Camus Albert - Albert Camus : from the absurd to revolt

ALBERT CAMUS

From the Absurd to Revolt

John Foley

First published 2008 by Acumen

Published 2014 by Routledge
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John Foley 2008

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ISBN 978-1-84465-140-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-84465-141-2 (paperback)

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For my mother and for Farah

It may be that the ideal of freedom to choose ends without claiming eternal validity for them, and the pluralism of values connected with this, is only the late fruit of our declining capitalist civilization: an ideal which remote ages and primitive societies have not recognized, and one which posterity will regard with curiosity, even sympathy, but little comprehension. This may be so; but no sceptical conclusions seem to me to follow. Principles are not less sacred because their duration cannot be guaranteed. Indeed, the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past. To realise the relative validity of ones convictions, said an admirable writer of our time, and yet stand for them unflinchingly, is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian. To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine ones practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity.

Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)