Albert Camus on being yourself
Every group blamed him for not being one of them
Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1957, the French writer Albert Camus grew up very poor in Algeria, beginning to build a name as a writer there, before he went to France during World War II. There he served in the Resistance editing the underground newspaper Combat, becoming a leading writer and intellectual in the inner circles of the French intellectual world while keeping his independence. The summary of a press conference he gave in Stockholm before receiving the prize is Camus’ biographer Herbert Lottman’s in his Albert Camus.
He was a solitaire independent of parties and believed that, after twenty years during which he refused no opportunity to take a stand on major issues, freedom remained the highest and surest of goals. Freedom permitted bettering of conditions, while tyranny did not.
As for his religion: He was not about to convert. He was long considered to be associated with atheism and materialism, through his own fault. But he recognized that there was a part of mystery in man. He had written with warmth of the person of Christ and he had only respect and veneration for his teachings as well, although he did not believe in the Resurrection.
He feared that in some so-called left circles a confession of ignorance, of a limit to man's knowledge, respect for the sacred, appeared as weaknesses. If so, he assumed these weaknesses.
Communist philosophers called him reactionary, reactionaries said he was a Communist, atheists that he was a Christian, while Christians deplored his atheism. He would continue to be as he was and could be.
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