Albert Camus and the Ethics of Rebellion

Author(s): James E. Caraway

Source: Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 3, Spain & the Mediterranean (1992), pp. 125-136
Published by: Penn State University Press
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 13
Albert Camus and the Ethics of
Rebellion
James E. Caraway

There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation
and action. This is called becoming a man.

Conquerors know that action is itself useless. There is but one useful action,
that of remaking man and the earth. I shall never remake man. But one
must do "as if."

The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat, what
he believes to be true must determine his action.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the

fundamental question of philosophy.

{Myth of Sisyphus, 64, 64, 5, 3)1

These observations by Albert Camus focus on the heart of his philosophy,

for his philosophy is an exemplification of thought informing and leading
to action, toward "remaking man and the world." At the beginning of The
Myth of Sisyphus, Camus indicates that this work marks the introduction of
an idea which he is to pursue in The Rebel. In affirming unequivocally that
the question of whether life is or is not worth living is the fundamental
question of philosophy and repeating that "the meaning of life is the most
urgent of questions,"2 Camus reveals that his primary work is a consideration
of ethics, even though he does not provide us with a systematic ethic. In

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O'Brien (New York:
Vintage Books, 1955); hereafter cited internally as Myth of Sisyphus, followed by page number.
2Myth of Sisyphus, 4.

125

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 126 SPAIN & THE MEDITERRANEAN

this essay, I want to examine Camus' description of the rebel and of how
one is to act if one is a rebel, because, for Camus, thought must proceed to
action. What actions, then, characterize the life of the person who is a rebel?
Before we get to the point of "remaking man and the world," we must
first examine the evidence to ascertain whether such an action is warranted.
An examination concerning man and the world will lead to an indication
that the absurd is at the heart of man's relation to the world.

Ontological Grounding: The Absurd

Camus' starting point is that of viewing man in the here-and-now world
without the possibility of any sort of leap to a set of transcendent values to
confirm man's value. For Camus, any knowledge must be on the basis of
immediate personal experience, for

I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But
I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for
me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition
mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. (Myth of Sisyphus,
38)

An examination of "immediate personal experience" - and one which

stops within this realm - reveals that man's relation to the world can
only be described as absurd. The absurdity is not in man himself nor
in the world by itself, but in the relation between man and the world.

The Absurd is not in man (if such a metaphor could have a meaning)
nor in the world, but in their presence together. For the moment it is
the only bond uniting them. (Myth of Sisyphus, 23)

Man finds himself in the world, and he must of necessity live in the world,
but the world does not fulfill his basic longings. Man longs for security in
his being, immortal life; the world offers death. Man longs for knowledge,
but the world remains opaque, a mystery (Myth of Sisyphus, 11).
This is the absurd situation in which man finds himself, a situation which
is clarified by the metaphor of marriage and divorce. On the one hand, man
is wed to the world; if he has being, his being must be experienced in the
world. There is no other arena. If the relation between man and the world
were reasonable, then the world in which man has to live would fulfill his
fundamental needs. On the other hand, however, the world does not fulfill
his basic needs. Hence, he is divorced from the world to which by ontological
necessity he is wed. It certainly makes sense to be wed to someone, and it
makes sense to be divorced from someone. But to be both wed and divorced
to the same person simultaneously is patently absurd. This is the situation
in which man finds himself in relation to the world.

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 According to Camus, the ontological relation between man and the
world gives rise to the most significant question in philosophy, namely, Can
man find life absurd and still go on living? That the meaning of life is at
the heart of Camus' work indicates that his work is concerned with ethics
throughout.
With the discovery of the absurd, two alternatives are open to the man
"who lives on the basis of what he knows" and "does not cheat." Man must
choose suicide or recovery. The question is, Can man find life absurd and
still go on living? The possibility exists, for between suicide and death a
third element can be interposed, the element of hope.
While the existential philosophers have realized the absurdity which
links man and the world, according to Camus "all of them without exception
suggest escape." For example, Jaspers and Chestov (Myth of Sisyphus, 24, 25),
realizing that there is nothing in experience to infer any satisfactory principle
which would negate the absurd and man's impotence, posit God as the only
true solution. Also unwarranted are Kierkegaard's attempt to escape the
absurd by his "leap of faith," and Husserl (Myth of Sisyphus, 33) and the
phenomenologists' attempt to escape the absurd by illogically finding absolute
value in each individual thing by immanentizing an essence in each thing,
and thus attempting to provide a principle of explanation the absence of
which was the origin of the absurd.
Camus rejects any attempt to offer an explanation beyond human reason.
Such attempts unjustly dismiss the absurd by altering the problem. He notes:

The leap in all its forms, rushing into the divine or the eternal, surrendering
to the illusion of the everyday or of the idea - all these screens hide
the absurd. (Myth of Sisyphus, 67)

Camus' response to any attempt to go beyond human experience and

reason is unequivocal:

I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But
I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for
me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition
mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. (Myth of Sisyphus,
38)
Camus thus rules out all appeals beyond immediate personal experience: leaps
of faith, appeals to transcendence whether theological or philosophical. These
are essentially philosophical or theological suicide. Also unwarranted is physical
suicide. For if one accepts the principle that he will act only on the basis of
what he knows, he has no knowledge on the basis of which suicide is
warranted since no information relative to results is obtainable.
Upon the realization of absurdity, Camus observed that one could "go
back into the chain" or consider suicide or recovery. Suicide is ruled out and

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 128 SPAIN & THE MEDITERRANEAN

all the forms of transcendent hope; if this is the case, what form could
recovery possibly take? Camus' answer is found in the acts of the Rebel.

The Ethics of Rebellion

Camus poignantly describes the way in which the consciousness of the absurd
begins:

All great deeds, and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.
Great works are often born on a street-corner or in a restaurant's
revolving door. So it is with absurdity. . . . Rising, streetcar, four hours
of work, meal, sleep. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
and Saturday according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed
most of the time. But one day the "why" arises and everything begins
in the weariness tinged with amazement. "Begins"-this is important.
Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the
same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens
consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual
return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of
the awakening comes, in time the consequence: suicide or recovery.
(Myth of Sisyphus, 10)

If one rejects suicide - the appeal to the transcendent in all its forms -
and if one does not "return into the chain," then the alternative is recovery.
Camus sees that three consequences immediately follow from the realization
of the absurd, namely, man's revolt, man's freedom, and man's passion. The
first alternative to suicide is the obstinate absurdity which remains in constant
revolt against the world. Revolt is the opposite of suicide. Suicide is an
admission that the absurd is final. Revolt is the ongoing struggle with the
absurd, a struggle which maintains the tension between man's desires and
what the world offers without allowing man to negate either pole by escaping
through suicide on the one hand or hope which does not conform to man's
experience on the other hand. Second, man sees freedom in a new light.
Freedom is no longer seen as coming from God or some transcendent being
or idea, nor is it freedom to work toward some future goal. Rather, freedom
is now seen as founded on the certainty of death and the absurd. With the
realization that man has only this present life as a certainty and with the
further realization that no transcendent beyond this life is admissible, comes
the freedom and release to live the present life fully. This does not negate
consideration for the future, but it does not allow the future to rob man of
his present. As Camus observes: "Real generosity toward the future lies in
giving all to the present."3
This realization leads immediately to the third consequence of the absurd:
passion. Realizing that man is certain only of this life, and consequently

3Albert Camus, The Rebel, trans. Anthony Bower, (New York: Vintage Books, 1956), 304;
hereafter cited internally as Rebel, followed by page number.

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being unbound by the future, man can now live with indifference to the
future and with the desire to exhaust the present moment completely. Indeed,
the

present and the succession of presents before an ever-conscious mind,

this is the ideal of the absurd man (Myth of Sisyphus, 38)

The actions of the rebel are immediately described by Camus on the

opening page of The Rebel:

What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply
a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes, from the moment he
makes his first gesture of rebellion. . . . Rebellion cannot exist without
the feeling that, somewhere and somehow, one is right. It is in this
way that the rebel slave says yes and no simultaneously. (Rebel, 3)

The rebel, then, is the absurd man. The absurd man, the rebel, lives only
on the basis of his personal experience. He does not scorn reason; he uses
reason, but admits the irrational. He is little inclined to leap before knowing.
He sees no further place for hope beyond this life. But, what is most important,
he sees that only this life has value. He rebels against death and for life.
Camus succinctly describes the absurd man:

What, in fact, is the absurd man? He who without negating it, does
nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he
prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live
without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs
him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his
revolt devoid of future and of his moral consciousness, he lives out his
adventure within the span of his lifetime. That is his field that is his
action, which he shields from any judgment but his own. A greater
life cannot mean for him another life. That would be unfair. (Myth of
Sisyphus, 49)

These two passages are very important for understanding Camus' view
of The Rebel. The first passage introduces the fact that the "no" of the rebel
is simultaneously a "yes," and serves to indicate the dialectical method which
is so important for understanding the ethical stance which Camus' rebel will
take. The second passage reveals that life is the only value which the rebel
realizes and that his actions will be for life. The passage underscores the fact
that the rebel's actions must occur "within the span of his lifetime"; i.e., it
existentializes the rebel's actions. Finally, the second passage indicates that
the rebel's actions are actions the validity of which he, and he alone, must
judge.
This latter observation may immediately rouse the charge of subjectivism
or even solipsism, but we will see that for Camus - largely because of his

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 130 SPAIN & THE MEDITERRANEAN

dialectic - that such a charge is unwarranted, even though the rebel's ethic
can be understood as self-authenticating.
The rebel revolts against death and for life. His "no" is simultaneously
a "yes." In realizing the absurdity of his relation to the world, he revolts,
but the revolt does not eradicate, circumvent, or even mitigate the absurd.
The absurd is maintained simultaneously with the revolt. These two consider-
ations illustrate the way in which Camus uses dialectic to describe the rebel's
actions.
With these two illustrations as guides, consider how the dialectic works
in Camus' understanding, for it is only by knowing that Camus' rebel thinks
and acts dialectically that we can understand the ethic. The history of the
dialectic reveals that there are at least three ways in which dialectic is employed.
The Platonic dialectic is most simply understood as discursive reasoning in
which question and answer lead to another question and answer with this
method continuing as the discussants move more closely to "the truth." The
Hegelian dialectic is an immanentizing of the idea as it works itself out in
history in concrete examples of a proposed thesis countered by an antithesis.
As the idea is concretized, the false dimensions of both thesis and antithesis
are repudiated and a synthesis more nearly approximating "the truth" emerges,
with this to be confronted by another antithesis and so on. A third variation
of the dialectic is that of Kierkegaard who describes various "stages on life's
way" with each stage serving as a thesis to be opposed by the antithesis of
meaninglessness in some form. When meaninglessness is experienced the
person "leaps" to another alternative, a move which is essentially a "leap of
faith." The Kierkegaardian dialectic is certainly not the dialectic as used by
Camus. Nor is Camus' dialectic either the Platonic or the Hegelian. Rather
his use of the dialectic could be referred to as the Tillichian or Barthian
dialectic, since both Tillich and Barth employed the dialectic in the same
way which Camus does. In this understanding of the dialectic, two seemingly
contradictory assertions are affirmed simultaneously, with neither being allowed
to take precedence over the other. There is no synthesis; each pole of the
dipolar group is maintained equally. Hence, in the illustrations of Camus'
rebel described above, the "yes" and the "no" are maintained simultaneously
and equally, just as revolt and absurdity are likewise affirmed simultaneously;
neither is denied, both are affirmed. The tension between the two remains.4
An examination of man's relation to the world reveals that the only
knowledge which man has is that he now has his present life, but that he
is, to use Heidegger's phrase "a being-to ward-death." Thus, the only value
which man knows is life. The rebel therefore rebels against death and for

4Cf. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E. S.
Haldane and Frances H. Simson (London: Routledge & KeganPaul, 1963); Paul Tillich, Systematic
Theology, vols. 1, 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951-63); Karl Barth, Church
Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961-67).

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life. Whatever action is life-affirming will be that action which is ethical;
that which is life-negating is not.
The dialectical understanding of reality is important in understanding
what Camus means by the rebel, for at the heart of the dialectic is the concept
of "limits" or "measure" so characteristic of the Mediterranean world. I have
already used two of the dipolar pairs of concepts which Camus uses to describe
the rebel, namely, no-yes and absurdity-revolt. To these we need to add three
others, so that Camus' dialectic can be described as follows:
No Yes

Absurdity Rebellion
I We
Freedom Violence
Violence Nonviolence
Absurdity Meaning
These dipolar elements guide us in understanding" how the rebel acts in
each case. In a real sense the absurdity-rebellion elements are prima facie for
their presence provides the essential impetus for any succeeding act which
the rebel may take. The absurdity of man-in-the- world leads to rebellion and
rebellion is always a rebellion for life and against death. As such it is a positive
dynamic. Rebellion is not the same as revolution, for revolution is primarily
interested in negating some entity, relation, or state of affairs. Rebellion, on
the other hand, is positive; it is for life. Any activity which is primarily
destructive cannot be rebellion. This is illustrated in The Just Assassins, г, play
which describes the difference between a revolutionary and a rebel and hence
depicts how a rebel would act vis-à-vis murder.5 The play tells of some young
Russian revolutionaries involved in the revolt of 1905. Much of the revolutionary
action prior to this was based on nihilism and terrorism. Not so with the
rebels of 1905; for in them the spirit of revolt is tempered with the spirit of
compassion (cf. Rebel, 284-86). The incident which presents an example of
the action of a true rebel involves the attempt to assassinate the Grand Duke
Serge by Kaliayev, one of "the just assassins" to whose lot it fell to throw
the bomb destined to kill the Duke. The attempt itself was a desperate
exception condoned only because all other attempts to overcome the Duke's
enslaving regime had failed. During the first attempt Kaliayev refused to
throw the bomb, for with the arrival of the Duke's carriage he discovered
that the Grand Duke was accompanied by two young children. Most of his
associates approved this action. The following attempt, however, found the
Grand Duke alone, and Kaliayev was successful, but he was arrested and later
hanged.
That Kaliayev was a rebel and not a terrorist is exemplified by two
statements which he made in opposition to one of his group, Stephan, whose

5Albert Camus, Caligula and Other Plays, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books,
1958); includes Caligula, The Misunderstanding, The State of Siege, and The Just Assassins, hereafter
cited internally as Caligula and Other Plays.

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 132 SPAIN & THE MEDITERRANEAN

only desire seemed to be to kill the opposition, and who felt himself automatically
justified in doing so. Stephan, says Kaliayev, only wants "to get something
done" (Caligula and Other Plays, 243). He has absolutized justice: "I do not
love life; I love something higher - and that is justice" (Caligula and Other
Plays, 244). Stephan wants to kill the Duke immediately. To him Kaliayev
says:

You will not kill him single-handed, as on behalf of nothing. You will
kill him with us, on behalf of the Russian people. That is what justifies
your act. (Caligula and Other Plays, 244)

Later, Kaliayev, the just rebel, points out to his colleagues that the love
of life - not abstract justice - is the only reason for revolution. He says:

I believe in an ideal quite as firmly as they do. Like them, I'm ready
to give my life up for it. I, too can be cunning, silent, resourceful, when
it's called for. Only, I'm still convinced that life is a glorious thing,
I'm in love with beauty, happiness. That's why I hate despotism. The
trouble is to make them understand this. Revolution, by all means. But
revolution for the sake of life - to give life a chance, if you see what
I mean. (Caligula and Other Plays, 245)
This illustrates the stance of Camus' rebel. The rebel is not a slave who
rebels and seeks to become master. Rather, he is a slave who rebels against
servitude and for life. His attempting to become master would merely deny
the origin of his rebellion. The rebel is one who asserts the "mutual recognition
of a common destiny and the communication of men between themselves"
(Rebel, 283). The rebel is one who attempts to rediscover with others "the
only value that can save them from nihilism - the long complicity of men
at grips with their destiny" (Rebel, 284).
"The long complicity of men at grips with their destiny" reveals that
rebellion is a communal dynamic. Even though the rebel as an individual
rebels, rebellion is not an individualistic act, for in his act of rebellion the
rebel is affirming a right for himself which by the very affirmation asserts
that it is also a right for all others.
This leads to a consideration of the dipolar elements: I-We. It is the
individual man who rebels, the one who says "no" to slavery and death. He
is a single individual who affirms that it is "better to die on one's feet than
to live on one's knees" (Rebel, 15). Yet, this does not mean that the rebel's
stance is an individualistic or subjectivistic one. While rebellion "springs
from everything that is most strictly individualistic in man," it nevertheless
"questions the idea of the individual" (Rebel, 15).
The individual may rebel but in so doing he is implicitly affirming a
right for himself which he cannot deny for others. Let Camus summarize:

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 In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. But from the moment
when a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective
experience. Therefore, the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed
by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness
is shared with all men and that human reality in its entirety, suffers
from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe.
(Rebel 22)

Camus notes that "rebellion" plays the same role in our everyday human
trials as does the "cogito" in the realm of thought. The rebel, therefore, says:
"I rebel, therefore, we exist" (Rebel, 22). Camus' insistence that the individual
can do nothing, but he can do everything, is the affirmation that the I and
the we will both be asserted simultaneously; neither can be affirmed over
the other. Rebellion began because the individual was called into question,
the individual was enslaved. But the rebel can claim nothing for himself that
he would not also claim for everyone. Hence, "man's solidarity is founded
upon rebellion, and rebellion, in its turn, can only find its justification in
that solidarity. We have, then, the right to say that any rebellion which
claims the right to deny or destroy solidarity loses simultaneously its right
to be called rebellion and becomes in reality an acquiescence in murder"
(Rebel 22).
The rebel also affirms his freedom, but this cannot be absolute freedom
for it finds its limits in "the other." Hence freedom cannot be affirmed apart
from justice. But rebellion was born from a view of justice which did not
ensure the individual's freedom. Hence, justice cannot infringe upon freedom.
Neither can be absolutized. Each must be affirmed simultaneously and find
its limits in the other. Both must support the value of life. Rebellion was
born in freedom but "rebellion puts total freedom up for trial." Of the rebel
Camus observes:

The rebel wants it to be recognized that freedom has its limits everywhere
that a human being is to be found - the limit being precisely that
human being's power to rebel. . . . The freedom he claims, he claims
for all; the freedom he refuses, he forbids everyone to enjoy.

Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To

be fruitful, the two sides must find their limits in each other. (Rebel,
284, 287-88)
The rebel is one who, in principle, opposes violence. But just as he says
"yes" to both freedom and justice, the rebel says "yes" to both violence and
nonviolence. While rejecting violence in principle, the rebel is not absolutizing
nonviolence for to do so would make of him a mere conformist. But, what

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 1 34 SPAIN & THE MEDITERRANEAN

is more important, he cannot absolutize nonviolence for such would become

the negative support of violence. Camus therefore asserts:

Absolute non-violence is the negative basis of slavery and its acts of

violence; systematic violence positively destroys the living community
and the existence we receive from it. To be fruitful, these two ideas
must establish final limits. (Rebel, 291)

A final pair of dialectical elements is absurdity-meaning. The Rebel is

not one who, by his rebellion, overcomes absurdity. The relation between
man and the world is absurd and remains so even in the face of rebellion.
The primary value is life, life affirmed even though absurdity remains. But
what kind of meaning could possibly ensue while the absurd continues?
To attempt to answer this question, take note of Camus' stance relative
to man's responsibility for the situation in which he finds himself. It is not
until The Fall that Camus faces the problem of the guilt of man.6 Until this
novel Camus has proceeded as if "the other" were somehow the guilty party
rather than "the man" who is being described in a particular mode. However,
the so-called innocent man himself becomes "the other" to those with whom
he is relating.
In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus speaks of "the principle of his innocence"
in describing the absurd man. He notes: "There may be responsible persons,
but there are no guilty ones" (Myth of Sisyphus, 50). In The Stranger we see
man struggling against an unjust legal and social order. In The Plague innocent
man struggles against the horrors of natural evil. In The State of Siege man
encounters the enslavement of a totalitarian regime. Moreover, in The Myth
of Sisyphus Camus provides four examples of the absurd man. The first
example, Don Juan, "goes from woman to woman." He is not in search of
total love. Rather, it is because he loves each with "the same passion and
with his total self that he must repeat his gift and his profound quest" (Myth
of Sisyphus, 51). Each woman attempts to give him love, assuming that it
can be given only by one. But for Don Juan it is not a matter of "at last"
but "once more," for "why should it be essential to love rarely in order to
love much" (Myth of Sisyphus, 52). He is not one "brought up on Ecclesiastes."
He lives each present to the fullest without appeal.7
A second example of the absurd man is the actor who lives to the fullest
the succession of "presents" consisting of those roles which he plays. He
must become "the other," Hamlet, Shylock, or whoever for the three hours
he is on the stage, and his meaning consists in his doing so. He must live

6Albert Camus, The Fall, trans. Justin O'Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1956); hereafter
cited internally as The Fall, followed by page number.
7Cf. Albert Camus, The Stranger, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1942);
idem, The Plague, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: The Modern Library, 1948); and idem,
Caligula and Other Plays.

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fully in this present time upon the stage. He is successful or even superior
to the extent to which he hides himself and reveals the character he is
portraying. This, says Camus, is "called losing oneself to find oneself (Myth
of Sisyphus, 59). The conqueror is also an example of the absurd man for he
fully involves himself in "remaking man and the earth" (Myth of Sisyphus,
65), even though he knows "that action is in itself useless." He knows he
can never remake man but he lives "as if." The conqueror knows that "the
individual can do nothing and yet he can do everything" (Myth of Sisyphus,
64). The final example of the absurd man is that of the artist or creator. He
is faced with the fact that his creation has no ultimate or lasting meaning.
He can neither explain nor resolve. He merely feels and describes the world
and his relation to it. He describes with nothing added to it. This is a painfully
difficult attempt, but in doing this, the artist communicates his personal
awareness to others, thus revealing their common lot.
Of these examples, Camus is careful to note that "an example is not
necessarily an example to be followed . . . and these illustrations are not
therefore models" (Myth of Sisyphus, 50-51). He insists that the "absurd mind
cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather,
illustrations and the breath of human lives" (Myth of Sisyphus, 50).
But, finally, with The Fall Camus speaks of individual guilt, and in the
personage of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, paints "a portrait which is the image
of all and of no one" (The Fall, 139). By describing in an exhaustive array
of vignettes his confessions, Jean-Baptiste Clamence makes every listener
aware of his own quilt, for sooner or later the listener hears the story of sins
which he himself has enacted. The message is clean it is a portrait of everyone.
But the central theme of the absurd and the crucial dimension of the activity
of the rebel is central. All the themes of revolt are present in The Fall. The
solidarity of men is still asserted, for Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a portrait of
all. The rejection of absolutes is still present, as is the rejection of any
transcendent hope or grace which may serve to absolve the judge-penitent
and, through him, all others from their guilt. Yet, the primary guilt, the
Fall of Jean-Baptiste Clamence is his failure to act as a rebel: he took no
risk; he failed to use his freedom responsibly for the affirmation or saving
of life.
Camus' fall has the advantage of existentializing "the sin" of man. It
avoids the mythological (Genesis) and meaningless neoplatonic explanations
of Augustinianism. It may provide no definitive answers, and certainly it
offers no salvation. Yet, the realization that each person must act for life and
live to the fullest, along with the guidelines of Camus' dialectic overarched
with the understanding of "limits," provides us with a strong prolegomena
to ethical analysis. But, to be sure, this must be an analysis of our own acts
and relations, for the rebel is one who, in the final analysis, adheres to no

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136 SPAIN & THE MEDITERRANEAN

judgment but his own. He is a self-authenticating individual, for, after all,

only he is responsible for his own acts.

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