The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

For Jean Grenier

And openly I pledged my heart to the grave and suffering land, and often in the consecrated night, I promised to love her faithfully until death, unafraid, with her heavy burden of fatality, and never to despise a single one of her enigmas. Thus did I join myself to her with a mortal cord.

holderlin:

The Death of Empedocles

Introduction

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined. But the Penal Code makes the convenient distinction of premeditation. We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and they have a perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose—even for transforming murderers into judges.

Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, would kill everybody on earth in order to possess Cathy, but it would never occur to him to say that murder is reasonable or theoretically defensible. He would commit it, and there his convictions end. This implies the power of love, and also strength of character. Since intense love is rare, murder remains an exception and preserves its aspect of infraction. But as soon as a man,through lack of character, takes refuge in doctrine, as soon as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest;now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law.

This is not the place for indignation. The purpose of this essay is once again to face the reality of the present, which is logical crime, and to examine meticulously the arguments by which it is justified; it is an attempt to understand the times in which we live. One might think that a period which, in a space of fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings should be condemned out of hand. But its culpability must still be understood. In more ingenuous times, when the tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets, when enemies were thrown to the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the mind did not reel before such unabashed crimes, and judgment remained unclouded. But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence—through a curious transposition peculiar to our times—it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself. The ambition of this essay is to accept and examine this strange challenge.

Our purpose is to find out whether innocence, the moment it becomes involved in action, can avoidcommitting murder. We can act only in terms of our own time, among the people who surround us. Weshall know nothing until we know whether we have the right to kill our fellow men, or the right to letthem be killed. In that every action today leads to murder, direct or indirect, we cannot act until we knowwhether or why we have the right to kill.

The important thing, therefore, is not, as yet, to go to the root of things, but, the world being what it is, toknow how to live in it. In the age of negation, it was of some avail to examine one's position concerningsuicide. In the age of ideologies, we must examine our position in relation to murder. If murder hasrational foundations, then our period and we ourselves are rationally consequent. If it has no rationalfoundations, then we are insane and there is no alternative but to find some justification or to avert ourfaces. It is incumbent upon us, at all events, to give a definite answer to the question implicit in the bloodand strife of this century. For we are being put to the rack. Thirty years ago, before reaching a decision tokill, people denied many things, to the point of denying themselves by suicide. God is deceitful; thewhole world (myself included) is deceitful; therefore I choose to die: suicide was the problem then.Ideology today is concerned only with the denial of other human beings, who alone bear the responsibilityof deceit. It is then that we kill.

The two arguments are inextricably bound together. Or rather theybind us, and so firmly that we can nolonger choose our own problems. They choose us, one after another, and we have no alternative but toaccept their choice. This essay proposes, in the face of murder and rebellion, to pursue a train of thoughtwhich began with suicide and the idea of the absurd.

But, for the moment, this train of thought yields only one concept: that of the absurd. And the concept ofthe absurd leads only to a contradiction as far as the problem of murder is concerned. Awareness of theabsurd, when we first claim to deduce a rule of behavior from it, makes murder seem a matter ofindifference, to say the least, and hence possible. If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning andif we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. Thereis no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or todevote ourselves to the care of lepers. Evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice.

We shall then decide not to act at all, which amounts to at least accepting the murder of others, withperhaps certain mild reservations about the imperfection of the human race. Again we may decide to substitute tragic dilettantism for action, and in this case human lives become counters in a game. Finally,we may propose to embark on some course of action which is not entirely gratuitous. In the latter case, inthat we have no higher values to guide our behavior, our aim will be immediate efficacy. Since nothing iseither true or false, good or bad, our guiding principle will be to demonstrate that we are the mostefficient—in other words, the strongest. Then the world will no longer be divided into the just and theunjust, but into masters and slaves. Thus, whichever way we turn, in our abyss of negation and nihilism,murder has its privileged position.

Hence, if we claim to adopt the absurdist attitude, we must prepare ourselves to commit murder, thus admitting that logic is more important than scruples that we consider illusory. Of course, we must have somepredisposition to murder. But, on the whole, less than might be supposed, to judge from experience.Moreover, it is always possible, as we can so often observe, to delegate murder. Everything would then bemade toconform to logic—if logic could really be satisfied in this way.

But logic cannot be satisfied by an attitude which first demonstrates that murder is possible and then that it is impossible. For after having proved that the act of murder is at least a matter of indifference,absurdist analysis, in its most important deduction, finally condemns murder. The final conclusion ofabsurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounterbetween human inquiry and the silence of the universe. Suicide would mean the end of this encounter, and absurdist reasoning considers that it could not consent to this without negating its own premises. According to absurdist reasoning, such a solution would be the equivalent of flight or deliverance. But itis obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is preciselylife that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis.To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive. How is it possible, without making remarkableconcessions to one's desire for comfort, to preserve exclusively for oneself the benefits of such a processof reasoning? From the moment that life is recognized as good, it becomes good for all men. Murdercannot be made coherent whensuicide is not considered coherent. A mind imbued with the idea of theabsurd will undoubtedly accept fatalistic murder; but it would never accept calculated murder. In terms ofthe encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe, murder and suicide are one and thesame thing, and must be accepted or rejected together.

Equally, absolute nihilism, which accepts suicide as legitimate, leads, even more easily, to logical murder.If our age admits, with equanimity, that murder has its justifications, it is because of this indifference to life which is the mark of nihilism. Of course there have been periods of history in which the passion forlife was so strong that it burst forth in criminal excesses. But these excesses were like the searing flame of a terrible delight. Theywere not this monotonous order of things established by an impoverished logic in whose eyes everythingis equal. This logic has carried the values of suicide, on which our age has been nurtured, to their extremelogical consequence, which is legalized murder. It culminates, at the same time, in mass suicide. The most striking demonstration of this was provided by the Hitlerian apocalypse of 1945. Self-destruction meantnothing to those madmen, in their bomb-shelters, who werepreparing for their own death and apotheosis. All that mattered was not to destroy oneself alone and to drag a whole world with one. In a way, the manwho kills himself in solitude still preserves certain values since he, apparently, claims no rights over the lives of others. The proof of this is that he never makes use, in order to dominate others, of the enormouspower and freedom of action which his decision to die gives him. Every solitary suicide, when it is not anact of resentment, is, in some way, either generous or contemptuous. But one feels contemptuous in thename of something. If the world is a matter of indifference to the man who commits suicide, it is becausehe has an idea of something that is not or could not be indifferent to him. He believes that he is destroyingeverything or taking everything with him; but from this act of self-destruction itself a value arises which,perhaps, might have made it worth while to live. Absolute negation is therefore not consummated bysuicide. It can only be consummated by absolute destruction, of oneself and of others. Or, at least, it canonly be lived by striving toward that delectable end. Here suicide and murder are two aspects of a single system, the system of a misguided intelligence that prefers, to the suffering imposed by a limited situation, the dark victory in which heaven and earth are annihilated.

By the same token, if we deny that there are reasons for suicide, we cannot claim that there are grounds for murder. There are no half-measures about nihilism. Absurdist reasoning cannot defend the continued existence of its spokesman and, simultaneously, accept the sacrifice of others' lives. The moment that we recognize the impossibility of absolute negation—and merely to be alive is to recognize this—the very first thing that cannot be denied is the right of others to live. Thus the same idea which allowed us to believe that murder was a matter of indifference now proceeds to deprive it of any justification; and we return to the untenable position from which we were trying to escape. In actual fact, this form of reasoning assures us at the same time that we can kill and that we cannot kill. It abandons us in this contradiction with no grounds either for preventing or for justifying murder, menacing and menaced, swept along with a whole generation intoxicated by nihilism, and yet lost in loneliness,with weapons in our hands and a lump in our throats.

This basic contradiction, however, cannot fail to be accompanied by a host of others from the moment that we claim to remain firmly in the absurdist position and ignore the real nature of the absurd, which is that it is an experience to be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence, of Descartes's methodical doubt. The absurd is, in itself, contradiction.

It is contradictory in its content because, in wanting to uphold life, it excludes all value judgments, whento live is, in itself, a value judgment. To breathe is to judge. Perhaps it is untrue to say that life is aperpetual choice.But it is true that it is impossible to imagine a life deprived of all choice. From thissimplified point of view, the absurdist position, translated into action, is inconceivable. It is equallyinconceivable when translated into expression. Simply by being expressed, it gives a minimum of coherence to incoherence, and introduces consequence where, according to its own tenets, there is none.Speaking itself is restorative. The only coherent attitude based on non-signification would be silence—if silence, in its turn, were not significant. The absurd, in its purest form, attempts to remain dumb. If it finds its voice, it is because it has become complacent or, as we shall see, because it considers itself provisional. This complacency is an excellent indication of the profound ambiguity of the absurdist position. In a certain way, the absurd, which claims to express man in his solitude, really makes him live in front of a mirror. And then the initial anguish runs the risk of turning to comfort. The wound that is scratched with such solicitude ends by giving pleasure.

Great explorers in the realm of absurdity have not been lacking. But, in the last analysis, their greatness is measured by the extent to which they have rejected the complacencies of absurdism in order to accept its exigencies. They destroy as much, not as little, as they can. "My enemies," says Nietzsche, "are those who want to destroy without creating their own selves." He himself destroys, but in order to try to create. He extols integrity and castigates the "hog-faced" pleasure-seekers. To escape complacency, absurdist reasoning then discovers renunciation. It refuses to be sidetracked and emerges into a position of arbitrary barrenness—a determination to be silent—which is expressed in the strange asceticism of rebellion.

Rimbaud, who extols "crime puling prettily in the mud of the streets," runs away to Harrar only to complain about having to live there without his family. Life for him was "a farce for the whole world to perform." But on the day of his death, he cries out to his sister: "I shall lie beneath the ground but you, you will walk in sun!"

The absurd, considered as a rule of life, is therefore contradictory. What is astonishing about the fact that it does not provide us with values which will enable us to decide whether murder is legitimate or not?

Moreover, it is obviously impossible to formulate an attitude on the basis of a specially selected emotion.

The perception of the absurd is one perception among many. That it has colored so many thoughts and actions between the two wars only proves its power and its validity. But the intensity of a perception does not necessarily mean that it is universal. The error of a whole period of history has been to enunciate—or to suppose already enunciated—general rules of action founded on emotions of despair whose inevitable course, in that they are emotions, is continually to exceed themselves. Great suffering and great happiness may be found at the beginning of any process of reasoning. They are intermediaries. But it is impossible to rediscover or sustain them throughout the entire process. Therefore, if it was legitimate to take absurdist sensibility into account, to make a diagnosis of a malady to be found in ourselves and in others, it is nevertheless impossible to see in this sensibility, and in the nihilism it presupposes, anything but a point of departure, a criticism brought to life—the equivalent, in the plane of existence, of systematic doubt. After this, the minor, with its fixed stare, must be broken and we are, perforce, caught up in the irresistible movement by which the absurd exceeds itself.

Once the mirror is broken, nothing remains which can help us to answer the questions of our time.

Absurd-ism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest. The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion. Deprived of all knowledge, incited to murder or to consent to murder, all I have at my disposal is this single piece of evidence, which is only reaffirmed by the anguish I suffer. Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. But its blind impulse is to demand order in the midst of chaos, and unity in the very heart of the ephemeral. It protests, it demands, it insists that the outrage be brought to an end, and that what has up to now been built upon shifting sands should henceforth be founded on rock. Its preoccupation is to transform. But to transform is to act, and to act will be, tomorrow, to kill, and it still does not know whether murder is legitimate. Rebellion engenders exactly the actions it is asked to legitimate. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that rebellion find its reasons within itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere. It must consent to examine itself in order to learn how to act.

Two centuries of rebellion, either metaphysical or historical, present themselves for our consideration.

Only a historian could undertake to set forth in detail the doctrines and movements that have followed one another during this period. But at least it should be possible to find a guiding principle. The pages that follow only attempt to present certain historical data and a working hypothesis. This hypothesis is not the only one possible; moreover, it is far from explaining everything. But it partly explains the direction in which our times are heading and almost entirely explains the excesses of the age. The astonishing history evoked here is the history of European pride.

In any event, the reasons for rebellion cannot be explained except in terms of an inquiry into its attitudes, pretensions, and conquests. Perhaps we may discover in its achievements the rule of action that the absurd has not been able to give us; an indication, at least, about the right or the duty to kill and, finally, hope for a new creation. Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. The problem is to know whether this refusal can only lead to the destruction of himself and of others, whether all rebellion must end in the justification of universal murder, or whether, on the contrary, without laying claim to an innocence that is impossible, it can discover the principle of reasonable culpability.