Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, Albert Camus

Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism

Contents
Acknowledgments
Translator’s Introduction
Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism
Introduction
Chapter One Evangelical Christianity
Chapter Two Gnosis
Chapter Three Mystic Reason
Chapter Four Augustine
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my friend Bruce Ward, who first suggested this project to me several years ago. My translation is the fruit of his suggestion, and the latest installment in our ongoing (I will not say eternal) debate about the ancients and the moderns. Tracey Higgin’s careful reading of an earlier draft of this manuscript helped me refine my translation significantly and to appreciate the beauty and subtlety of the French language. Dr. Gérard Vallée of McMaster University was a great help in tracking down some of Camus’ more obscure ancient terms. He also taught me a thing or two about the nature of the translator’s art. Many thanks to my colleague at Laurentian University, Guy Chamberland, who gave generously of his time and talents in tracking down and translating several of Camus’ original Latin sources. Thanks go to Beverly Jarrett, director and editor-in-chief of the University of Missouri Press, whose support of my work has been constant and untiring. Thanks also go to Sara Davis and Julie Schorfheide for getting the manuscript into shape. Many thanks also to Mme. Catherine Camus for her encouragement of this project and her permission to reproduce Métaphysique chrétienne et néoplatonisme in English translation. Jerry Day has discussed with me or read nearly everything I have thought or written about Camus over the years. His good sense and his friendship are things that have counted for me. From Zdravko Planinc I learned how to read Camus. Thanks to him for a pedagogy that always left room for a second sailing and that wisely kept the important parts of the map blank. A very heartfelt thanks to Susan Srigley for her fine conversation, her constant encouragement, and for her gracious efforts to keep me in the game. Thanks also go to my mother, Joyce Srigley, for her support and for not quitting, even when the chips were down.

A special thanks to the boys, William and Elliott, who never cease to remind me that reading Camus in French is not much without summer basketball and evening swims at cheap-laugh rock. I reserve my deepest thanks for my partner, Kate Tilleczek. Her intelligent and thoughtful reading of this manuscript improved it immeasurably and gently encouraged me to see and describe things as they are—in life as in work. From subtropical coastal plains to the dizzying heights of the Athabasca Pass, I have seen with her rare and distant things, both high and low, and learned life’s most beautiful and enduring lessons.

 
Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism

Translator’s Introduction

In the fall of 1947, Albert Camus wrote in his Notebooks: “If, to outgrow nihilism, one must return to Christianity, one may well follow the impulse and outgrow Christianity in Hellenism.”1 A few years later, Camus restated the matter more forcefully and in a way that cleared up any lingering ambiguity about where the line should be drawn between the ancients and the moderns: “Go back to the passage from Hellenism to Christianity, the true and only turning point in history.”2

Camus acknowledges a difference between Christianity and modernity at the same time that he implicates Christianity in the modern project. He also makes it clear that for him the Greeks are the only genuine alternative in the West. They alone possess an account that is free of the limitations of both traditions. These bold claims indicate a direction in Camus’ thought that was first articulated and explored in Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism.

His proposed return to its subject matter alone is good evidence of its importance to his central philosophical project. Camus once said of Melville that he only ever wrote one book.3 I think the same can be said of Camus. At the heart of the mystery out of which that book was written and rewritten are the fundamental questions about human life that he first explored in Christian Metaphysics.

Camus wrote Christian Metaphysics in order to fulfil the thesis requirement for his diplôme d’études supérieures at the University of Algiers. A brief history of Camus’ education and his life at this time will help situate the text for contemporary readers.

1. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1942–1951,trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Paragon House, 1991), 183.
2. Ibid., 267.
3. Albert Camus, “Herman Melville,” in Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Philip Thody, trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy (New York: Knopf, 1968), 291. “But it seems to me (and this would deserve detailed development) that Melville never wrote anything but the same book, which he began again and again.”

In June of 1932, at the age of nineteen, Camus received his baccalauréat from the Grand Lycée.4 This is the European equivalent of a high school diploma. Jean Grenier, his principal instructor at the lycée, became an important intellectual influence on Camus in the early stages of his career and remained a close friend in later years. In mainland France, students who wished to pursue university degrees were required to complete two preparatory years of study before entering their programs. These were called the hypokhâgne and khâgne years, respectively. In Paris, completion of these years would normally lead to acceptance into the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and subsequently to a teaching position. The full range of such academic programs were not offered in the French colonies, however. In the case of Camus’ native Algeria, only the hypokhâgne year was available. Camus successfully completed his in 1933 and began his studies at the University of Algiers in the fall of the same year.

The program at the University of Algiers lasted three years and comprised two parts. Completion of the first two years of the program led to the licence de philosophie. Students were required to complete four certificats in different areas of specialization. The content of these areas was completely open. Each professor would select his own materials, and classes were small and operated more like advanced seminars than undergraduate lectures, with students making oral presentations followed by open discussions. Each certificat would culminate in a final examination. Camus’ chosen areas of specialization were as follows: certificat de morale et sociologie, certificat de psychologie, certificat des études littéraires classiques, and certificat de logique et philosophie générale. Camus successfully completed all his certificats by June 1935, well within the two-year limit specified by the program.

4. The following biographical remarks are gathered largely from Herbert R. Lottman’sand Oliver Todd’s excellent biographies of Camus. Herbert R. Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography (New York: George Braziller, 1981), 38–76. Oliver Todd, Albert Camus: A Life, trans. Benjamin Ivry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).

The third year of the program was taken up with the writing of a dissertation. Students who successfully completed this requirement received the diplôme d’études supérieures, which made them eligible to take the examinations for the agrégation. This important examination was the path to a teaching career in France or abroad, or to doctoral studies.5 Herbert Lottman claims that only a third of the students enrolled in the program managed to complete their diplôme, so given the circumstances it was no small achievement on Camus’s part. In North American terms, the diplôme is roughly the equivalent of a master’s degree.

Indications are that Camus fully intended to sit the examinations for the agrégation and to pursue a career in teaching as a means to support himself.6 He had come from a poor working-class family and so had no illusions about poverty, and he had few if any complexes about the need for money. Despite the occasional assistance he received from his uncle’s family and his mother-in-law, he was always compelled by circumstances to work in order to support himself.7 This continued over the course of his studies, and there is no reason to think that Camus ever imagined it would be otherwise. We always tend to think of writers as having emerged full-blown into the world and with knowledge comparable to our own about their future accomplishments. But at this stage in his life, Camus was not yet Camus. He was, instead, a young writer with a remarkable talent who fully expected to work to support himself and who worried that these necessities might interfere with his literary projects. Teaching likely seemed a good bet to him; and if he had any doubts, he had the example of his mentor, Grenier, to guide him.8

5. Lottman, Camus: A Biography, 65.
6. Roger Quilliot confirms this ambition in his introduction to the Pléiade edition ofChristian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, citing Charles Poncet as his source: “The logical outcome of the licence de philosophie is the diplôme d’études supérieures, prelude to the application for the agrégation, the highest competitive examination for teachers in France. Camus, in 1936, did not despair of achieving it: according to Charles Poncet, he dreamed of a foreign appointment that would leave him sufficient leisure for his personal work.” Albert Camus, Essais (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1965), 1220.
7. Lottman, Camus: A Biography, 49, 62.
8. Lottman tells us that Grenier’s own literary career really only began after he hadmoved to Algiers. Prior to that move, his entire published work consisted of a few insignificant essays. However, in 1930, after arriving in Algiers, he published no less than four essays and began to publish a series of small books of philosophy. Ibid., 42.

In the end, Camus’ poor health prevented him from sitting the examinations for the agrégation and becoming a teacher. In France, a teaching position was a state appointment, and candidates had to pass a physical examination to prove that they were in satisfactory health in order to receive one.