|
|
Throughout his life’s work, Albert Camus made use of metaphorical distinctions to emphasize the general themes of his writings. These metaphors emerged at a relevant moment in history in which they connected Camus’s own experience with historical circumstances. Camus’s ideas were grounded in everyday living as he worked out the implications of the metaphor of the absurd. For example, Camus’s first cycle of work exploring absurdity includes the novel The Stranger, the philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, and the plays The Misunderstanding and Caligula. As Camus’s historical moment changed, he began working more explicitly with the metaphor of rebellion—leading to the publication of his second cycle of work, including the novel The Plague, the philosophical essay The Rebel, and the play The Just Assassins. This shift should not be viewed as a turning away from engaging absurdity but as a way of adding further nuance to his understanding of absurdity. Camus did not encourage an optimistic outlook that held unrealistic expectations for living. Arnett and Arneson wrote, “A wedding of hope and cynicism within a dialogic perspective is guided by a metaphor, not of unlimited potential, but of hope within limits” (25–26). When one willingly recognizes the limits of a given moment while at the same time attempting to respond ethically and productively, one is walking in the land of Martin Buber’s unity of contraries. This dialectical tension is “lived out in the confusion of contradictions, not in the certainty of yes or no” (Arnett and Arneson 142). Resignation and hope went hand in hand for Camus through his recognition that those who took action in the world were capable of great evil; nevertheless, he attempted to build a vision for the world that encouraged one to take action in spite of life’s absurdity. This tension keeps both elements (resignation and hope) healthy and provides limits within the optimism or unrealistic hope that many possess while engaging absurd circumstances.
The final lesson to be drawn from Camus’s work is that sometimes ideas are more important than relationships. Like the contributors to Communication Ethics in an Age of Diversity—a text that explores the implications of taking ethical action in the contemporary historical moment—Camus sought to “develop constructive responses to the