Is it possible to find a rule of conduct outside the realm of religion?

Camus’ essay (The Rebel- 1956) is really a reaction to Dostoyevsky’s claim that if God is dead, then all things are permissible. Camus cannot accept nihilism like this. He rejects Sade’s cruelty and the waste of life that his age committed. Still, he cannot return to the safety of the sacred, to the state of belief in God for the sake of having a justification for action. Rather, the existentialist in him posits the individual as his own justification for all actions. And yet this doesn’t satisfy him either. By 1956, Camus sees that he cannot leave the individual on his own. In his forward to the essay, Sir Robert Read says, “if we decide to live, it must be because we have decided that a human society has some positive value” (vii).

The rebel, he asserts, aspires to “give a definite answer to the question implicit in the blood and strife of this century”(4). He cannot be satisfied with the idea that “evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice”(5). He condemns Hitler and others by saying that such a position of absurd nihilism makes the universe a place where “there is no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or to devote ourselves to the care of lepers”( 5). In a sense he rejects Nietzsche’s amorality, but then praises Nietzsche for his recognition of the necessity for having values, even if one destroys all others. Such thinkers’ “greatness is measured by the extent to which they have rejected the complacencies of absurdism in order to accept its exigencies….. to escape complacency, absurdist reasoning then discovers renunciation…” (9). He concludes his introduction by saying that the rebel’s drive is to transform, demanding to know “whether murder is legitimate” (10). His evidence for consideration is the existence of rebels. He suggests that in looking at rebellion, “we may discover in its achievements the rule of action that the absurd has not been able to give us…and finally, hope for a new creation” (11). His ultimate goal is to “discover the principle of reasonable culpability”(11).

The rebel says no, affirming a borderline, a limit. A saying of ‘no more’ is equivalent to saying that there exists a higher truth or value beyond the individual. He argues that when a rebel rebels it involves “we” and not “I”. He rejects the condition of slavery, demanding to be treated as an equal. He says to himself that it is “better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees (15). He is willing to “sacrifice himself for the sake of a common good” (15). He risks everything for the sake of his natural community, and therefore it is not an egoistic act. Thus, human solidarity is metaphysical!

Camus rejects the sacred (knowing that religion too can create human solidarity), but he claims that “we live in an unsacrosanct moment in history” (21). This, he says, is our historic reality, and “unless we choose to ignore reality, we must find our values in it” (21). After looking at countless examples of revolution and rebellion, Camus limits rebellion to rebellion that is “moderate” meaning that it cannot justify murder and mayhem. Such actions deny the value of other humans. This, he argues, is illogical. Paradoxically, he moves from individualism to a form of communism (with a small c…). He says, “at this limit, the “we are” paradoxically defines a new form of individualism… I have need of others who have need of me and of each other” (297). This collective action requires discipline without it, Camus says, we are “a stranger”(297). Such discipline is a constant Sisyphusian struggle. Reminding ourselves that others are part of our struggle, we must see that there “does exist for man… a way of acting and of thinking which is possible on the level of moderation to which he belongs” (303).

His final answer, “at this meridian of thought”, is that “we shall choose Ithaca” (306). My first reading of this was simply that, like Odysseus, we must not choose war. Instead of leaving Ithaca, we should stay with our families and not fight a pointless war. However, I am indebted to Kit Collins for her insightful moment of epiphany, reminding me that Odysseus chooses Ithaca at another key moment in the story. He chooses not to be a god with Calypso. He prefers to “learn to live and die” in his “faithful land.” Along with Marx, Lenin, and the martyrs of 1905, we must all learn to accept the “thin yield” of our own fields, accepting from the others “that he is not God”(306).

Does Camus’ plan from 1956 work today? One must ask if we are in a similar history. His answer seems to include people from all walks of history, from Odysseus to Marx, and so I would assume that his answer does work, and that our history is not so different from his. Is it possible to find a rule of conduct? Yes. Is it absolute? No. It is the product of a constant struggle to remember that we are not Gods, and therefore, we need each other and therefore must act within moderation, respecting all other humans who have likewise chosen Ithaca.