Education, Ethics and Existence

Camus and the Human Condition

Peter Roberts, Andrew Gibbons, Richard Heraud

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317527220
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Best known today for his novels, plays and short stories, but also an accomplished essayist, editor and journalist, Albert Camus was one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. He has gained widespread recognition for works such as The Stranger, Caligula, The Plague and Exile and the Kingdom. In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1960 he was killed in a car accident, aged just 46. Since Camus' untimely death, his work has been engaged by scholars in literature, politics, philosophy and many other fields.

This volume is one of the first book-length studies of Camus with a specifically educational focus. Camus' writings raise and address ethical and political questions that resonate strongly with current concerns and debates in educational theory, and the difficulties and dilemmas faced by his characters mirror those encountered by many teachers in school classrooms. This book will appeal to all who wish to consider the connections between education, ethics and the problem of human existence.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy & Theory.

Introduction: Camus and education

PETER ROBERTS^a, ANDREW GIBBONS^b & RICHARD HERAUD^c

^aCollege of Education, University of Canterbury; ^bSchool of Education, Auckland University of Technology; ^cFaculty of Education, University of Waikato

Born in 1913, Albert Camus was one of the most influential literary figures of the twentieth century. He grew up in Belcourt, a poor neighbourhood in Algeria. Camus was just over a year old when his father was killed in the First World War. He was raised by his mother, who survived on a widow’s pension and meagre wages from her work as a ‘domestic’, his grandmother, and other members of his extended family. Supported by a dedicated teacher, Louis Germain, the young Albert won a scholarship to attend secondary school in Algiers (Todd, 2000, p. 12). A bout of tuberculosis sharpened Camus’ awareness of his own mortality but he was able to complete his schooling, after which he attended the University of Algiers, where he studied philosophy (Todd, 2000, pp. 18, 27). He married Simone Hié, who was suffering from a drug addiction, in 1934, but this union was short lived. With financial pressures mounting, he completed a graduate diploma to qualify as a teacher in 1936. His literary interests still strong, Camus became immersed in the theatre, initially via the work of other artists. He joined the French Communist Party, but later in life would distance himself from Party orthodoxy, concerned at the dogmatism and lack of critique of human rights abuses among some of his former friends.

As a writer, Camus’ contributions were wide ranging. Best known today for his novels, plays and short stories, Camus was also an accomplished essayist and editor (see Camus, 1968, 1943/1991b, 1951/1991c, 1960/1995). He first made his mark as a journalist, reporting, for example, on the difficult conditions endured by the Kabyle tribes of Algeria, before moving to occupied France to help found the underground newspaper Combat (O’Brien, 1995). His anonymous editorials for Combat provided readers with the ‘most vigorous expression of their own feelings’ during the war years of 1943–44 (p. vi). Camus was an important part of the Resistance movement. At the same time, he was honing his craft as a novelist. He gained widespread recognition among the intelligent reading public in France for his first published novel, The stranger (Camus, 1942/1989). (This work has also appeared in English as The outsider.) His play Caligula (Camus, 1944/1958a) was also a success, and his first major work of non-fiction, The myth of Sisyphus (Camus, 1943/1991b) marked his arrival as a serious contributor to philosophical debate. Another play, The misunderstanding (Camus, 1944/1958c), was greeted less enthusiastically. In the postwar years, his reputation was further enhanced with the publication of his second novel, The plague (Camus, 1947/1960) and his play The just assassins (Camus, 1950/1958b).

Camus had formed a strong friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre, only to find, to his great distress, that this would turn sour as their political views—and particularly their respective stances on communism—diverged (Todd, 2000, pp. 306–310). The publication of The rebel, Camus’ ‘Essay on man in revolt’ (Camus, 1951/1991c), served as a catalyst for the break between these two leading intellectuals. Camus’ next novel, The fall (Camus, 1956/2000), arose from a period of crisis in his life. In addition to the tensions he now experienced with some on the French political left, his second marriage (to Francine) was under considerable strain, he was questioning the value of his work, and he was physically and mentally exhausted. His response was to begin writing some stories, and this is how The fall evolved. In the second half of the 1950s his theatrical work continued with adaptations of Dostoevsky and Faulkner for the stage. Exile and the kingdom, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1957 (Camus, 1957/1991a). In October of that year, Camus was informed that he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His initial response was one of genuine surprise; he felt the prize should go to André Malraux (Todd, 2000, p. 371). His next major project, a semi-autobiographical novel with a strong educational focus (later to be published as The first man: Camus, 1996), would never be completed. On 4 January 1960, Camus was killed in a car accident, aged just 46. (For further biographical details, see Bronner, 1999; Todd, 2000; Hawes, 2009; Zaretsky, 2010.)

In the decades following Camus’ untimely death, his work has been engaged by scholars in literature, politics, philosophy, theology, sociology, journalism and other fields. Among educationists, he has not been altogether ignored. Articles on Camus can be found in educational journals dating back to the 1960s (e.g. Denton, 1964; Oliver, 1973; Götz, 1987; Curzon-Hobson, 2003; Marshall, 2007a, 2007b; Weddington, 2007). It is more difficult, however, to locate book-length studies with an educational focus. This is somewhat surprising, for Camus’ corpus of published writings lends itself well to in-depth examination from an educational point of view. For philosophers of education in particular, Camus has much to offer. Both his fictional and his non-fictional writings raise and address ethical and political questions that resonate with current concerns and debates. The journey of self-discovery that young Jacques takes in The first man provides a classic example, even in its unfinished state, of the Bildungsroman as a literary genre. The Bildungsroman, well known to European readers, is less frequently discussed by educationists in Australasia, but its form—the novel of education as formation or development—provides an antidote to the narrower, technocratic conceptions of education that prevail today. The existential difficulties and dilemmas faced by characters such as Meursault, Rieux, Clamence, Daru and others mirror those encountered by many teachers in school classrooms. The points of principle that led to differences between Camus and Sartre find contemporary expression in arguments between Marxists and postmodernists in educational discourse. The famous opening line of The myth of Sisyphus—‘There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide’ (Camus, 1943/1991b, p. 3)—warrants ongoing reflection in countries such as New Zealand, where alarming numbers of young people take their own lives. There is a good deal more that could be said about the possibilities for educational and philosophical exploration in Camus’ work, but we hope these few points will suffice as encouragement to read further. As a novelist and a thinker, Camus is both accessible and profound. Like all writers, he was shaped by his circumstances and the problems of his time, but he can also speak to us in the twenty-first century in a manner that is insightful, challenging and rewarding.

This volume, to be published a century after Camus’ birth, appears in two different forms: first as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory and secondly as a stand-alone monograph. The monograph includes two additional articles by Peter Roberts that do not appear in the special issue: one on The fall; the other on ‘The guest’, a story from Exile and the kingdom. For both the special issue and the monograph, we have sought to produce a collection of essays that coheres around a set of related themes but does not pretend to present a unified picture of Camus and his significance for education. The aim has been to maintain a certain cohesiveness in focus and purpose, while also respecting our differences as authors. All of the essays address, either directly or indirectly, the problem of ‘existence’: the question of how we understand ourselves, give meaning to life and make our way in a seemingly absurd world. There is likewise a shared interest in ethical matters and their importance for education. Notions of difference, otherness and alienation figure prominently throughout. But each of us has interpreted Camus in distinctive ways in responding to these key concerns. For this reason, we have decided to retain our names as individual authors for each article. At the same time, it is recognized that the ideas expressed in the articles have also been prompted, tested and transformed through our many conversations with each other about Camus over recent years.

This collection of essays is not intended to cover all aspects of Camus’ oeuvre. We have, for example, said relatively little about The rebel and the educational implications of Camus’ political thought; nor have we commented at length on Camus’ aesthetics or his impressive body of journalistic work. But in its monograph form, the collection addresses each of the novels Camus himself authorized for publication—The stranger, The plague and The fall—together with The first man and A happy death. We also tackle one play (The misunderstanding) and one short story (‘The guest’). The essays included here have been ordered more or less on the basis of the text(s) under consideration, with those focused on Camus’ earliest writings appearing first and those concerned with later works appearing last. Decisions about English translations have rested with the author of each individual article.

The contributions by Andrew Gibbons can be separated into two pairs of interconnected articles that open space for critical analysis of contemporary manifestations of education institutions and teaching and learning relationships. In the pair ‘Beyond education: Meursault and being ordinary’ and ‘Like a stone: A happy death and the search for knowledge’, Gibbons juxtaposes the lives of Meursault and Patrice Mersault, questioning the purpose of learning in relation to the politics of education, in the case of the ways in which a society is seen to respond to ‘the stranger’ (in the novel of that name), and the individual’s search for enlightenment, in A happy death. The relationship between the two characters across these novels is explored in terms of the assumptions that might be made about the nature of life as an educational journey. For the existential hero Meursault, assumptions are challenged by his less than ordinary ways of responding to: his mother’s death, his relationships, and then ultimately the possibility of saving of his own life. Meursault’s failure to intervene in his own life challenges both the ways in which we are ordinarily educated and the ways in which we ordinarily resist our education. This first article contributes to the critique of schooling as a disciplinary mechanism, and looks beyond this critique to the possibilities and challenges of resistance in more or less normal ways.

In the posthumously published, and arguably incomplete, A happy death, Camus develops a thoroughly different yet very recognizable character. He shares, with Meursault, Camus’ love of the world; however, he is unwilling to let this love wash over him, like a stone, and hence embarks on a journey to find his happiness: the world must be conquered by the will of a young man. Unlike his ‘brother’, this Patrice Mersault is not an outsider. In this second article the wider educational theme of the search for enlightenment is considered in relation to themes of childhood, happiness, time and death. Mersault’s search is considered in relation to other stories of the search for some great human storyline, and the possibilities of relaxing into a different kind of willing being.

The stranger, as examined by Richard Heraud in his article, is described by Camus as having a zero point; humankind’s predicament is conceived of as being without hope or cause for nostalgia. What separates this text from Camus’ philosophical tract, The myth of Sisyphus, is that Meursault, the protagonist of The stranger, suffers for his ideas, while in The myth of Sisyphus, it is Camus, the author, who must suffer for his ideas. The action and speech of both works are enframed by the supposition that there is no life after death, that one cannot believe in God and that one must act in full knowledge of the absurd fact that what one wants and how things are, are themselves incommensurable facts of one’s existence. Each man responds to this disjunction and its absurd affirmation in distinctive ways.

In Meursault’s case, it is a conscious acceptance of his situation that borders on indifference and a determination to restrict himself to the mere pleasure of the habits that his existence involves. Camus achieves this effect by delimiting the nature of Meursault’s character such that consciousness is taken up with the circumstances of his existence; or at least what Meursault thinks these circumstances are. In this event, consciousness does not imply a need to respond to the gulf that separates what Meursault wants for himself and how the world presents itself to him. The absurdity remains. In The myth of Sisyphus, Camus conceptualizes the role for thought in a more expansive manner. Here, he casts the problem of existence, which must be lived without a belief in God, as one that must be responded to with the question that seeks a positive truth in relation to whether or not life has value. Camus concludes that our answer can be neither philosophical suicide nor suicide itself, but must be a gesture of revolt. This revolt involves both an embrace of the incongruity that produces the absurdity of his need not being met by a reasonable explanation and a defiant gesture that leaps for a positive truth via his pursuit of adventures of consciousness.

The stranger speaks to a problem in education through the manner in which the reader is asked to empathize with a character who refuses to ask questions of himself and his world. How would one teach a student who presumed such indifference? Would there be anything to teach? The myth of Sisyphus, while a philosophical tract, is also a work of art and, as such, beckons to the reader’s capacity to understand his or her situation as a philosophical situation and one for which there is not a systematic approach: an exceptional response is always required. Camus presents a challenge to education in the ways that it is contemporaneously conceptualized—as a unique capitalist enterprise—in that he alludes to the idea that we might need to suspend our focus on the outcome, the consequences of which we cannot know, if we are to explore the nature of the positive truth that can be found in the question of whether life has any value.

Camus’ involvement with the theatre is an often neglected element of his literary life. Of his own plays, perhaps the most troubling and thought provoking is The misunderstanding. An attempt to reconstruct classical tragedy in modern form, The misunderstanding concerns a man who, after two decades abroad, returns to his homeland and is killed by his mother and sister (who do not recognize him). Peter Roberts analyses the play in the light of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. Focusing on the theme of communication, Roberts draws a comparison between the forms of misunderstanding evident in Camus’ play and those characteristic of educational environments such...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• 1. Introduction: Camus and education
• 2. Like a Stone: A happy death and the search for knowledge
• 3. Beyond Education: Meursault and being ordinary
• 4. The Stranger: Adventures at zero point
• 5. Education and the Face of the Other: Levinas, Camus and (mis)understanding
• 6. The Teaching of Tragedy: Narrative and education
• 7. Tragedy and Teaching: The education of narrative
• 8. Bridging Literary and Philosophical Genres: Judgement, reflection and education in Camus’ The Fall
• 9. Teaching, Learning and Ethical Dilemmas: Lessons from Albert Camus
• 10. Acceptance, Resistance and Educational Transformation: A Taoist reading of The first man
• Index