrast this with the Guevara passage quoted above. Edward D’Angelo argues that Guevara's understanding of rebellion and love hinges not on love of a specific subset of humanity,23 but of humanity as a whole (D’Angelo). In defining

Guevara’s concept of revolutionary love, they contrast it with paternal, romantic, and brotherly love before concluding that revolutionary love “has experienced inadequate attention,” a conclusion mirroring that of this chapter’s (D’Angelo).

Agape is the Recognition of a Structure of Consciousness

On my view, Camus was moving towards a position similar to Guevara’s conception of revolutionary love. Such a love would not be love for specific, temporally situated humans but a general and universal love for all of humanity. While I recognize that the Camus of the past would balk at this universalist language, I argue that he was on his way, in the third cycle, to developing a philosophy of love that would indeed be universalist. More specifically, the conception of love that I see implicit in Camus’s early thought and more explicit in his later thought concerns a transcendental, ahistorical structure of consciousness, namely that it is the recognition of all of humanity's ability to create values.

23 Subset here can be taken to mean nearly anything, including race, sex, class, gender, or creed. However, I wish to use it to differentiate between temporal and numerical subsets of humanity. The quote from The Rebel seems to suggest that rebellion hinges on love of the subset of present humans or the subset of individual humans that are in close geographical proximity—something the Guevara quote rejects wholeheartedly.

73 The conception of love suggested in the unwritten cycle would have been most similar to the Ancient Greek conception of agape. This conception moves past pure sexual desire and long- term, committed love and is instead pure, empathetic, and universal love. Agape is not felt for any specific individual in their particularity, but is instead felt for the whole of humanity and thus individuals insofar as they are human. We may then see how solidarity, primarily concerned with the temporally current, geographically close humans, pales in comparison to the agape love that demands empathy for all of humanity, past, present, and future. As stated above, eros and philia are necessarily selfish, first concerned with the self and then the other. Furthermore, any other that eros or philia are concerned with are others that are temporally situated and geographically close to the self. It has a selfish selection. Agape is one and the same with Guevara’s conception of revolutionary love; it is unselfish, wholly other-oriented primarily and motivated towards humanity as a whole rather than specific others.

Agape is different from our modern understanding of love as well as eros and philia. In his book Situation Ethics: The New Morality, Joseph Fletcher first defines it as “a matter of attitude, not of feeling,” noting that it is “discerning and critical” rather than

“sentimental” (Fletcher, 103). I turn to Fletcher here as his development of the conception of agape as the base of his defines the concept in a similar way that we are in this project. As seen by the above passage, agape, being an attitude rather than a feeling, is best understood as the recognition of this structure of consciousness. It is intentional, while eros and philia are, in a sense, accidental.

Furthermore, as we can recall from the above discussion of rebellion, solidarity arises from my decision to rebel. As a result, while it moves out of solipsism, it does so in an

74 inadequate fashion. The other only becomes the “different same” and is thus only granted this new value because I have granted it to them. Consequently, in order to free the other from oppression, I have now subjugated them to the activity of my valuing. True agape can do no such thing. The other is no longer subjugated to my created value, nor are they only a value creating agent because of me; it is our shared humanity that allows value creation. I am no longer rebelling for the other, and if we are involved in rebellion, then we are rebelling for us, i.e., humanity as a whole.

Highlighting this potential transition, Villanova argues that “for Camus love is a metaphysical act, as it transforms the ‘I’ into the materially-abstract ‘we’” (Villanova, 190). This

“we” then empowers us to take the Rebel’s cogito (I rebel - therefore we exist) and change it into

“we exist - therefore I can love” (Villanova, 190). This is why I argue that agape love is no longer simply an action or feeling that we have. Rather, it is, as stated above, the recognition of a transcendental, ahistorical structure of consciousness. This structure of consciousness is the human ability to create and destroy values, making them the only valuing agents. And like all other structures of consciousness, this motivates us and our actions in our lived world. Thus, as opposed to the rebel’s “All”, recognizing a created, shared value as seen in The Rebel, our new

“All”, built by agape, is the recognition of this structure of consciousness. Thus our rebellion is the recognition that the other, rather than simply being a “different same” is a “same different”, capable by their very nature to also be a creator of value.

As seen in chapter 3, the “different same” is the result of solidarity; it is the move out of solipsism, and this movement is enabled only through our rebellion against death and meaninglessness. Rather than remaining a tool in my environment, as seen in the Sisyphean

75 cycle, the other is now partially accessible as valuable beyond any utility. I recognize that they are not me, and yet they too share in my created value. Rather than a world divided between masters and slaves, my rebellion creates a world—or seeks to create a world—comprised not only of myself but also beings which are different from me. Yet these other beings, despite their difference from me, are ultimately similar to me. And this is made clear by the fact that they become valuable for me precisely insofar as they participate in my created value. In a sense, I subjugate their otherness to my identity in the name of solidarity. They are always different, yet in order to make them valuable, I have made them similar to me through my action. Contrast this then with the “same different”, built from a recognition of a structure of consciousness, namely the universal, empathetic agape, rather than my created value. The “same different”, by their very being, is the same as me, meaning that the value that others have as human is not a created value. This is to say that the ultimate value of others does not issue from a creative act on the part of an individual consciousness but is built into the very being of consciousness (i.e., consciousness as consciousness and not as me). Not only do they partake in my created value, but they too are meaning- and value-creators necessarily. This would then mean that human beings are intrinsically valuable because they are the source of meaning.

This is not to be confused with a one self or same self philosophy. While I recognize the

“same different” as the same as me, I still remain an individual; the other is a different consciousness and different self. That is to say, we are universally similar, but contingently different. Thus, the difference between the “different same” and the “same different” is a matter of primacy. The solidarity established by the rebel is one that stresses difference. It looks at the problem of the other and says, “let me unite us around my created value.” While attempting to

76 erase division, it creates a new hierarchy, a new wall in between groups, in a sense highlighting further division. Recognizing agape as a transcendental structure of consciousness erases this further division, placing an emphasis not on the newly created value, but on all human’s ability to create value. Thus, agape love truly brings similarity to the forefront. In a sense, the rebel’s solidarity establishes similarity through difference, while agape establishes the opposite, recognizing difference, only after first establishing unity.

In other words as Fletcher writes, agape “is the cause of desire” while contemporary love is the product of desire (Fletcher, 104). This is important to note as we relate Camus’s understanding of agape with Fletcher’s, as it helps to illustrate both the inadequacy of solidarity and the difference between the “different same" and the “same different”. Solidarity, arising from our rebellion, which is in turn driven by a more contemporary understanding of love, arises out of desire. I rebel, first for myself to possess some created value, then for the other to possess some created value, which as a result creates solidarity and a loving bond between us. That is to say, my desire causes my love for the “different same”. Thus, they are only free, in possession of some created value and loved because I originally desired. In recognizing agape as a structure of consciousness, one that motivates me to rebel so that all can create value, love has caused desire.

Thus, I desire the “same different” to create values with or without me, because I love them completely.

Camus’s Turn to Agape

77 We should feel confident of our explication of agape and what would be Camus’s turn to it in the unfinished cycle for a number of reasons. As stated above, I argue that we should see agape, the recognition of the structure of consciousness of the ability to create meaning and value inherent in all humans, as the natural progression of Camus’s philosophy. This is evident from his published work, as well as in addition to his personal notebooks and journals. In the period directly after the publication of the works in the Sisyphean cycle, Camus began working on an unfinished manuscript that begins, “‘Love…’ ‘Knowledge…’ ‘It’s the same word’” (Notebooks 1942, 74). The equation of love and knowledge here is incredibly interesting.

What does it mean to say that the two are the same word? I argue that is the beginning of an understanding that true love, agape, is the recognition of the most fundamental structure of consciousness. Knowledge and love are equated once we understand that their subject matter is the same. I argue that, for Camus, to possess true knowledge is the same as recognizing the structure of consciousness that unites us all, which would be the same as the possession of true love.

Keeping the above passage in mind, we then see a similar theme, this time connecting love with morality rather than knowledge. Camus writes, “if someone here told me to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: “I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.” And, as far as everything else is concerned, I say no. I say no with all my strength” (Notebooks 1935, 54). For Camus, morality is following the commitments of love. While this was evident in the Promethean cycle,

Dr. Rieux in The Plague and the general call to rebellion against death and injustice omnipresent in The Rebel, we find this duty of love fits our description of agape perfectly. The one duty that

78 we have, the one duty of love conceived of as agape, is to recognize the universal structure of consciousness of meaning- and value-creation — to recognize the other not as the “different same” but as the “same different”. In our absurd world this can be the only morality.

This morality of love, the morality of agape, is, as I argue, the next development in a consistent evolution of Camus's philosophy. As we have seen, the literary figures of which each cycle bears its name reveal the themes of the cycles. Sisyphus rebelled against his death so that he could continue to conquer, and for that he was punished by the gods with a meaningless task for all of eternity. However, Camus argues that we should take Sisyphus as a hero, rebelling not only against death, but also the meaninglessness of life, by creating value; imagining him happy.

We must keep in mind though that Sisyphus rebelled against his death and the meaninglessness of his life, it is a solipsistic rebellion at this point. I rebel against my death, and the meaninglessness of my life. It is only when we move into the Promethean cycle that one can rebel on behalf of the other.

Prometheus rebelled against the gods, giving fire to the humans. It is important to note that for the Greeks the gods were above the humans; we could consider them their masters. Thus,

Prometheus sought to equate the two; in Camusian terminology, he granted humans his created value, the stolen fire. Humans, to Prometheus, became the “different same” not becoming the gods, but also being in possession of fire. Much like Sisyphus, Prometheus is subjected to infinite torture for his rebellion, which we should interpret as the acceptance of martyrdom present in The Rebel. Looking then at the unwritten third cycle, we find that the literary figure was to be Nemesis, the Greek god of justice, also known as the inescapable. This is the third and

79 final piece of evidence I wish to submit in this thesis that supports my argument that we should understand the move towards agape as an authentic move in Camus’s unfinished philosophy.

Agape: knowledge, morality, recognition of the human ability to create value and meaning as a structure of consciousness. I argue that these all fall under the umbrella term of justice, the virtue that is supposed to unite all of humankind in egalitarian balance. The “same different”, secured only by agape, is perhaps best personified by Nemesis’ level scales. The turn to Nemesis is interesting, as she is not a figure of rebellion in any traditional sort; however, I argue that this is a representation of the development of Camus’s philosophy of rebellion. The

Sisphyean rebel’s “no” was a simple renunciation. They rejected death of any kind, and in that found a reason to continue living. The Promethean rebel’s “no” was more than a simple renunciation. They rejected death, but also asserted a positive value for the other, albeit a specific other. Nemesis and her balanced scales of justice empower us to move past rebellion. We no longer have to say “no” to say “yes”. Agape is the recognition of humanity’s ability to create value, a feat no longer tied to a renunciation of death in the same manner. We began with the necessitation of imagining Sisyphus happy. I now humbly submit that we must imagine Nemesis loving.

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