The Plague by Albert Camus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic.
As with all of Camus’s books, The Plague is a seamless blend of philosophy and art. The story tells of an outbreak of plague—bubonic and pneumonic—in the Algerian city of Oran. The narration tracks the crisis from beginning to end, noting the different psychological reactions of the townsfolk; and it must be said, now that we are living through a pandemic, that Camus is remarkably prescient in his portrayal a city under siege from infection. Compelling as the story is, however, I think its real power resides in its meaning as a parable of Camus’s philosophy.
Camus’s philosophy is usually called absurdism, and explained as a call to embrace the absurdity of existence. But this is not as simple as giving up church on Sundays. Absurdism is, indeed, incompatible with conventional religion. Camus makes this abundantly clear in his passage on the priest’s sermon—which argues that the plague is god’s punishment for our sins—an idea that Camus thinks incompatible with the randomness of the disaster: appearing out of nowhere, striking down children and adults alike. But absurdism is also incompatible with traditional humanism.
The best definition of humanism is perhaps Protagoras’s famous saying: “Man is the measure of all things.” In many respects this seems to be true. Gold is valuable because we value it; an elephant is big and a mouse is small relative to human size; and so on. However, on occasion, the universe throws something our way that is not made to man’s measure. A plague is a perfect example of this: an ancient organism, too small to see, which can colonize our bodies, causing sickness and death and shutting down conventional life as we know it. Whenever a natural disaster makes life impossible, we are reminded that, far from being the measure of all things, we exist at the mercy of an uncaring universe.
This idea is painful to contemplate. Nobody likes to feel powerless; and the idea that our suffering and striving do not, ultimately, mean anything is downright depressing. Understandably, most of us prefer to ignore this situation. And of course economies and societies invite us to do so—to focus on human needs, human goals, human values—to be, in short, humanists. But there are moments when the illusion fades, and it does not take a pandemic. A simple snowstorm can be enough. I remember watching snow fall out of an office window, creating a blanket of white that forced us to close early, go home, and stay put the next day. A little inclement weather is all it takes to make our plans seem small and irrelevant.
A plague, then, is an ideal situation for Camus to explore his philosophy. But absurdism does not merely consist in realizing that the universe is both omnipotent and indifferent. It also is a reaction to this realization. In this book, Camus is particularly interested in what it means to be moral in such a world. And he presents a model of heroism very different from that which we are used to. The humanist hero is one who is powerful and free—a person who could have easily chosen not to be a hero, but who chose to because of their goodness.
The hero of this story, Dr. Bernard Rieux, does not fit this mold. His heroism is far humbler and more modest: it is the heroism of “common decency,” of “doing my job.” For the truth is that Rieux and his fellows do not have much of a choice. Their backs are against the wall, leaving them only the choice to fight or give up. An absurdist hero is thus not making a choice between good and evil, but against a long and ultimately doomed fight against death—or death. It is far better, in Camus’s view, to take up the fight, since it is only in a direct confrontation with death that we become authentically alive.
You might even say that, for Camus, life itself is the only real ethical principle. This becomes apparent in the speech of Tarrou, Rieux’s friend, who is passionately against the death sentence. Capital punishment crystalizes the height of absurdist denial: decreeing that a human value system is more valid that the basic condition of existence, and that we have a right to rule when existence is warranted or not. To see the world with clear eyes means, for Camus, to see that life is something beyond any value system—just as the entire universe is. And the only meaningful ethical choice, for Camus, is whether one chooses to fight for life.
This book is brilliant because its lessons can be applied to a natural disaster, like a plague, or a human disaster, like the holocaust. Indeed, before the current pandemic, the book was normally read as a reaction to that all-too-human evil. In either case, our obligation is to fight for life. This means rejecting ideologies that decree when life is or is not warranted, it means not giving up or giving in, and it means, most of all, doing one’s job.
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I read a book about the history of evil. I thought it was interesting and I never really thought about it, but before the 20th century people considered natural acts as having an ethical component to them. Like a terrible storm would be evil, where rain after a drought would be good and of blessing. Where as with the modern era or the 20 century at least, only human acts have that kind of ethical component.
And it is alway interesting to me that Camus and the midearly 20th century existentialism really reflects that.
Personally I think those 20th century existentialists were really reacting to the only intellectual way that they had of coming upon the universe, which Foucault Really describes as “man” as being equivalent to a sort of “one-size-fits-all” meaning or definition of what man it is, as if man equals intelligence equals thought and those things identify a singular entity . The 20th century existentialists I think we’re really caught in that kind of modern religious moment and Camus Using Kierkegaard’s term of “absurd” in a particularly, I’ll say, uneducated or incomplete or truncated ability of reviewing Kierkegaard‘s philosophy. The early existentialists were really reacting to this absurd situation that they wanted to hang on to the singular idea of humanity, as a unitive and encompassing term for this group of creatures that we call humanity. They were not able to see outside of their trauma, really.
For what is absurd is to have a legitimate relation with the chaotic or seemingly random events of the universe such that there is no “random“ or “non-sensible” thing that occurs. What is absurd is only in reference to this modern idea of man that the so-called post structuralists then critique.
Thanks!
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Thanks for your comment! I can’t say I’ve read much on the post structuralists.
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Michelle Foucault. A book that pretty accessible it’s called “the order of things”. Maybe check that out? 👍🏾
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I suppose I’ll have to read some Foucault someday…
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The order of things. From what I remember, Is a critique on the idea that “man” ( as in ‘mankind’) is a constant of human being. In short, he shows how ‘man’ only came into being recently and has changed in its conception since it started.
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