Original text of the lecture by Albert Camus in McMillin Theater
Columbia University (New York) March 28, 1946 (Google Translated)
The human crisis: The crisis of man.
The men of my age in France and Europe were born just before or during the first great
war. They arrived in adolescence for the first global economic crisis, and then lived another 20 years before the takeover by Hitler. This was built on a foundational education from the Spanish war, Munich, War of 1939, defeat and four years of occupation and clandestine struggle.
So I guess it's called an interesting generation. And
precisely, it will be interesting for you as I speak, rather than my own behalf, on behalf
a number of French who are now 30 years old and who have formed their intelligence and
Heart during the terrible years when, with their countries, they fed on shame and lived in
revolt.
Yes, it's an interesting first generation because in front of the absurd world than their elders manufactured, we believed in nothing and lived in revolt.
The literature of his time, surrealism in particular, was in revolt against clarity, narrative and
sentence itself. The painting was abstract, that is to say, it was in revolt against the subject and
reality.
Music melody refused.
As for philosophy, it taught that there was no
truth but merely "phenomena" that there could be Mr. Smith, Mr. Durand, Herr
Vogel, but nothing in common between these three particular phenomena.
As for the moral attitude of
this generation, it was even more adamant nationalism seemed a truth
exceeded, religion exile, twenty-five years of international politics had taught him to doubt
all purities, and think that no one had ever right or wrong. As for morals
traditional society, it seemed to us that it has not ceased to be, that is to say, a
monstrous hypocrisy.
And so we were in denial.
Of course, it was not new.
Other generations, other countries have experienced other periods of history that experience. But what
again, is that these same men, strangers to all values, have had to adjust their position. Personal compared to war first and then compared to murder and terror.
It is on this occasion they had to think that there might be a crisis of man, because they
had to live in the most heartbreaking contradictions.
As they entered, indeed, in war,
as one enters Hell, if it is true that hell is the denial.
He loved neither war nor
violence ; they had to accept war and exert violence.
They had hatred for the
hatred.
It took them yet to learn this difficult science.
After that, they had to take care of terror or terror rather took care of them. And they
were faced with a situation; rather than characterize in general, I would like to illustrate four short stories about a time that the world began to forget but that burns us
even the heart:
1) In the building of the Gestapo of a European capital, after a night of interrogation, two
indictees still bloody are bound and the building superintendent [done carefully
household] the heart at peace since it took probably his breakfast. The charge of one of tortured, she replied indignantly a phrase translated into French, would go something like this: "I never take care of what my tenants."
2) Lyon, one of my friends is taken from his cell to a third interrogation. As they tore his ears, in a previous interview he wears a bandage around his head.
The German officer who led the interrogation is the same who has already attended the first sessions. Yet he who asks with a hint of affection and concern in his voice, "So,
how are these ears?"
3) In Greece, following an operation by Maquis, a German officer prepares to shoot
three brothers he took as hostages. The old mother fell at his feet and he agrees to spare
one, provided it refers itself. As she can not decide, we put them
plays. She chose the elder, because he was in charge of family, but at the same time, she
sentenced the other two to death, as was the German officer's intention.
4) A group of women deported among which is one of our comrades, is repatriated
France by Switzerland. Having newly arrived in Switzerland, they perceive a civil funeral.
And at the sight of this show are thrown into hysterical laughter: "That is how they treat the dead
here!" they say.
I chose these stories, not because of their sensational nature, but because I know that we have tend to spare the sensitivity of the world and prefer usually close my eyes to keep our tranquility.
But that's because these examples force me to respond other than a conventional "yes" to the question: " Is there a crisis of Man? "
They allow me to answer, as answered all the men I mentioned, "Yes, there is a crisis of man, since
the death or torture of a being in our world can be addressed with a sense of indifference or friendly experimental interest or mere passivity. "
Yes, there is a crisis of man, since the death of a prisoner may be considered differently
with horror and outrage that should lead, instead of human pain seen as a somewhat boring reality or logistical problem such as the refueling trucks or the obligation to
queuing for any gram of butter.
It is too easy on this point to blame Hitler and say that the beast is dead, thus the venom has disappeared. For we know that the
venom has not disappeared, we carry it in our hearts and nations, parties and individuals share the feeling, still look on with the rest in quiet anger.
I have
always thought that a nation bears solidarity with its traitors just as to its heroes. So does a civilization
also. And the white Western civilization, in particular, is responsible for its perversions
as well as its successes.
From this point of view, we all stand responsible for Hitlerism and we
must seek the most general causes that have made possible this terrible evil that mauled the face of Europe. Of this general crisis, greater spirits than I could possibly could make the subject of an edifying speech. But the
generation of which I speak knows that this crisis is neither here nor there: it is only the rise
the subsequent terror to a perversion of values. Abman or a historical force
were no longer judged on their dignity, but according to their success, their power. The modern crisis
consists entirely in the fact that no Western is assured of his immediate future and that all
live with more or less precisely fear of being crushed one way or the other by history. Yes, if we want that this miserable man, Job Temps Modernes, shall not perish from his wounds in the middle of his pile of shit, we must first lift the mortgage of fear and anxiety so that he finds freedom of spirit without which it will not solve any of the problems that face the
modern consciousness.
This is what the men of my generation understood, and that the crisis
before which they are found and where they are. And we should resolve it with the values
we have, that is to say, with nothing but the consciousness of our absurd lives.
Thus we had to enter the war without consolation and without certainty. We knew
only that we could not surrender to the beasts that rose across Europe.
But we did not know justify this requirement other than to simply oppose them. Moreover, even those most self aware found they still had no thought in principle that could them allow to oppose terror and to disavow the murder.
For if one believes in nothing, because if nothing makes sense and if we can not say no value,
then everything is permitted and nothing matters.
So if there is no good or evil, then what Hitler did was not wrong, nor unreasonable. You can spend the lives of millions of innocent people in the crematorium as surely as one can devote oneself to
care for lepers. One can rip the ears with one hand, and heal with the other. We can perform housework before the tortured bound in chairs. And we might as well honor the dead thrown in
trash cans.
All this is equivalent.
And since we thought that nothing has meaning, it must be concluded that right means success, power and success make right. And it's
so true that even today a lot of smart, skeptical people say that if Hitler had won the war, history would have honored him as right and the atrocious pedestal on which he was perched. We cannot doubt the truth that History
as we understand it, Mr. Hitler justified in his terror and murder as we
the dedicated majority justified, we dare to think that nothing else than that makes sense.
Some
among us, it is true, believed that in the absence of any higher value, at least believe History had meaning. In all cases, they often acted as if this is what they thought.
They said that this war was necessary because it would liquidate the era of
nationalism and end the time of empires. That after conflicts would come Universal Society and Paradise on earth.
But thinking about it, they came to the same result as if they had thought nothing at all had meaning.
For if history means anything, it must make sense or it is nothing. Those men
thought and acted as if history obeyed a sovereign dialectic and as if we
were heading together towards a final goal.
They thought and acted according to the detestable
principle of Hegel: "Man is made to history and not the history for man. "
In truth,
all political realism and moral guidance of this last war pointed towards a World Destined obeyed, often without
knowledge, a philosophy of history in German, that humanity is heading
by rational ways towards a definitive Universe. Nihilism was replaced by absolute rationalism and in both cases the results are the same.
For if it is true that history follows a
logic sovereign and fatal, if it is true according to the same philosophy as the German feudal state
must inevitably succeed the anarchic state and nation to feudalism and empires to
nations to finally arrive at the Universal Company, then all that is good is that fatal march
and achievements in history are the definitive truths.
And as these achievements can not be served by ordinary means, but through wars, intrigues and individual and collective murders, not all acts are justified in
that they are good or bad, but whether they are effective or not.
And so it was that in the world today men of my generation were delivered during
years to the double temptation to think that nothing is real or think that power alone is true, abandoning all historical inevitability. Thus, many succumbed to either of these
temptations.
And this is how the world comes to the will to power, and that is to say Finally, to terror.
For if nothing is true or false, if nothing is good or bad, and the only value is efficiency, while
the rule should be: power belongs to the most effective, to the strongest.
The world is no longer shared
by just men or unrighteous men, but made of masters and slaves. Whoever is right are those in power, those that enslave.
The housemaid was right about the tortured. The German officers who torture and the SS turned into gravediggers became the reasonable men of this new
world.
Look at the things around you and see if even now it's not true.
We are caught in the nodes of violence and we stifle it. Whether inside
nations or the world, distrust, resentment, greed, and the race for power are
busy making a dark and desperate world where every man is forced to live in
the present, the only word of "future" in him means anguish, comes to abstract powers that emaciate and brutalize his hurried life; his existence is separated from natural truths, wise and simple recreation and happiness.
Perhaps after all, in this still happy America, you would not do this or allow this wrong. But the men I speak of, they saw this for years, still feel a sickness in their flesh, read it still on the faces of those they love. From the depth of their hearts still afflicted rises
now a terrible revolt that eventually sweeps everything away. The monstrous memories still haunt them, but they
too deeply experienced the horror of those years to agree to continue it.
It's here that
begins for them this real problem.
It is not enough to know the disease. We must heal. How then do we heal, what immediate remedies could we apply to our hurt?
If our analysis [is] just, what are the characteristics of this crisis?
They are:
1) the will to power
2) terror
3) the replacement of the real man by political and historical man
4) the reign of abstractions and fatality
(despite Anatole France who had a short philosophy)
it is ideas that so industrially kill men today.
5) The loneliness without a future.
If we want to resolve this crisis, it is these characteristics that we must change, and our generation is faced with this immense problem with all its negatives. It is these
same denials that we drewthe strength to fight.
It was perfectly useless to say: we must
believe in God or Plato or Marx, precisely because we did not have that kind of faith. The
only question was whether we would accept a world where it was not possible to be
victim or executioner. And since we accepted neither, we fought. That is why we sought this reason even in our rebellion. Yet, wet were fighting not only for us but for something that was
common to all men. We understood that in a meaningless world, men and women at least could agree that human beings should not be tortured, ears torn, and sons killed before their mothers eyes. We understood that since
some of us were willing to die for this human community that valued human life and decency, that we had found at least one higher value than our personal lives and, therefore, at least one universal truth, one unity of solidarity.
Yes,
it was a shared belief that we had to oppose the world of murder. And that is why we had defended against murder, why we had to fight against
injustice, against slavery and terror, because these three things impose a reign of silence between men, raise barriers between them, obscure one from finding the other and prevents them from finding the only value that can save this hopeless world. This became the binding brotherhood of men in struggle against their fate.
We knew then what we had
get in front of this world torn by its crisis.
We must:
1) call things by their names and well realize that we kill millions
men every time we agree to think certain thoughts. We do not think badly because
that we are a murderer. We are murderers because we think wrong. Thus we can be a
murderer without ever apparently killed.
Thus, more or less, when our minds think wrong thoughts, we become murderers.
The first thing we must do is outright reject by thought and action any form of realistic and fatalistic thinking. It is the job of each of us.
2) The second thing to do is to decongest the world of terror that prevails and prevents us from thinking well. I am told that the United Nations
held in this city an important first session, we might suggest that the first narrative of this world organization should be to solemnly proclaim the abolition of the penalty death over the whole of the Universe. It is the job of governments.
3) The third thing to do is relegate politics back to its proper purpose, a secondary place. Politics does not exist to give the world a gospel or
political / moral catechism. The great evil of our time is precisely that policy
claims to bring us together, delivers a catechism, a complete philosophy and even
sometimes an art of love to the world to follow. Yet, the role of politics is to run society, not settle
our domestic problems and universal issues.
I do not know for me if there is an absolute. I know that growth of corn should not drive the political order. The absolute should be the concern of all, not just the few: it is everyone's business. All must
adjust their relations to each other so that everyone has the domestic leisure to question the absolute.
Our life belongs to others, we are linked, and it is fair to give it when needed.
But
our death belongs only to us.
And that's my definition of liberty. It's the work of the
legislators and constitution makers to run society so that we may accomplish these things before we die.
4) The fourth step is to research and create and promote positive values that will reconcile pessimistic thinking and an establish upbeat action. This is the
work philosophers.
5) The fifth step is to understand that this attitude comes
creating a universalism in which all men of good will can meet. It's the work
of all, not just the few. That's where we are at right now on our side. Was it worth going thru all this to achieve this simple realization? But after all, human history is often the history of our mistakes and what not what is good and true. The truth is probably like happiness, it is simple and it does not follow an ideal script.
Does this realization mean all problems are solved? No, of course not.
This world is
neither better nor more reasonable; we're still not out of the absurdity, but we
at least a reason to strive to change the world, a worthwhile reason that hitherto we were missing. The world would still be despairing if there were no men, but since there are men and
his passions, his dreams and his community, there is hope. We few in Europe hold a realistic and critically pessimistic view of the world yet still preserve a deep optimism in man.
We do not claim to escape
History, as we are in history. We claim only to fight for preservation of a history that part of man does not belong. I think I may well say, We always refuse to worship the évémement the fact, wealth, power, history
as it is and the world as it is. We want to see the human condition as it ideally is and could be, better.
And what it is, we already know. It is this awful condition that requires barrels of blood and centuries of history to achieve a perceptible change in the destiny of
men. This is the law. For years in the eighteenth century, the heads fell in France
like hail, the French Revolution burned in hearts full of excitement and terror.
Finally, at the beginning of the next century, this led to the replacement of the monarchy by a legitimate
constitutional monarchy. We French of the twentieth century know too well the terrible
law. There was the war, the occupation, the killings, the terrible prison walls, a Europe
disheveled pain and all for a few of them finally acquire two or
three positive inches of forward progress that would help lessen the despair. It is optimism here that would be a scandal.
We
know that those of them who are now dead were the best for their sacrifice. We who are still alive, we
are alive only because we gave less than others.
That is why we continue to live in contradiction.
The only difference is, this generation can now join this contradiction with an immense hope in
the man.
This generation thinks, in short, one who hopes in the human condition is a
crazy and he who despairs of events is a coward. We refuse absolute explanations and
the reign of political philosophies, but we want to affirm man in his flesh and in his
effort to achieve freedom. We do not believe it is possible to achieve universal happiness and satisfaction, but we believe it is possible to reduce the pain of men. This is because the world
is unhappy in its essence, and we must do something to bring happiness. It is because of injustice that we must work for justice. Finally, because all life is absurd, we must give it meaning and reason to continue.
What does all this mean? This means being humble in our thoughts, take action, do our job. It means we all have to create, outside of parties and governments, reflections of communities. Communities that begin dialogue across nations; people who argue with
their lives and speech that the world must stop being that of police, soldiers and money
to become one of the man and woman of fruitful work and thoughtful leisure.
I think we should direct our efforts, our thinking, and if necessary, our
sacrifice to these ends.
The decadence of the Greek world began with the murder of Socrates. They have killed madly Socrates' in Europe recently. This indicates
only the Socratic spirit of indulgence towards others and discipline towards oneself is
dangerous to murderous civilizations.
It is the only indication that this spirit can
regenerate the world. Other efforts, admirable as they are, applying power and domination to direct power and domination,
can only mutilate man more seriously. In any case, this is the revolution we French and Europeans are living right now.
Perhaps you have been surprised that unlike other French writers officially came to America and felt obliged to present a rosy picture of their country, I have not made efforts in the direction of what is called propaganda. But maybe
reflecting on the problem we posed in front of you made it appear more natural. The purpose of propaganda, I guess, is to provoke feelings that people do not have. But the French who have shared our experience seek to show reality or complain. The only national problem that they are not asked about does not depend on the opinion of the world.
It came to us for five years whether we
could save our honor, that is to say retain the right to speak for us the day after
the war. And this law, we did not need to recognize. This was not easy, but eventually, if we recognized this right,
it is because we know and are known only to the true extent of our sacrifices.
But this right does not give us the right to give lessons.
It is only right to escape humiliating silence of those who were beaten and beaten for too long despised
the man. Beyond that, I beg you to believe that we will keep our place. There is some chance
for this story of France will impact other nations in the next fifty years. And from this point of view, this nation that has lost 1 million and 620 thousand men twenty-five
years ago in WWI, and lost hundreds of thousands of volunteers in WWII, must recognize it
perhaps abused its own forces. This is a fact. The opinion of the world, its consideration or disdain cannot change this. This is why it seems ludicrous to solicit or
to convince the public otherwise.
But it does not seem ridiculous or futile to point to this view how the
crisis of the world depends precisely on these quarrels of precedence and power.
To summarize the debate tonight and speaking for the first time on my own behalf, I
would like to say only this:
whenever it is judged from France or other countries, or
any other matter in terms of power, we remind the world again of this conception of man which led to its dismemberment, and that this will always strengthen the thirst for domination. Ultimately, it brings about murder. Everything enters into the world as ideas. Those who say or write that the end justifies the means, and the one who says and writes that greatness is judged by
strength, the same is liable for absolutely hideous piles of crimes that mar
contemporary Europe. Essentially, that is the whole meaning of what we have thought to say. And it was,
indeed, a duty for all of us, I suppose, to stay true to the voice and experience of our European comrades so that you will not be tempted to judge too quickly.
We should never take the deadly ideas of just one man, but should look to all nations with the hope and certainty of
finding human truth that each of them contains.
With particular regard to American youth who are listening tonight, the men we talked about respect humanity in you and taste
freedom and happiness which I read on the faces of great Americans. Yes, they expect of you
what they expect of all men of good will, a fair contribution to the spirit of
dialogue they want to establish in the world.
We only have one word to say about it: do not reject the hand that extends to you. Our struggles, hopes and claims seen from a distance, look perhaps confused or
futile. And it is true that there is one path of wisdom and truth, these men dI'd not chose the right path and the simplest. In the world of history
they offered nothing of law and simplicity. The secret they could not find in their condition, they
tried to forge with their own hands. And they will fail, perhaps, but my belief is that
their failure will be shared in the world. In a Europe still poisoned by violence and
deaf hatred in this world torn by terror, they attempt to preserve the man that can
still be. And this is their only ambition. Of our latest effort in France and it's bexpression, we give you this evening a faint idea: the passion and justice that animates all the French, our only consolation and my simple pride.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaFZJ_ymueA
