Camus and Sartre

 Camus and Sartre - The Debate 

Camus first writing was 'The Myth of Sisyphus' in which he discussed his philosophy of "absurdity" in the context of his well-known claim that the problem of life was whether or not to commit suicide. He established that suicide was wrong - the point of life is to survive, he said.  His next work, "The Rebel" established that he felt mistaken about his claim and that the real problem was murder particular the French Resistance's outright murder of the German Nazi soldiers and any French collaborationists in the years following the August 1944 liberation of France.

In the 1952 Sartre-Camus dispute, both freedom and violence were debated. Sartre’s notion of freedom was interpreted by Camus as an excess - for Sartre there is freedom of choice, everyone has plenty of freedom. Camus felt that freedom was absurd - there was no absolute freedom. This difference was enlarged in the primary aspect of their dispute - the issue of violence. Namely, the problematic actions were assassination and terrorism. Camus argued for ‘mesure’ or measured revolutionary violence, counterterrorist violence - he dismissed assassination as absolutely unethical! Sartre appeared to permit unrestrained violence. Beauvoir mediated this contrast with her essay on “Ethics of Ambiguity.” Even their friend Merleau-Ponty engaged Sartre in debate over his ultra-Bolshevism.

The problem that no one addresses is the effect of physical violence, psychological abuse and verbal aggression including symbolic violence on the personality of each member of entire populations during the early socialization process - the formation of the traumatic core of personality. Every parent traumatizes their child with physical violence, threats and abuse!

Is there any doubt that the core of personality is not ethical or moral because of the aggression experienced and internalized/identified in early childhood? Therefore, the question of freedom, violence and ethics is at the heart of the cultural socialization of each child!

Camus was a believer of 'inexistentialism.' His version of "absurd freedom" was opposed to Sartre's freedom of choosing where not choosing is still the freedom to choose not to choose. Sartre recognizes the complexity of freedom and consciousness and limits the freedom to choose to situations, not to an ontological being in-itself - there is no absolute obstacle for Sartre.

In "The Plague," Camus' characters complain of life dictated by the fear of infection. Isolation occurs for the individual, for cities, regions and entire nations. One interpretation of Camus' "La Peste" is that the foreign invader is not merely lice that kills rats and even humans, but other humans, namely the Nazi's. A very famous 1945 film by Marcel Carne, "Children of Paradise" produced during WWII also used a different time and place to criticize the Nazi's using displacement and irony - the Boulevard of Crime and the theatre.

Camus used the metaphor of 'little-ease' to characterize daily life during the 'plague,' the occupation: one could not stand-up and freely stretch, everyone was bent over as if working in a cave or mine. The isolation of towns and cities was also an internal exile: there was no dissent, everyone was obedient. However, more were dying than victims from the virus. The political order predicated on intimacy: marriage and family was also dying. There was no deliberation or plurality, no negotiations - everyone accepted the nihilism of the conditions - there was nothing that could be done! The state and medical response to the plague was terrifying - blind obedience was coerced. The ethical was suspended - adherence to a faceless telos!

Camus misinterpreted Sartre's practical in-situ existential freedom, or absolute freedom of choice, as ontological or factual freedom. Sartre was very clear that ontological freedom was absolute, complete, total destruction of values and freedom, objectification of human beings, domination, totalitarianism, the dangerous freedom without restraint. Sartre later said, "The moral attitude appears when technical and social conditions render positive forms of conduct impossible. Ethics is a collection of idealistic tricks intended to enable us to live the life imposed on us by the poverty of our resources and the insufficiency of our techniques." This passage is an unpublished note of Sartre's quoted by Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance (New York, G.P. Putnam, 1965), trans. Richard Howard, p. 199. 

Sartre also retreated from his absolutist position in later years. We must always remind ourselves that the French Resistance was fighting the Nazi’s, but this did not console Camus.

Existential freedom for Sartre was practical: the mode in which we choose to practice, exist or live our existential freedom within the practical limitations that our activities impose upon us as though it were ontological freedom. Camus thought Sartre's notion of freedom was useless and accused his characters of having too much freedom - alone, enclosed in his freedom; freedom is loneliness and the others restrict it.

Camus did not realize that freedom was a quest for values. Camus believed that freedom for Sartre meant 'to obtain what one has wished,' but Sartre said that success was of no importance to freedom, what mattered was the autonomy of choice. Choice, however is not wish or dream, but acting - choice and acting are the same. Camus was simply off the mark when he interpreted Sartre as meaning that freedom meant the ability to do or obtain whatever one wants.