Defying Evil: Albert Camus and His Century

November 7, 2013 By Vladimir Tismaneanu

Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes–Albert Camus, The Rebel

I disagree with Bernard-Henri Lévy: the 20^th century did not belong to Sartre. From the point of view of the Evil perpetrated, it was Lenin’s century. But if one takes honesty, truth, or Good as criteria, then it was Camus’s age. When we are assaulted by so much unsettling news, when we despair as we witness the rise of moral misery, when nihilism resurrects in front of our own eyes (but did it really lay dormant throughout all these years ravaged by ideological fantasies?), it is time to return to Albert Camus.

We often talk about “the treason of the intellectuals,” but we often forget that there were intellectuals who did not betray. Solzhenitsyn was no traitor. Neither was Havel. The Romanian political and religious thinker, Nicolae Steinhardt, did not abandon his principles even when tortured physically and psychologically.

Camus was born a century ago on November 7, 1913. He died on January 4, 1960 in a tragic and absurd car accident. His work remains proof that one can live, think, and write with dignity without acquiescing in infamy. He diagnosed the malady of our times; he called it the plague. He knew that despite any illusions to the contrary, the totalitarian plague is always latent — ready to devastate both the soul and the society……To Read More…..