Albert Camus (1913—1960) - Richard Curtis

with rigorous academic training, systematic thinking, logical consistency, and a coherent,
carefully defined doctrine or body of ideas.
This is not to suggest that Camus lacked ideas or to say that his thought cannot be
considered a personal philosophy. It is simply to point out that he was not a systematic, or
even a notably disciplined, thinker and that, unlike Heidegger and Sartre, for example, he
showed very little interest in metaphysics and ontology (which seems to be one of the
reasons he consistently denied that he was an existentialist). In short, he was not much
given to speculative philosophy or any kind of abstract theorizing. His thought is instead
nearly always related to current events (e.g., the Spanish War, revolt in Algeria) and is
consistently grounded in down-to-earth moral and political reality.
a. Background and Influences
Though he was baptized, raised, and educated as a Catholic and invariably respectful
towards the Church, Camus seems to have been a natural-born pagan who showed almost
no instinct whatsoever for belief in the supernatural. Even as a youth he was more of a
sun-worshipper and nature lover than a boy notable for his piety or religious faith. On the
other hand, there is no denying that Christian literature and philosophy served as an
important influence on his early thought and intellectual development. As a young high
school student Camus studied the Bible, read and savored the Spanish mystics St.
Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and was introduced to the thought of St.
Augustine (who would later serve as the subject of his baccalaureate dissertation and
become – as a fellow North African writer, quasi-existentialist, and conscientious
observer-critic of his own life – an important lifelong influence).
In college Camus absorbed Kierkegaard (who, after Augustine, was probably the single
greatest Christian influence on his thought). He also studied Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
(undoubtedly the two writers who did the most to set him on his own path of defiant
pessimism and atheism). Other notable influences include not only the major modern
philosophers from the academic curriculum – from Descartes and Spinoza to Bergson –
but also, and just as importantly, philosophical writers like Stendhal, Melville,
Dostoyevsky, and Kafka.
b. Development
The two earliest expressions of Camus’ personal philosophy are his works Betwixt and
Between (1937) and Nuptials (1938). Here he unfolds what is essentially a hedonistic,
indeed almost primitivistic, celebration of nature and the life of the senses. In the
Romantic poetic tradition of writers like Rilke and Wallace Stevens, he offers a forceful
rejection of all hereafters and an emphatic embrace of the here and now. There is no
salvation, he argues, no transcendence; there is only the enjoyment of consciousness and
natural being. One life, this life, is enough. Sky and sea, mountain and desert, have their
own beauty and magnificence and constitute a sufficient heaven.
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