Original Innocence in a Passionate Universe: The Moral Anthropology of Camus

ORIGINAL INNOCENCE IN A PASSIONATE UNIVERSE: THE MORAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF CAMUS THE DRAMATIC WORLD of Albert Camus, like the Christian world to which Camus was the disaffected heir, is populated by strangers: men and women estranged by their reason from nature, from other human beings, and even from themselves. In the crisis Camus calls the ' absurd,' the crisis in which he locates the mystery of human estrangement, we recognize a secular counterpart of a central Christian doctrine, the fall of man. More surprisingly, Camus's account of this crisis corresponds in remarkable psychological detail to one particular version of the fall: that forged by St. Augustine through a fusion of Biblical themes with the philosophy of Plotinus. The rest of Camus's plot of the human drama-primitive ' innocence ' before the absurd, exile and return to the kingdom following the crisis-shows similarly detailed likenesses to the treatments of Plotinus and Augustine.1 What could account for such remarkable similarities in a twentieth-century author to thinkers who lived more than fifteen-hundred years before? Clearly the enormous impact of Augustine and Plotinus on all subsequent Western European thought explains a great deal. I hope to show in this paper that there is a more methodical reason: an ·assumption common to Camus and to the Plotinian-Augustinian tradition concerning the nature and function of human reason. Plotinus and Augustine explicitly lay the foundation of human alienation in an epistemological theory of what constitutes a rational ex1 Camus often expressed a sense of the sacred in the universe; but he cherished no hidden convictions on pre-existence, immortality, Neoplatonic hypostases, or God. This paper seeks resemblances only within human experience. 69 70 EDWARD T. SMITH planation, a theory that will be called the thesis of heteronomous explanation. In Camus, as in the two earlier thinkers, human alienation from our world and ourselves arises largelynot solely-from an incongruity between reason and reality. In describing this estrangement, Camus unmistakably displays every symptom of holding this same thesis of explanation. If he does so understand the nature and role of reason, we have not only a rationale for an otherwise remarkable parallel between theories, particularly concerning the central moral crisis of humanity, but also a helpful instrument for interpreting Camus's work, both philosophical and fictional. This paper will attempt to point out the parallels between Camus and the earlier two thinkers, to describe the tradition of heteronomous explanation found in Plotinus and Augustine; to show that Camus did, in fact, hold this view of the nature of rational explanation; and to trace the connection between this thesis and the complex of factors, passionate, intellectual, and moral, set forth in Camus's account of the 'absurd.' By way of restrictions, I do not claim, among other things, to present a definitive, or a best, method of interpreting Camus. I shall not attempt to trace the path through which Plotinus and Augustine came to influence Camus.2 I cannot develop completely the themes ascribed to Plotinus and Augustine: their views can be sketched in only lightly as points of departure and comparison. Similarly I shall not try to analyze the entire human drama as seen by Camus. Aside from necessary references to other episodes in the plot, I shall confine this paper to the ' absurd 'the ' fall "-and its immediate antecedents and consequences. This theme Camus treats particularly in two works, Le Mythe de Sisyphe and La Chute. I shall concentrate most heavily on • Camus wrote a thesis dealing with Plotinus and Augustine, M etaphysique Chretienne et Neoplatonisme, for a diploma in etudes superieures, printed in Camus, Essais, ed. by R. Quillot, Pleiades edition (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), pp. rn20-IS18. The influence of Plotinus and Augustine on Camus, however, was undoubtedly produced first more indirectly through the tradition of the great French moralists, particularly Pascal. THE MOR.AL ANTHROPOLOGY OF CAMUS 71 the Mythe; La Chute will be mentioned only briefly as a coherent treatment of a problem left unresolved in Le Mythe. Explanations: You Can't Get There from Here What Camus's convictions about reason evidence in common with those of Plotinus and Augustine can be summed up in what might be...