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the "human" and of the "individual." What makes Camus' discourse so
appealing in spite of its gaps is that he does not speak in terms of any
established pattern of ideas, such as "humanism," Christianity, or
existentialism. His language is that of a neophyte, a recent convert from
nihilism who would rediscover by himself, step by step, the elementary
norms of humanity. Lucid disillusionment and insistence on hope are so
consistently paired, in what he says, that it is difficult to weigh the one
against the other. He pleads the case of the "human" by the skin of his
teeth, as it were. Hence the terseness of his statements, even when their
scope is not clear. Hence, also, Camus' hold on his readers.
A serious analysis of the article, interviews, and public speeches,
collected in
Actuelles
would require little less than a history of France
from 1944 to 1948, the years during which Camus played an outstanding
role in French social life, if not directly in French politics, as an editor
of
Combat,
exercising an influence that cannot be evaluated in terms
of political effectiveness. What Camus and his friends wanted to accom–
plish by their journali tic activity was, in a time of yellow press, pre–
fabricated public opinion, and mass politics, to give an example of "critical
journalism," that is of a journalism aimed at the individual reader and
his reason rather than at the "public," which would hence try to satisfy
all the requirements of a truly cultural enterprise, from good writing
to objective reporting and dignified argument. In this, the founders
of the original
Combat
(the paper that continues to carry its masthead
has no longer anything in common with it), certainly succeeded. One
has to go far back in the history of French journalism to find a newspaper
of a comparable level. This, however, did not prevent the effort from
being shortlived, not on account of financial difficulties so much, as
of the intrinsically exceptional nature of the attempt itself. The "critical"
position taken by Camus, the journalist, implied either that the critical
attitude itself, that is the rejection of present political alternatives in the
name of cultural and human values, could become a powerful movement
of opinion, and eventually provoke a liberal revolution, and this was, of
course, contradictory; or (more likely) that the situation was hopeless,
and criticism had to be kept up indefinitely, as a kind of stoic defiance
to the course of contemporary history, and this was impossible.
Camus' political message is aptly condensed in the quotation from
Nietzsche that opens
Actuelles:
"It is better to perish than to hate and
to fear; it is better to perish twice than to make oneself hated and feared.
Such shall be one day the highest maxim of all politically organized
society."
The restoration of individual nobility does not, of course, constitute
