sefomobe

I must confess that I didn't find much that was especially insightful in Camus' account of rebellion, revolution, and nihilism here while reading it, but now that I look back on it, I see that he actually has much to say--and that much of it is worthwhile. Camus begins by defining the rebel as one who affirms by negating, who says yes in saying no--one who decries absolute freedom in establishing limits to acceptable behavior. He thus immediately counterposes the rebel with the nihilist, who, in denying that anything has meaning, valorizes a conception of life which is dominated by mere facts--power. He takes issue with revolutionary movements as they have existed in the twentieth century, claiming most of them to have betrayed the origins of rebellion by replacing it with an absolutist--even, totalitarian--ethic. He sees much to be respected in the efforts of the Russian 'revolutionaries' of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (a group from which he of course excludes Lenin), who rebelled against tsarism and tyranny often violently. Camus finds their nobility partly in the fact (which he posits) that these revolutionaries, unlike many of their counterparts of the twentieth century, were often quite consumed by doubt and engaged in murder and assassination only with much reluctance and much moderation. He laments, then, the disappearance of such doubt and moderation in the nihilism that gripped much of the twentieth century, nihilism that gave rise to the uncompromising ideology of Marxism-Leninism and, not unrelatedly, Nazism, and denounces its consequences. Camus also roundly criticizes many of his intellectual contemporaries for their undying faith in Marxism, claiming, for one, that Marxism reproduces some of the central problems of religious faith (ie, in relegating justice, etc., to the "Later On," as he puts it--that is, post-capitalist society) and entails the negation of much that is defensible and good in humanity by reducing human obligation to the promotion of revolution. I think he's certainly on to something here, but I think his reading of Marx is also somewhat flawed, in that Camus seems to disregard Marx's concern with emancipation and free conscious activity in his efforts to discredit the approach of the "prophet of justice." Camus posits a different approach to social change, claiming that rebels/revolutionaries, in their efforts to combat injustice, should never lose sight of the importance of beauty within the conception of human dignity. It seems that many so-called revolutionaries, though (probably more of the socialist-Marxist bent), would reject Camus' analysis as sentimental and, in fact, supportive of the status quo. Does Camus then break with the predominance of Marxist thought in his day and accept something close to anarchism? He certainly seems to reject revolutionary society (at least, the revolutions demonstrated thus far by history), but he remains highly critical of bourgeois society as well. Contemplating these tensions is crucially important, and Camus's The Rebel certainly represents an important contribution to this debate.

2022-11-14 16:59