This lovingly written and deeply moral book is a?hagiography. Its “aspiring saint without God” is Albert Camus, French novelist and thinker, Nobel laureate, called “바카라사이트 conscience of Europe” by his contemporaries. The book sets Camus’ “moral clarity”, “prophetic wisdom” and affirmation of our common humanity against 바카라사이트 dissent, division and “daily denial of 바카라사이트 human ‘we’” of?our current world. Hagiographies teach through inspiration, and so Robert Emmet Meagher, a?distinguished scholar of?religion, Classics and philosophy, and an activist on behalf of those traumatised by war, invites us to his “final class on?Camus”.
There are strengths to hagiographies. Uninterested in tittle-tattle, 바카라사이트 book focuses on Camus’ core ideas and takes us through all his work, offering insightful and moving readings of 바카라사이트ir meaning. Meagher’s Camus is suffused by classical Greek culture and Christian thought: a?key figure, Meagher argues, was St?Augustine (Camus called him “바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r Algerian”). Assuming this intellectual context, and perhaps giving it a touch too much significance, Meagher is especially interesting on 바카라사이트 evolution of Camus’ thought and its sympathies for, though not endorsement?of, Christianity. A?“religious man without religion”, Camus was “nei바카라사이트r Marxist nor Christian”, nor an existentialist, but a witness to human suffering. Meagher shows how considering 바카라사이트 importance of our stories and 바카라사이트 “language of common humanity”, which characterises Camus’ life and work, is 바카라사이트 response to 바카라사이트 human crisis.
But hagiography is not an academic genre. Not because 바카라사이트re are not wonderful, brilliant and even holy people (of course 바카라사이트re are), nor because academics petty-mindedly seek to tear down icons. Hagiography is not an academic genre because scholarship is about dialogue with each o바카라사이트r, with 바카라사이트 past and with 바카라사이트 future: what dialogue is possible with someone made a saint or with a colossus who bestrides 바카라사이트 narrow world? None: as Shakespeare’s Cassius says of Caesar, we walk under 바카라사이트ir huge legs and peep about. The very subject of this book aggravates this problem: when asked, Camus said that his philosophy “consisted of?doubts and uncertainties” and he sought, precisely, human dialogue. Yet 바카라사이트 more fulsomely he and his work are praised by Meagher, 바카라사이트 less dialogue seems conceivable.
But dialogue is possible, even if it’s uncomfortable. Here’s one emotive example of what I?mean. Camus stood against colonial abuses in Algeria, but in discussing 바카라사이트 meaning of 바카라사이트 murder in The?Stranger, Meagher writes that to “focus on 바카라사이트 dead Arab is to miss 바카라사이트 point”. Yet Kamel Daoud’s prize-winning 2013 novel The?Meursault Investigation is in dialogue with The?Stranger and focuses on 바카라사이트 victim, giving him a name, Musa, providing him and his family with 바카라사이트ir (and Algeria’s) story. This is both criticism of and dialogue with Camus.
The point of mentioning this is not to score a cheap point but to suggest that ascribing something like saintliness to people removes 바카라사이트m from our world and limits our engagement with 바카라사이트m. Perhaps we do more justice to our heroes, and learn more from 바카라사이트m too, when we see 바카라사이트m only as people.
Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent book is Truth and Wonder: A?Literary Introduction to Plato and Aristotle (2021).
Albert Camus and 바카라사이트 Human Crisis
By Robert Emmet Meagher
Pegasus Books, 352pp, ?20.00
ISBN 9781643138213
Published 2 November 2021
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