Fate and freedom in Camus

Aída de Verdi

Camus’ conception of freedom must be understood within a Philosophy of the Absurd in which he bases his Ethics. Throughout his literary production he exposes his view on freedom as a problematic issue in a world where there is no sense and meaning. Fate and freedom are always present, in a state of tension. In works such as The myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, it seems that fate somehow triumphs. Freedom does take place, but only in the context of the inevitable. In contrast, The Rebel shows the possibility of overcoming the predetermined course of events.

The Myth of Sisyphus analyses the legend of Sisyphus, who defied the gods by cheating death (so that no one had to die anymore), receiving as punishment the torment of an existence in hell, where he was condemned for all eternity to push a rock up a mountain and watch it roll down again, having to start over. The gods believed that there was no crueler punishment than condemning him to eternally carrying out a meaningless task. Sisyphus is the absurd hero, whose entire existence is hopelessly directed towards achieving nothing. This is a metaphor of the unreasonableness of the world and the meaninglessness of life. But man, a rational being, cannot help searching for meaning amidst the chaos. Absurdity is the product of a clash between the human need to understand and the nonsense of the world, when “my appetite for the absolute and for unity meets the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle.”[1] During the tortuous lapse of time when he returns to where he started (down the mountain), Sisyphus becomes conscious of what is happening, and through consciousness he is now the owner of his faith. ‘He is stronger than his rock’. The absurd hero is a conscious hero, who is aware of his terrible condition and knows there is no hope. For Camus, consciousness arises “at that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent pivoting when he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him”.[2] His fate has already been decided (by the Gods), but inasmuch as he is able to reflect on his life and realize what he is doing and where he is going, he becomes the creator of his own destiny. Therein lies his freedom. Consciousness is thus a necessary condition for freedom.

But how is freedom possible in a hopeless life? According to the metaphor of Sisyphus, freedom is not the absolute freedom of an undetermined life. Freedom is accomplished by giving up the search for meaning; i.e. accepting absurdity as an unchangeable condition. The only possible truth can be found in absurdity, and a free man acknowledges so. Expectations of a better future have no place in a life without purpose, so the absurd man experiences freedom in a purely concrete sense -at each instant, living in the present. As I see it, Sisyphus’ process of working through his task can be experienced by him in a variety of ways. He can become overwhelmed by the burden he carries on his shoulders and the absurd repetition of his task, thus succumb to despair. Another option is that he naively expects to change his situation. Or he can rather enjoy every moment of the endeavour by taking charge and, most importantly, comprehending the absurdity of it all. In other words, he can go through his enterprise lucidly. Lucidity within a life in prison may be torture, but it is the only means to freedom and hence to happiness. As Camus concludes, “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.[3] For Camus, happiness requires living intensely and lucidly in the present, aware of the absurdity of life and conscious of the impossibility to explain the unexplainable. The lucid man recognizes that we cannot fight the absurd, so we must rather preserve the absurd condition by rejecting all transcendent values (such as God and an afterlife), acknowledging that this life is all we have and experiencing happiness in the enjoyment of the present.

The stranger also illustrates Camus’ philosophy of the absurd. From my own interpretation, the character of Meursault is indifferent to things that happen around him because he is aware of the world’s meaninglessness. He may be the only truly conscious man in the story, because the rest of the people just seem to go with the flow (representing society as a whole) and disapprove of his attitude to life. Camus shows through this novel the problem of hypocrisy in western morality. Meursault’s authenticity -being what he is and not what he ought to be- clashes with the prevailing moral. Absurdity can be represented either by Meursault (as an absurd hero who is conscious and therefore free) or, on the contrary, by society (a society that imposes a senseless ethical code which contradicts man’s true self). If we regard Meursault as a free agent, then we must conclude that the cost of freedom is being a stranger to society; i.e. society does not promote freedom and it is actually incompatible with it. Meursault’s authenticity is shown from the very beginning of the story in the situation of his mother’s funeral, where regardless of what others think of him, he does not express an emotion that he does not feel. He won’t cry because he is just not sad. Such is precisely what being authentic is about. But he gains rejection from society because of not having followed the ‘rules of the game’ by not showing the expected behaviour, ‘proper’ for a funeral and especially being his mother’s (one of the most ‘sacred’ figures to most cultures). If authenticity entails freedom, then the fact that he dares to be himself in spite of the harsh judgment, is an expression of his free will. If he was behaving in that manner with the purpose of annoying the people around him or trying to prove something, then he would just be one of them, equally inauthentic and attached to the prevailing morality. But Camus draws a character that genuinely does not care, since he does not even share the ethical code of the society in which he lives. He is not immoral but amoral.

Meursault is a man who lives entirely in the present, guided by his instant needs (not feelings). He shows this by his sexual behaviour and the way he searches for momentary pleasure, not committing to another person because commitment entails the thought of a future. The notion of ‘future’ cannot even be found in the character’s mindset. As in The Myth of Sisyphus, expectation just sabotages freedom. From this outlook Meursault may be a happy man with a meaningless life. Equally meaningless is his suddenly killing of an Arab ‘because he was bothered by the heat’. Such event is indifferent to him and to the universe as a whole, but has total relevance to society and supposedly to God. Here we can see that, as a stranger to society, Meursault is actually close to the ‘true’ reality; the world prior to, or apart from, all the falsity. Morality is thus falsity. During Meursault’s trial, it seems that he is more severely judged for not having shown any grief at his mother’s funeral than for the actual murder, being finally sentenced to death as a result of a moral assessment of his attitude to life, not an objective evaluation of a specific event. While awaiting his execution he meets with a chaplain and refuses to turn to God: the ‘supreme judge’ who is meant to represent the absolute values. In that moment in the story, Camus expresses his worldview through Meursault, claiming that there is no God, there is no meaning and therefore no one can really judge him or his actions. By denying the Absolute (i.e. God and order), what is left is the absurd and what is affirmed is freedom. Meursault faces his fate (death) as a free man. His fate was imposed by society, the instance that opposes him and contradicts human nature. So here we find a similar situation to that of Sisyphus: the paradox of being free (due to awareness of the true nature of things) in the context of a predetermined ending. Fate and freedom coexisting. We would conclude that society defeated the stranger and that the gods triumphed over Sisyphus, if it wasn’t because these characters were conscious of the actual reality and therefore free. Meursault’s final resistance –not to death, but to succumbing to the prevailing moral values (through showing remorse and turning to God) — is what Camus later exposes on in his essay, The rebel.

Looking at The Myth of Sisyphus, The Stranger and The rebel from an overall view, I would say that The Rebel, as distinct from the other two works, shows that although there is no meaning, there is hope. And hope can only be found through revolt. Camus takes the idea of ‘becoming the owner of one’s fait’ to another level, setting forth the possibility of an actively free agent (not a passive one who is free by consciously accepting the course of things). Let us look at what Camus refers to when he talks about ‘revolt’ and ‘the rebel’:

A rebel is a man who says “no”. Such “no” means setting a limit; the boundary between what is acceptable from what it is not. The impulse to revolt arises in the face of a situation that is considered unjust. Revolt is the categorical refusal of an intrusion from the outside, and in the act of refusing, affirming oneself -not as an individual entity, but as part of the whole of humanity. Revolt is the movement in defense of a dignity common to all men (human dignity), originating as consciousness of my own individual rights. The rebel is the man who no longer tolerates to be silent, because not speaking out means adapting to injustice, resigning, appearing as someone who does not hold any desires. A slave who has received orders throughout his life, suddenly reacts and shouts ‘enough!’, recovering the part of himself that had been stifled. He restores his value as a human being. However, the rejection of abuse is not the only thing that operates in the rebellious act. It is something more profound. Rebellion is to revive the lost desire, since a free man is a man who desires. This part of him that has been recovered is now a priority, valued above everything, even above life itself: it is preferable to die than to renounce the newly conquered freedom. The individual prior to the condition of revolt is a tied up, repressed and gagged human being. Consciousness emerges through revolt. An authentic act of revolt can only arise from an informed person, aware of his rights as a human being. Taking this idea to an existential level, Camus argues that man needs to rebel in order to be. But what emerges is the collective being: “I rebel, therefore we exist”. Revolt, as a condition for freedom, is our historic reality. History is a succession of revolts. The act of revolting allows us to change the course of history, avoiding to be passively determined by it. For Camus, the spirit of rebellion is only possible in a community where a theoretical equality hides large de-facto inequalities. Under this scheme, transgression is the only way to wake up and find yourself. Transgression is the rupture of order and thus is required for movement. We can say that rebellion is to emerge into being through a break: it breaks the harmony sustained by injustice.

The rebel places his freedom even over his own life. Hence, the ultimate goal is not life, but freedom. The fact that freedom has become an abstract and existential ideal, to the point where some are willing to die for freedom, has moved the concept away from its concrete and vital source. When a man prefers death to a life with no freedom, he is appealing to a moral value: his dignity. It is surprising to see how values can be put above instincts (in this case, a survival instinct), but such is the enormous power of human reason. This phenomenon is what makes us such complex creatures and distances us from other animals. Both principles, life and freedom, have been intended to be crushed under the yoke of abstractions such as God and the State, says Stirner. The absolute liberation of man can only be achieved through the ultimate metaphysical revolution, which consists in turning against God, the highest moral authority. We must kill God in the name of justice. The ‘owner’ of this world, whose legitimacy has been questioned, should be overthrown. Thus, man becomes God. Being God is to acknowledge that everything is allowed, rejecting any other law other than our own. Through the movement of revolt, individual suffering becomes collective consciousness; collective awareness of our dignity and hence our rights as human beings. However, once we remove God -the instance that was supposed to sustain the world and human morality- how do we rescue some sense and meaning? If what reigns is absurdity, must we claim that nothing makes sense and accept it as our reality? Camus argues that absolute nihilism is only achievable in suicide, where revolt reaches its maximum contradiction, denying itself. Within such an outlook, we must find a new impulse to not disappear. Camus wishes to bet on a revival, but for it to take place we would need to start creating something in the midst of the ruins of nihilistic destruction. However, on the basis of the idea that existence is only possible in revolt, the rebellious drive -an impulse of freedom- can never be totally consumed. A renaissance is not possible within stillness. But we must channel revolt now in creative ways.

In this innovative drive, Camus proposes the expression of revolt in art: live and create life, to create what we are. Revolt is seen here in its ‘pure’ state. Under this premise, art would offer us a good perspective on the content of revolt. Revolt is partly an aesthetic requirement, because both the artist and the rebel reject the world and wish to remake it according to a certain ideal. For Camus, all revolt (including the artistic impulse) involves the construction of utopic worlds. To show the absurdity of the injustice in the world, the artist, which is essentially a rebel, does not conform and thus fights. As he does not adapt to existing conditions and lives to denounce them, the artist tends to insanity but avoids losing himself. He saves himself from overflow through his work of art and the unity accomplished through it. It is a unit understood as the expression and realization of the deepest desire of the artist. Only through his work of art, the artist is free. Creating, he exists. However, a conflict remains that even the highest rejection of the existing world does not allow man to escape it completely, not even through art. A healthy man clings to the world and does not want to abandon it; he runs away from the alternatives that madness and suicide offer him, for they do not represent a true liberation, but the acceptance of defeat. The rebel does not stop fighting because he will never renounce his greatest desire, which is freedom. If he resigns, he ceases to exist.

Notes:

1. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p.14
2. Ibid, p.42
3. Ibid, p.40

References:

Blanco Ilari, J. “Albert Camus: Rebellion and Freedom” in Journal of Institutions, Buenos Aires, 2009, pp.86–95.

Camus, A. The Myth of Sisyphus. London, Penguin Classics, 1985.

Camus, The Rebel. London, Penguin Classics, 2000.

Camus, The Stranger. London, Penguin Classics, 2011.

Hochberg, H. “Albert Camus and the Ethics of Absurdity” in Ethics, The University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp.87–102.

Ordóñez, E. “The human condition: on death and suicide. An approach to the work of Albert Camus” in Guillermo de Ockham Scientific Journal, Cali, Colombia, 2010, pp.183–195.