Lessons from Camus' The Plague: or, Doing one's duty in the present moment

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain at Tate Modern. [Public Domain, photo by David Shankbone, London].

The Plague by Albert Camus

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This literary work by Albert Camus might be rewarding if read simply as a novel. But to comprehend the work in the context of his philosophical "book-length essays", The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel (which I am yet to read), and his other famous novel, The Stranger, requires an understanding of Camus' philosophy of the absurd. While Camus refused the label of existentialist philosopher, it is clear that he develops a philosophy of the absurd in the three of the above works I have read thus far. 

I suspect that a reading of The Rebel and also Nuptials will provide further insight into his ideas, but much like reading Nietzsche, I think one could develop a sense of Camus' ideas no matter where one starts. I enjoy referring to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy when trying to comprehend philosophical works, but I follow Mortimer Adler's advice to read the work first, so as to form my own impression, before immersing myself in the interpretations of others'. This particular edition of the novel is helpful in that it contains an afterword, rather than an introduction, by the late Professor Tony Judt.

Whenever I think of absurdity, I tend to think of the Dada Movement. But the ridiculousness of Dada served the purpose of mocking the bourgeois, so it does not relate so much to the absurd in the philosophical sense as it does "absurd" in the sense of "ridiculous". What I gather from my reading is that the absurd relates to the absence of any meaning of life. It is irrational in that you cannot reach, by reason, the meaning of life other than that you live and then you die. 

There is an element of Nietzsche's "God is dead", too, in that Camus attacks religion, no, challenges religion, in its attempt to provide meaning to life (or the after-life). As the title suggests, this novel is a fictional story about the plague striking Oran, Algeria, and the lives of a group of men who are caught up by the inevitable quarantining of the city. In his afterword, Tony Judt tells of how Camus relied on his personal experience of Nazi-occupied France (Camus was a reluctant hero of the French Resistance) as a basis for his story, and how as soon as the tragedy is over, people simply pick up from where they left off and seem to forget the lessons learnt from the trauma.

Without giving too much of the plot away, nor the interesting use of the narrator, the non-religious protagonist simply does his duty. In doing so, we see a human Sisyphus at work. It probably didn't help being sick myself while reading this, and wondering if each time one of the pets scratched themselves I might be in for a dose of the plague, but like all of Camus' work I have read thus far, it leaves me with a strange sense of resignation. I was going to say hope, but this is where Camus disagreed with Sartre and the existentialists: he saw them as "deifying" the knowledge that there was no god (or God or gods), and turning existentialism into its own form of religion, much like the anti-religionist non-scientist science-lovers do on social media these days.

Something that strikes me with Camus is the absence of hope. If one doesn't like it, then one can always end it. And here I draw parallels with the Stoics. There is always that macabre option. But if we choose to live, we can only live for the present moment. What appears again and again in The Plague is a sense of duty. Not so much for a cause, but to do what one does because that is what one does. To live in the present moment, for the future is death, and the past is beyond our control.

Yet this doesn't mean we adopt a hedonistic approach to life, but rather that we do our duty, in accordance with our nature. Of course, these ideas are difficult to comprehend without a thorough reading of Camus, Nietzsche, and the Stoics; even so, it is still difficult to articulate the concept. Camus' use of the novel to explain these concepts is powerful, in that through metaphor, we can come to understand his non-philosophical philosophy.

Rather than attempting to find meaning in life (which is absurd because there is none), we can exist in the present moment and do our duty. And while this may sound nihilistic, there is a sense of peace one can gain by acknowledging that all we can control are our impressions of external events, and then how we react to the things we cannot control. As Camus observed in The Myth of Sisyphus (p. 64):

...integrity has no need of rules.

It would seem that there is some relation to Stoicism, in that personal decision and choice is a central theme. 

But that is just my take on it. If you would rather just read an excellent novel, then this is it. If, of course, you can not wonder about the absurdity of it all after reading it.

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I am convinced that Leo Sayer was channelling Nietzsche in 1974!

Leo Sayer in 1974. I say he was channelling Nietzsche! [Image via YouTube]

The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This work is where most of Nietzsche's ideas begin. The poetry was unexpected, even though poetry is "the gay science". I routinely reflect on La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, and The Gay Science follows a similar structure. Based on my own reading, I also see elements of Voltaire's style. La Rochefoucauld's influence on Nietzsche has been acknowledged by numerous scholars, such as Brendan Donnellan, but also to Voltaire. 

Writing in the New Republic, Jacob Soll includes Nietzsche as an extension of Voltaire in terms of the critique of religion, which interestingly extends into a critique of socialism. (In the Marxian tradition, religion is the "opiate of the masses".) Borrowing from Mortimer Adler, my approach to reading Nietzsche is to read it myself, and later to look toward critiques of his work, so I am pleased that my connections between La Rochefoucauld and Voltaire do not stray from the mark. Nevertheless, my comparison was based purely on Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique and La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, rather than an in-depth study of either. 

In many ways, Nietzsche sets out the work as a dictionary of his ideas, not so much in the style of aphorisms, but certainly as a form of developing his own ideas in the style of a list of definitions, ideas, critiques, and polemics. Having said that, Nietzsche points out so many things that remain relevant today, including working for the sake of work, the "non-voluntariness in forming opinions" in academia, and even Rousseau's idea (apparently Nietzsche disliked Rousseau's work) of experience being "dearly bought and hardly worth the cost", nationalism, and the idea that science is not rational but merely a form of metaphysics where we attempt to measure things that are for the most part immeasurable, just to name a few. I also noticed echoes of Nietzsche in the work of Anton Chekhov and Albert Camus. 

But to return to Jacob Soll, who suggests that, in the US, the Enlightenment has been more or less abandoned, provides an interesting counter-point to what routinely appears in political debates in Australia. For example, the Enlightenment is often reified as the benchmark for all things good, yet, much like the US, there seems to be a disconnect with the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. (Soll, in effect, includes Nietzsche as an extension of the Enlightenment heavy-weights.) What this indicates to me is a weakness in my own understanding based on the glossed-over ideas of the Enlightenment that are too often taken-for-granted. I need to read much more and not just the philosophers, and Nietzsche points out Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer (that "pedantic Englishman") as worthy of further critique. 

Rather than suggesting we do what the social sciences try to do now by emulating the natural sciences, Nietzsche suggests we should, in effect, refer to the social sciences as "the unnatural sciences". Which brings me to an interesting observation. The Delphic Oracle's motto, "Know thyself" is based on the idea that knowledge (as Nietzsche suggests) is simply about attaching something we do not know to something we already know. So rather than seeking to understand, we seek to know. This subtle yet powerful difference seems to link to the Dionysian approach that Nietzsche develops in his later works. In many ways, it is also a critique of the natural sciences, especially Newton ("If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of giants"). In the current era, everything must be measured or it is not valued (and to quote Galileo, "Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so" - see also the Canadian designer, Bruce Mau). 

Nietzsche provides one of the best critiques of these ideas, and in ways I would never have dreamt of in a lifetime of thinking. He also has his usual go at Aristotle, Socrates, the Stoics, yet seems to agree with Epicurus, and introduces Zarathustra, but I think I have only seen the tip of the iceberg. I intend to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra for my next Nietzsche reading, but I can only imagine how much I am missing as I have not the complete grasp (is it even possible?) of the many influences that Nietzsche draws on. 

It would seem logical that to read Nietzsche, one might begin at the beginning and work through in chronological order. Then again, I would have lost so much had I read this book early on, as many of Nietzsche's ideas remain largely undeveloped, at least in terms of how he converses with the reader. Interestingly, Nietzsche suggests that we only know something when we are able to discuss it. But this is simply the herd instinct monopolising our intellect. If we seek rather to understand than to "know", we may well not be able to communicate it at all. 

I think this is what Nietzsche captures best in this work, and I would hazard a guess that his poems pick up on this theme, and his epilogue (mirrored in the final poem) invites us to "dance". It doesn't matter if you do not understand the Minstrel, but the more you can hear the music and the melody, so much better can you... dance. I can dance!

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Theodore Roosevelt: An Exemplification of the Golden Mean of Virtue

George Street, Sydney, decorated for the visit of the US "Great White Fleet", 1908. State Archives and Records  NSW [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia.

The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt by Theodore Roosevelt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This autobiography is a mini-tome. Reading it from the perspective of a foreigner means I comment disinterestedly on the work of one of the US Presidents who was immortalised in Mount Rushmore. I have read Theodore Roosevelt's The Strenuous Life, and while I enjoyed reading it, I was surprised by the rather cumbersome writing style of a man who allegedly read tens of thousands of books. Maybe speed-reading (for which Roosevelt was apparently famous) doesn't help with writing? 

There was so much of the man, speaking plainly and as one might expect a politician to write one's memoirs, but I felt the endless ebb and flow of agreement and disagreement, while the numerous letters included as annexes to the chapters read something like following President Trump's Twitter feed. Justifications and defences and sharing text of his earlier and others' letters - all the things one might expect a president to do. 

While reading this book, I completed a humanitarian training course that enabled me to use some of my long underutilised military skills. During the course, I found myself using these skills but with the opposite purpose. Indeed, if I did the exact opposite of my military training, it would invariably be the right decision in the humanitarian sphere. This had me thinking about Aristotle's "golden mean" of virtue, at the precise time I was reading about Theodore Roosevelt's idea of courage. 

Roosevelt, for example, stayed away from bars and other trouble spots, preferring to respond decisively to unexpected challenges to one's safety or dignity only as a last resort, rather than go looking for trouble. He wore glasses, and as a "cowboy", he had to work doubly hard to earn the respect of the men he worked with. All of this follows closely the idea of the golden mean. Brave, but not cowardly or reckless. (Roosevelt was awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts in leading "Roosevelt's Rough Riders" during the Spanish American War; dealing with the police corruption, corporate and political corruption, not to mention the Philippines, the Panama Canal, Russia and Japan and so on.) 

Roosevelt appears to have ever been in the right place at the right time, especially in being awarded the Medal of Honor (he was only four months away at war); to become President (he became President in the first instance after William McKinley was assassinated); and to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

His achievements were remarkable. I did not know the extent he had played in bringing about modern corporations and competition laws. The Sherman Antitrust Act came into being in 1890 but by Roosevelt's time it was hardly having the desired impact. All sorts of modern checks and balances we now take for granted in liberal democracies were simply not happening. It would seem that Roosevelt's leadership in creating a governance culture made liberal democracy, in the American sense, to function at least somewhat fairly. 

The United States had been a wealthy, functioning democracy for at least four decades (from the time of the Civil War until Roosevelt's presidency). Yet we assume much poorer, less well governed, less educated countries can become functioning democracies in the space of a few years when the oldest liberal democracy in the early 1900s suffered from all of the corruption we see in poorer nations today. 

Roosevelt had the idealism of the times; a form of neo-conservatism tempered by a strong sense of moral purpose. He was tough with the corporations and the unions, but equally interested in prosperous businesses looking after workers - a form of "fair trade" that was unique for the times. I also found the references to Australia interesting, around the time of the "Great White Fleet" and its circumnavigation of the globe, visiting numerous ports throughout the world (including Sydney - pictured above) over a sixteen month period. 

I didn't have the "Team America" theme song playing in my head while I read this, but rather the thoughts and actions of a sober, intelligent man influencing my own thoughts and actions as I discovered, in the practical sense, the idea of the golden mean of virtue. 

My trepidation with reading Roosevelt is that many modern fans of his work talk up his manliness and courage. But having read the man's memoirs, I discovered a sensitive man (which appears obvious in his letters - I think Woodrow Wilson cut him a little too deeply) who was far from fake and far from superhuman, yet strong and of moral righteousness all the same. 

The book ends along with the end of his presidency, almost as if he was hoping to write more after he was re-elected. (Roosevelt was encouraged to stay on after his second term, as he had not been elected to the first term, nor had served two full terms, but he refused on principle.) And so the book ends with a few letters. No uplifting moral lesson, no standing ovation. And that was how he lived. 

If I am to take the Stoic's view, he lived a good life. Not the Disney-fied life we have come to expect from the popular media, but a real man doing real things for good. How times have changed.

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