The Rebirth

By Jack Schauer

It is Paris 2005. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and a Catholic priest by the name of Farther Brody have survived into older age. They are debating past and current trends in philosophy as they meet in a number of coffeehouses and night clubs throughout Paris. They are also tracing historical philosophy back to its roots within the present pers

• Language: English
• Publisher: Go To Publish
• Release date: Jan 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781647496456

Jack Schauer

Jack Schauer is an author and singer-songwriter who as written four books and created and produced four CDs. He is also President of Angels of the Muse, a nonprofit organization which provides music to underserved populations within the Fargo-Moorhead community area of North Dakota and Minnesota.

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Prelude

As both friends and colleagues in post–World War II France, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Pascal Pia belonged to a group of writers referred to then, as well as now, as existentialists However, Camus, as far back as 1938, had criticized Sartre’s existentialist thought as one in which, although the individual has the freedom to refine him or herself through authentic action by absolutizing this freedom, as in the case of Marxist socialism, Sartre’s absurd characters were essentially giving up; instead of struggling for dignity within the present, they were sacrificing that freedom for a transcendent hope of a Communist state in the future. Anyway, Camus did not consider himself an existentialist, owing to his later views and, in turn, intense feelings of anti-communism with which the French existentialists, such as Sartre, strongly identi fied with.

However, there were similarities between Sartre and Camus back in 1938. They both shared the basic belief regarding the injustice of life visa vis the individual, and thus, in turn, shared a common historical situation. Both menfaced a similar historical and existential perspective in terms of the Nazi threat and the coming of a new world war leading to the defeat of France and, thus in turn, sharing a return to consciousness by which people could be liberated by taking control of their lives. It was a matter of demystification. Camus’s journalistic friend Pascal Pia, not a philosopher but having fought on the republican side in the Spanish Civil War, had always been somewhat critical of Camus for not having a more active stand in the political struggle to defeat Franco’s right-wing nationalism. However, as was the case of being rejected by the army in World War II because of his tuberculosis, he also did not have the necessary strength to take part in the Spanish Civil War.

However, during the occupation of France—when Pascal Pia managed the resistance paper, Combat, and Camus served as editor-in-chief—they had worked closely together, and thus, they had a deep admiration and fondness for one another. Pascal was very much a practical man who was not given to deep emotion. Camus, who saw himself as a writer and journalist who should express the objective truth, believed that it was a mistake for writers to be influenced by their moods. Although Camus was often criticized by his fellow leftist intellectuals as being overly moralistic, Mauriac, the Christian writer, frequently exasperated Camus with his Christian sense of moralism. In addition, Camus was deeply criticized by Sartre and his crowd of French Marxist Communists as being overly moralistic in tone and a bit of a stubborn humanist. For example, after Paris was liberated by the Allies in 1944, a process of purification began to take place in which former Nazi collaborators were rounded up and jailed to be eventually put on trial. Mauriac’s position was that these collaborators should be freed since he felt that divine justice would eventually have its day. Camus, on the other hand, believed that there could only be human justice and that divine justice (also being an agnostic) was simply under the conditions of post-liberated Paris. However, later Camus took a staunch stand against the death penalty, and he frequently wrote letters on behalf of prisoners condemned to death whether in France or in Algeria. Camus recalled how his father had gone to an execution by guillotine, believing that the criminal deserved to die, and then arriving back home, his father had become sick to his stomach and thereafter would never attend another execution.

In 1956, with the crisis for an independent Algeria heating up, Sartre had criticized Camus for not having taken a more active political role in the struggle to accomplish this. However, Camus never supported an independent Algeria, and he was more inclined to believe that France and Algeria should try to work out their differences. For example, Camus believed that the Muslim population within Algeria should be adequately addressed by France so that all foreign populations in Algeria should be given the freedom to become an equal partner in serving both Frenchmen and Algerians. Sartre was, at that time, still committed to communist ideology: the worldwide worker’s revolution which he saw as the best hope for third-world countries in Africa and in South America in terms of gaining their independence. The civil war in Algeria was one of the main reasons why there had been such a public split in the friendship between Camus and Sartre. However, the deep personal split which occurred between these two friends actually began with Camus’s publication of The Rebel, which was deeply critical of Marxist Communism and its adherence to a totalitarian state. Sartre, as the main spokesman for French Communism, could never support Camus for his attack against Russian totalitarianism.

Camus, in relation to Algeria, felt strongly that ideologies of whatever kind are bound to end in destructive criticism. Instead, Camus felt that the best way for the French and Algerians to come to some agreement was to find common ground, such as in a humanitarian thrust which, while uniting them, would not force each side to give up their strongly held convictions. Essentially, Camus—while wanting Frenchmen and Algerians, as well as Arabs, to live peacefully side by side in a liberated Algeria—also had his heart set on Algeria retaining close ties with France. It was obviously somewhat of an anachronism, which would haunt Camus later in terms of his relations with Sartre. Thus, many on the left and the extreme right began to consider Camus somewhat of a colonialist, a label he was unable to shake with many leftist intellectuals before his death.

Estranged since the 1950s and 1960s, it wasn’t until after the new millennium that these three men were able to come to some sort of reconciliation in terms of renewing their earlier friendship. Old age—they were now in their late eighties and early nineties—had softened their more serious sides, and all three loved to get together and chat about old times, as well as ponder current international issues.

1

As a youth growing up in Algeria, Camus had especially loved the sea. Perhaps, when he wrote about Meursault, his protagonist in his novel, The Stranger , he was perhaps thinking of himself. Like Meursault, as a youth, he had lived for sensual pleasure, not given to thinking about the future in terms of a religious or political utopia. Like Meursault, Camus had conceived himself as more of a pre-Christian pagan with pagan desires and hopes. Having spent part of his youth in Oran, Algeria, along the northern African seacoast, he and his friends enjoyed spending many wild afternoons swimming in the ocean and playing in the sand. Now in 2002, Camus would often nostalgically recall those sensual memories of the past: the pretty face of his girlfriend, swimming side by side, naked in the warm glow of the afternoon sun enveloping one another as they dove further down and rising to the surface, their bodies suddenly renewed and fulfilled. However, he knew that whatever age one is one should always try to concern oneself with t he future.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Albert became more obsessed with his notion, as espoused in The Rebel, that as soon as man begins to act, whether through a revolt or rebellion, he cannot help committing murder. During the occupation of Paris, while Camus was editor-in-chief of Combat, he began formulating his philosophical position of revolt. From his experience during the occupation, a revolt was the natural instinct he and many of his resistance compatriots felt in the wake of Nazi atrocities, in which many of their good friends were murdered. It was only after the liberation that Camus began to become more philosophical in leading a revolt to its natural end, or course, that being revolution and the death of innocence. In fact, as Camus believed, since man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is, the problem then becomes one of knowing whether all rebellion inevitably leads to revolution or self-destruction, or else, whether a rebellion must end in the justification of universal murder.

In complete agreement with his critical biographer, David Sprintzen, Camus’s thesis was that, in the post-enlightenment world, people no longer believe in God and, having lost faith in the Christian transcendent ethic, turned instead to history for salvation. Since any divine vertical transcendence was not possible, people chose to live with an absolute horizontal transcendence, which would lead to the promise of the end of history, by which all suffering of this life would be overcome; values take on a kind of a gauge of efficacy; suddenly, the end justifies the means, any means. And that was another personal anachronism for Camus. He would frequently recall over coffee with his three friends, Pascal, Sartre, and Father Brody how eager most of them were to sentence the Nazi collaborationists to death just after the liberation. In addition, while Father Brody could understand the strong feelings of Pascal and Sartre in taking revenge against the Nazis, he tended to agree with Francis Mauriac, that questions like these should be left to God or divine justice in terms of finding a just solution. However, since Pascal and Sartre were still agnostics, they felt justice could only be meted out in the present, although Camus would have agreed with this in the past, now that he had the faith of a Christian Catholic, he now agreed with Father Brody.

But that was over a half century ago. And many events had changed Camus’s strongly held beliefs with respect to a Christian transcendent ethic. He would often find himself thinking about and citing Kierkegaard—that life has a way of driving an individual down to their knees, and man is forced to reckon with not only the evil within himself but the meaninglessness of his human condition, which only a transcendent ethic can make sense of. In a postmodernist era in which many diverse religious experiences began popping up, Camus, lost like many other intellectuals, suddenly found a renewed sense of purpose and universal truth in the faith of Christian Catholicism. Camus, in considering his life before the tragic car crash and his subsequent desire to become a Catholic had, in fact, saved himself from committing suicide. In addition, Camus had befriended a local Catholic priest, Father Brody, who seemed to enjoy talking about philosophy as well as existential and religious matters. It was only a short connection, and Father Brody became friends with Pascal Pia and Sartre. However, Father Brody also had his own demons to deal with; he had been in treatment for alcoholism and now was trying to make a good go of it. As a member of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), Father Brody was not so interested in discussions of a philosophical perspective but was trying to keep his life much simpler by taking it one day at a time.

Father Brody was also a Frenchman who grew up and lived in Montreal, Canada. Like Camus, he had been a soccer player, but perhaps unlike Camus, he hadn’t learned his system of ethics in soccer competition but through his deep belief in a kind of Catholic brotherhood and, in turn, sense of religious mysticism. He often thought to himself that, if he could not handle the pressure of being a priest in charge of a parish, he might become a monk, perhaps a Jesuit or else a Trappist monk. Although Father Brody felt relaxed in the company of Pia, Camus, and Sartre, he recalled his last binge, having started while sharing drinks of tequila in Sartre’s apartment. Although after falling off the wagon more than a year ago, he was able to maintain his religious status as a deeply intelligent, compassionate, and successful priest deeply devoted to the Catholic faith. However, he did not like to play the role of the judge with his friends, Camus, Pia, and Sartre; and thus whenever the topic of innocence and judgment and morality came up, he felt more attuned to maintaining his silence unless, of course, it was something which might provoke him to personal protest, and thus, he also understood Camus’s philosophy of rebellion in Camus’s book, The Rebel. That is, Father Brody understood the underlying existential reasons for a revolt and rebellion, but since he had greater faith in the transcendent ethic in Catholicism, again he felt most comfortable in maintaining a kind of objective sense of silence. Perhaps, as Camus often stated, Father Brody thought, he was maintaining his indifference to the apparent silence of the universe. However, Father Brody, thought to himself, Pia and Sartre were still agnostics, just as Camus had been before his spiritual transformation after the car crash.

Now, Camus, Pia, Sartre, as well as on most occasions, Father Brody, would often meet in several nightclubs and coffeehouses in the Saint-Germain area of Paris. At the end of a very long day of working in July of 2005, this small group of comrades began dwelling on an earlier conversation they had had with Sartre in the Café de Flore, a nightclub Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Camus had met regularly in, in earlier times, the four of them sitting around a small table near the stage. The question of America’s preemptive strike on Iraq suddenly came up again, a topic which none of them had been able to reconcile. They all considered themselves liberals, leftist libertarianism, with the exception of Sartre, who still maintained his strong beliefs in Marxist Communism.

Sartre began by stating the obvious, in relation to Camus, many years ago, that any political ideology, including democracy, cannot accept criticism from the outside. But that doesn’t imply that one should become a pacifist.

Well, countered Camus, "I’ve always been somewhat of a libertarian with respect to my politics . . . I recall in the late 1940s when the Cold War was just heating up, I resolved that both the United States and the Soviet Union were equal threats to peace. While it is true that the Americans did not have concentration camps or gulags like the Soviets did, on the other hand, their love of technology over humanity