He does a particularly good job with certain irregularities in Camus’ biblical citations and in tracking down proper references for his French secondary sources. Occasionally he will point out an inconsistency in Camus’ scholarship or an instance in which he appears to be using an original language text but is in fact citing a passage in translation from a secondary source. Some of these discoveries are based on Paul Archam bault’s literary excavations in Camus’ Hellenic Sources, and they are helpful as far as they go. In my judgment, however, a more critical version of the text is required.

There are three ways in which the current edition tries to meet this requirement. I offer a much more comprehensive examination of Camus’ sources. For instance, in addition to the sort of work done by McBride, wherever possible I track down Camus’ many unidentified or partially identified sources, clarify others, correct his transcriptions of both Latin and French texts, and offer proper titles and references for them. I also offer a series of translator’s notes that chart Camus’ use of the ideas and arguments of Christian Metaphysics in subsequent essays and books. Those notes are fairly exhaustive and by themselves give the reader a good sense of the manner in which Camus’ thinking about the subject developed over the years and of Christian Metaphysics’ importance for his mature analyses of modernity, Christianity, and the Greeks.

There is one further way in which my translation differs from McBride’s and also improves on it, I think. In the course of his analysis, Camus cites dozens of Greek and Latin texts in French translation. McBride’s manner of handling these texts is simply to translate Camus’ French edition into English. I have approached the matter differently. Whenever Camus cites an ancient primary source, whether in French translation or in the original language, I have substituted a standard English translation in its place. My reason for doing so with passages in original languages is simple: I want to make Camus’ book accessible to a wide range of readers, and too much Latin in the body of the text would have been an unnecessary barrier in that regard. McBride too offers English translations of these Latin texts, but he does not offer references for them. In some instances they are the same as those I have used, in others I have been unable to identify his source, whether it be his own translation or another English edition. The latter explanation seems most likely, because had McBride translated the Latin texts himself, he would have discovered and noted Camus’ frequent errors in both transcribing passages and referencing them. Be that as it may. I have followed the same procedure in the case of texts in French translation for the sake of scholarly accuracy. An English translation of a French translation of an original Latin text would in some instances give the reader a better sense of what Camus had before him when writing Christian Metaphysics. However, it would do so at the price of placing the reader just one step farther removed from the original source.
Whenever I substitute an English translation in either of these manners, I have placed the full French or original language text in a translator’s note, along with a reference for the English translation I have used. On the rare occasion when there is a substantial textual difference between the French and English editions, I have identified it in a note. In instances in which I have been unable to find the source of such a passage, or in which no standard English translation exists, I have simply translated the French text into English. This practice is indicated by means of an asterisk following the translator’s note.

One final word about the translation itself. Given the importance of not only the subject matter but also the substance of the analysis of Christian Metaphysics for Camus’ mature thought, it seems to me that a separate critical edition of the book is long overdue. I hope the current volume satisfies the need for such an edition and helps make this important aspect of Camus’ thought better known to a wider Englishspeaking audience.

The importance of antiquity for Camus’ books, particularly of Greek philosophy and Christianity, is a subject that has received only limited attention from Camus scholars and critics. Literary analyses usually ignore such matters in favor of more formal questions concerning the construction of Camus’ texts, while the more philosophically inclined of Camus’ readers have tended to explore the modern and even postmodern orientation of Camus’ writings rather than his relationship to the ancients.34 The scholarship becomes even more scarce when we look for discussions of Christian Metaphysics itself. This might be explained in part by the long absence of an English translation of the book. That explanation would make some sense, at least for the Englishspeaking world; but my guess is that even here the real reason for the neglect has more to do with contemporary cultural patterns and habits of mind than with the availability of texts. At the end of the day, scholars read and analyze the books and ideas they consider important.

The studies of Christian Metaphysics currently available are few in number. The most notable among them are those of I. H. Walker, Jacques Hardré, and Paul Archambault. Though all of these writers share an interest in the text, the aim and comprehensiveness of each of their analyses is quite different. Walker’s discussion is thematic and explores Camus’ Greek sources, most notably Plotinus’s Enneads.Hardré’s paper is essentially a summary of the argument and structure of Christian Metaphysics and a recommendation of further research to map the full extent of Camus’ use of Greek and Christian sources. Archambault uses Christian Metaphysics as part of a larger project to elucidate the nature and extent of Camus’ Greek culture. The following is a brief discussion of their works.

In his essay “Camus, Plotinus, and ‘Patrie’: The Remaking of a Myth,”
Walker explores Camus’ use of Plotinus in early works like “Essay on Music,” “Art in Communion,” Christian Metaphysics, The Wrong Side and the Right Side, and Nuptials. Walker argues that in these texts, the earliest of which predates Christian Metaphysics by four years, the Plotinian notion of patrie or royaume and its existential counterpart, exil, became essential features of Camus’ analysis of the human condition. Camus used them to explain a wide range of phenomena, from the relation between the real and ideal in a work of art, to the compatibility of moral and aesthetic experience, to the character of travel, and,

34. Two examples of this type of reading are Jeffery C. Isaac, Arendt, Camus, and Modern Rebellion(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), and David Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). There are exceptions to this type of reading. Bruce K. Ward explores Camus’ critique of Christianity and his Hellenism in his essay “Christianity and the Modern Eclipse of Nature: Two Perspectives,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63, no. 4 (1995): 823–44.
    perhaps most important, to the basic human desire for a homeland and the deep existential unease that accompanies the experience of its loss or absence.
    In his article, Walker does a good job of tracking down the various ways in which Camus incorporates Plotinus’s insights into his own literary and philosophical project, and he makes a compelling case for the predominance of ancient over modern influences on that project, though he occasionally misidentifies the latter.35Despite these findings, Walker’s final assessment of Camus’ effort is that by the time Nuptials appears in 1938, all that was left of Plotinus in this effort were his “key terms of reference,” patrie and exil.36The principal feature of Plotinus’s thought illuminated by these terms, his notion of the Ideal or transcendence, is completely absent. “By this time, Camus had completely rejected any vestige of belief in Plotinus’ world of the Ideal or man’s surviving link with it, the soul.”37 What Walker does not point out is that Camus himself was well aware of the ongoing debate regarding the transcendence or immanence of Plotinus’s notion of the One.38 Camus, for his part, came down on the side of immanence.39 However, he did not do so uncritically. He added an important proviso to his interpretation: the use of terms like transcendenceand immanenceto explain Plotinus’s thought, though perhaps inevitable, is nonetheless highly misleading because such terms employ spatial categories to elucidate what is essentially an “attempt at non-spatial thought.”40 This is a much more nuanced interpretation of Plotinus than the one with which Walker credits Camus. It suggests that once the metaphysics are set aside,Camus’ nonspatial or existential use of Plotinian terms such as patrie and exil in his early works might be much more in accord with the spirit of Plotinus than Walker seems to allow.
35. Walker says that Schopenhauer still belongs in some measure to the ancient worldbecause he retains the notion of the Ideal (though he separates it too definitively from the real). However, he suggests that because Nietzsche has “no conception of the Ideal” his departure from the ancients is complete (830). I think it is open to question whether having or not having an Ideal in Walker’s sense is the best way to determine one’s relationship or lack thereof to the ancients.
36. Walker, “Camus, Plotinus, and ‘Patrie,’” 839.
37. Ibid., 838.
38. Camus, Essais, 1284. Camus identifies the two styles of interpretation by their representatives: Caird for the notion of transcendence, and Zeller for the idea of Plotinian pantheism.
39. Ibid. “In our view, God is therefore immanent. Desire demands it. And furthermore,we carry within ourselves the three hypostases, since it is through inner