Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity (review)

It seems common that at some point in their careers, writers begin to think about their collective works in terms of an overarching direction or evolution. As diverse as the genres or styles they have employed might be, or as varied the themes, geographies, and time periods, a corpus of writings is amassed that can be viewed, questioned, and even understood accordingly—that is to say, as a whole. Whereas, in hindsight, examination of one's own works may lead to a more nuanced appreciation of how the corpus has changed over time, such contemplation can just as soon prompt the author to establish more deliberately the trajectory, scope, and tenor of future endeavors.

For Albert Camus, this reckoning appears to have first come on the heels of the publication of The Plague in 1947. It was then that he set forth in his Notebooks an agenda that, albeit modified in subsequent years, arguably remained the structural and philosophical impetus of the works he was to write during the remainder of his lifetime. The resulting three "stages" or "cycles" are organized around central themes—the absurd, revolt, and love—each coinciding with a Greek myth—The Myth of Sisyphus, The Myth of Prometheus, and The Myth of Nemesis, respectively. While critics have accorded varying degrees of importance to this tripartite project, Ronald D. Srigley argues that the majority of criticism has all too hastily accepted this structure as a blueprint for interpreting Camus' oeuvre; as a result, the very chronology of his works, heeded to a fault, has led to the perception that Camus' body of writing can be interpreted as a transparent, straightforward progression that is moreover in line with Camus' own intellectual growth.

Quite to the contrary, Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity aspires to demonstrate that the cyclic nature of Camus' works does not lead toward an ever-clearer and less-naïve position on the part of Camus. Rather, according to Srigley, the goal of the cyclical works is to explain and critically assess "modernity's darkest ambitions," and this project, in proving to be "increasingly honest and uncompromising" (7) in its account, proves fraught with risk and frustration. Furthermore, Srigley asserts, it is in treating modernity and Christianity as one and the same that Camus renders this undertaking even more problematic.

Works from Camus' first cycle (The Stranger [1942], The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], The Misunderstanding [1943], and Caligula [1944]) describe the awakening of the absurd man to the meaningless of his existence and, subsequently, demonstrate why the perfunctory "leap of faith" afforded by both Christian and existentialist thought is ultimately unacceptable. Instead of committing to what amounts to "philosophical suicide," the absurd man must continue to confront and question the reality that transcends him. In the second cycle (The Plague, The Rebel, State of Siege and The Just Assassins), the issue of rebellion takes center stage as Camus turns to what Srigley views as a choice between the ancients and the moderns: "[Camus] wants to distinguish between ancient attempts to find meaning in history that emphasize recurrent forms and patterns and Christian and modern accounts of history in which the course of events is understood to be 'strictly unique' and in which that uniqueness is carried to its final term in the notion of an absolutely unprecedented apocalyptic kingdom" (64). This latter, providential history breaks with the Greeks and is, for Camus, a significant development that points toward Christianity as being where metaphysical rebellion finds its roots. Where one (Christianity) is transcendent, the other (modernity) is immanent in terms of its salvation or "messianic aspirations" (73). Both perspectives are thus progressivist in Camus' eyes and thereby rebuke the cyclical view shared by the Greeks with respect to history.

Interceding between the second and third cycles are The Fall (1956) and Exile and the Kingdom (1957)—texts making up what Srigley refers to as an Intermediate Stage. As opposed to the previous cycle in which Camus had merely attempted to "teas[e] out...the [inadmissible] presuppositions of modernity...