plays itself out backward and forward into conflicting interpretations of the Greeks and the Jews on the one hand, and of modernity on the other. I think there are two distinct patterns that emerge from these conflicting interpretations. These patterns amount to two different histories of antiquity, histories that in turn result in two very different interpretations and assessments of modernity. One history is Greek, the other Christian. In the former history, Camus argues that Christianity and modernity are the same thing. Christianity has no answer to the crisis of the modern world, particularly its most extreme or totalitarian manifestation, that is not itself an earlier expression of the same pathology. Here Camus proposes the Greeks as the only real alternative to modernity, not because their account solves Christian and modern problems, but because it recognizes them to be false and thus as insoluble on their own terms.
The findings of Camus’ Greek history are contradicted by those of his Christian history. In the latter, Camus claims that our current forms of metaphysical rebellion began historically not with Christianity but with Judaism. Here Camus argues that Christianity successfully overcame the problems from which metaphysical rebellion arises. These are the problems of “evil and death,” which, though constant in human life, had been exacerbated in the West by the Jewish invention of a radically transcendent personal God who is somehow responsible for everything but whose ways do not correspond to any normal human judgment about what is good and what evil.87The sole textual evidence that Camus offers in support of this claim is the story of Cain and Abel, in which God prefers the latter’s sacrifice to the former’s “without any convincing motive . . . and, by so doing, provokes the first murder.”88 Nonetheless, he argues that herein lies the real source of our contemporary history. “The history of rebellion, as we are experiencing it today, has far more to do with the

87. Camus, The Rebel, 32.
88. Ibid., 33.

children of Cain than with the disciples of Prometheus. In this sense it is the God of the Old Testament who is primarily responsible for mobilizing the forces of rebellion.”89
Here Camus interprets Christianity, not the Greeks, as the most effective alternative to modernity, because it is the only tradition to have overcome the metaphysical rebellion on which modernity rests. The Greeks are given a vastly subordinate role. They contribute the notion of mediation, which on its own solves nothing, but when adopted by Christianity is deepened into the notion of incarnation and then used as a means of overcoming Judaism’s radical separation of God and world. And when it comes to Camus’ own formulation of the type of rebellion that might avoid the excesses of modern metaphysical rebellion while retaining the necessary willingness to resist, the account he offers is remarkably similar in both form and content to the Christian account. “There is in fact no conciliation between a god who is totally separated from history and a history purged of all transcendence. Their representatives on earth are, indeed, the yogi and the commissar. . . . Between God and history, the yogi and the commissar, [rebellion] opens a difficult path where contradictions may exist and thrive.”90 Despite its modern philosophical language and the reference to Koestler’s book, what else is this but a reformulation of the Christian notion of incarnation? The Rebel does not leave most readers with the impression that Camus was particularly sympathetic to Christianity or that he endorsed it as a viable alternative to the modern project. But in at least one version of Camus’ history Christianity does just that. I think Camus was aware of the limitations of his analyses in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel—perhaps not in all their details, and perhaps not of the fact that they point to contradictions of the type that I have described here. But he knew that something was amiss or incomplete, the best evidence of which is his proposed third philosophical essay.
Camus ordered his books very carefully. The well-known three-cycle structure of his works was first formulated in 1947 and achieved its final form in 1955.91According to that structure, “The Myth of Nemesis” is the

89. Ibid., 32.
90. Ibid., 288, 290.
91. Camus, Notebooks 1942–1951, 158. Albert Camus, Carnets III: mars 1951–décembre 1959 (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1989), 187. When I say “final form” I mean last. What Camus would have done with the structure had he lived is a matter of speculation.

name Camus gives to the third of these cycles, the familiar Myth of Sisyphus and Myth of Prometheus being those given to the first two, respectively.92 In a subsequent reference to the Nemesis cycle, Camus gives the theme a content: “Go back to the passage from Hellenism to Christianity, the true and only turning point in history.”93Five years later, he continued to explore the same historical problematic, only this time as a means of explaining certain features of the modern world. In 1957 he writes: “Nemesis: The profound complicity between Marxism and Christianity (to develop). That is why I am against them both.”94 And a year later, in April 1958, he states his own positive ambition explicitly: “The world marches toward paganism, but again it rejects pagan values. We must restore them. We must paganize belief, grecesize the Christ and restore balance.”95

The proposed subject of the Nemesis cycle is the subject of Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism. It would seem that the basic idea had remained unchanged for Camus over the course of more than twenty years. Indeed, his books and notebooks indicate that as Camus matured he became even more convinced of the importance of that historical dispensation, particularly for his own attempt to understand the course of the modern world as it races toward perfect justice and perfect freedom. In a sense, Camus never ceased to address the problem he first explored in Christian Metaphysics. That problem or question concerns the nature of the Greeks, how Christianity departs from their insights and their ways of life, and how that departure and its extraordinary influence have contributed to the advent of the modern world. All these elements can be found in one form or other in Christian Metaphysics; and they can also be found, whether as buried themes or as explicit analyses, in virtually all of Camus’ subsequent books. I hope the publication of this translation will encourage Camus’ readers to consider them afresh. I think that Camus still has much to teach us in this regard.

92. Camus, Notebooks 1942–1951, 257.
93. Ibid., 267.
94. Camus, Carnets III, 209.
95. Ibid., 220.

Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism

Introduction

In the paintings of the Catacombs, the Good Shepherd often
assumes the face of Hermes. But if the smile is the same, the symbol has changed its significance. It is in this manner that Christian thought, constrained to express itself in a coherent system, attempted to adopt Greek thought forms and to express itself in the metaphysical formulas that it found ready-made. Nevertheless it transformed them. Hence in order to understand the originality of Christianity, it is necessary to clarify that which constitutes its profound meaning, and from a historical point of view to go back to its sources. This is the goal of the present work. But any research, to be coherent, must organize itself according to one or two fundamental approaches. This introduction will permit us to define these approaches, to the extent that, considering the complexity of the historical materials that concern us, it will nevertheless underscore in them certain constant elements.

It has often been asked what constitutes the originality of Christianity in relation to Hellenism. In addition to the evident differences, a good number of themes remain common. But to tell the truth, in all cases where a civilization is born—the great affair of humanity—we observe a changing of planes and not a substitution of systems. It is not by comparing Christian dogmas and Greek philosophy that we can get some idea of that which separates them, but rather by observing that the sentimental plane, where the Evangelical communities were situated, is foreign to the classic aspect of Greek sensibility. It is on the affective plane where problems arise and not in the system that tries to respond to them that we ought to find what made Christianity novel. In its beginnings, is learned. Without always acknowledging it, all Greek philosophy makes its sages God’s equals. And God being nothing more than a higher science, the supernatural does not exist: the whole universe is centered around man and his endeavors. If, therefore, moral evil is ignorance2 or error, how do the notions of Redemption and Sin fit into this attitude?

As to the rest and in the physical order, the Greeks still believed in a cyclical world, eternal and necessary, which could not be reconciled with a creation ex nihilo3 and hence with an end of the world.4
Generally speaking, because they were attached to the reality of the pure idea, the Greeks could not understand the dogma of a bodily resurrection. The mockery of Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, for example, is endless in regard to this idea. Therefore whether in physics, in morality, or in metaphysics, the differences lay in the way the problems were posed.
But at the same time, some positions remained similar. Neither Neoplatonism, which is the ultimate effort of Greek thinking, nor Christianity can be understood without considering the substance of the common aspirations, to which all thought of this epoch must respond.

2. Cf. Epictetus Moral Discourses 1, 7: “If you cannot correct the wicked, do not blame them, for all wickedness is correctable; but instead blame yourself, you who cannot find in yourself enough