Introduction: Camus and education

Born in 1913, Albert Camus was one of the most influential literary figures of the twentieth century. He grew up in Belcourt, a poor neighbourhood in Algeria. Camus was just over a year old when his father was killed in the First World War. He was raised by his mother, who survived on a widow’s pension and meagre wages from her work as a ‘domestic’, his grandmother, and other members of his extended family. Supported by a dedicated teacher, Louis Germain, the young Albert won a scholarship to attend secondary school in Algiers (Todd, 2000, p. 12). A bout of tuberculosis sharpened Camus’ awareness of his own mortality but he was able to complete his schooling, after which he attended the University of Algiers, where he studied philosophy (Todd, 2000, pp. 18, 27). He married Simone Hié, who was suffering from a drug addiction, in 1934, but this union was short lived. With financial pressures mounting, he completed a graduate diploma to qualify as a teacher in 1936. His literary interests still strong, Camus became immersed in the theatre, initially via the work of other artists. He joined the French Communist Party, but later in life would distance himself from Party orthodoxy, concerned at the dogmatism and lack of critique of human rights abuses among some of his former friends.

As a writer, Camus’ contributions were wide ranging. Best known today for his novels, plays and short stories, Camus was also an accomplished essayist and editor (see Camus, 1968, 1943/1991b, 1951/1991c, 1960/1995). He first made his mark as a journalist, reporting, for example, on the difficult conditions endured by the Kabyle tribes of Algeria, before moving to occupied France to help found the underground newspaper Combat (O’Brien, 1995). His anonymous editorials for Combat provided readers with the ‘most vigorous expression of their own feelings’ during the war years of 1943–44 (p. vi). Camus was an important part of the Resistance movement. At the same time, he was honing his craft as a novelist. He gained widespread recognition among the intelligent reading public in France for his first published novel, The stranger (Camus, 1942/1989). (This work has also appeared in English as The outsider.) His play Caligula (Camus, 1944/1958a) was also a success, and his first major work of non-fiction, The myth of Sisyphus (Camus, 1943/1991b) marked his arrival as a serious contributor to philosophical debate. Another play, The misunderstanding (Camus, 1944/1958c), was greeted less enthusiastically. In the postwar years, his reputation was further enhanced with the publication of his second novel, The plague (Camus, 1947/1960) and his play The just assassins (Camus, 1950/1958b).

Camus had formed a strong friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre, only to find, to his great distress, that this would turn sour as their political views—and particularly their respective stances on communism—diverged (Todd, 2000, pp. 306–310). The publication of The rebel, Camus’ ‘Essay on man in revolt’ (Camus, 1951/1991c), served as a catalyst for the break between these two leading intellectuals. Camus’ next novel, The fall (Camus, 1956/2000), arose from a period of crisis in his life. In addition to the tensions he now experienced with some on the French political left, his second marriage (to Francine) was under considerable strain, he was questioning the value of his work, and he was physically and mentally exhausted. His response was to begin writing some stories, and this is how The fall evolved. In the second half of the 1950s his theatrical work continued with adaptations of Dostoevsky and Faulkner for the stage. Exile and the kingdom, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1957 (Camus, 1957/1991a). In October of that year, Camus was informed that he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His initial response was one of genuine surprise; he felt the prize should go to André Malraux (Todd, 2000, p. 371). His next major project, a semi-autobiographical novel with a strong educational focus (later to be published as The first man: Camus, 1996), would never be completed. On 4 January 1960, Camus was killed in a car accident, aged just 46. (For further biographical details, see Bronner, 1999; Todd, 2000; Hawes, 2009; Zaretsky, 2010.)

In the decades following Camus’ untimely death, his work has been engaged by scholars in literature, politics, philosophy, theology, sociology, journalism and other fields. Among educationists, he has not been altogether ignored. Articles on Camus can be found in educational journals dating back to the 1960s (e.g. Denton, 1964; Oliver, 1973; Götz, 1987; Curzon-Hobson, 2003; Marshall, 2007a, 2007b; Weddington, 2007). It is more difficult, however, to locate book-length studies with an educational focus. This is somewhat surprising, for Camus’ corpus of published writings lends itself well to in-depth examination from an educational point of view. For philosophers of education in particular, Camus has much to offer. Both his fictional and his non-fictional writings raise and address ethical and political questions that resonate with current concerns and debates. The journey of self-discovery that young Jacques takes in The first man provides a classic example, even in its unfinished state, of the Bildungsroman as a literary genre. The Bildungsroman, well known to European readers, is less frequently discussed by educationists in Australasia, but its form—the novel of education as formation or development—provides an antidote to the narrower, technocratic conceptions of education that prevail today. The existential difficulties and dilemmas faced by characters such as Meursault, Rieux, Clamence, Daru and others mirror those encountered by many teachers in school classrooms. The points of principle that led to differences between Camus and Sartre find contemporary expression in arguments between Marxists and postmodernists in educational discourse. The famous opening line of The myth of Sisyphus—‘There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide’ (Camus, 1943/1991b, p. 3)—warrants ongoing reflection in countries such as New Zealand, where alarming numbers of young people take their own lives. There is a good deal more that could be said about the possibilities for educational and philosophical exploration in Camus’ work, but we hope these few points will suffice as encouragement to read further. As a novelist and a thinker, Camus is both accessible and profound. Like all writers, he was shaped by his circumstances and the problems of his time, but he can also speak to us in the twenty-first century in a manner that is insightful, challenging and rewarding.

This volume, to be published a century after Camus’ birth, appears in two different forms: first as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory and secondly as a stand-alone monograph. The monograph includes two additional articles by Peter Roberts that do not appear in the special issue: one on The fall; the other on ‘The guest’, a story from Exile and the kingdom. For both the special issue and the monograph, we have sought to produce a collection of essays that coheres around a set of related themes but does not pretend to present a unified picture of Camus and his significance for education. The aim has been to maintain a certain cohesiveness in focus and purpose, while also respecting our differences as authors. All of the essays address, either directly or indirectly, the problem of ‘existence’: the question of how we understand ourselves, give meaning to life and make our way in a seemingly absurd world. There is likewise a shared interest in ethical matters and their importance for education. Notions of difference, otherness and alienation figure prominently throughout. But each of us has interpreted Camus in distinctive ways in responding to these key concerns. For this reason, we have decided to retain our names as individual authors for each article. At the same time, it is recognized that the ideas expressed in the articles have also been prompted, tested and transformed through our many conversations with each other about Camus over recent years.

This collection of essays is not intended to cover all aspects of Camus’ oeuvre. We have, for example, said relatively little about The rebel and the educational implications of Camus’ political thought; nor have we commented at length on Camus’ aesthetics or his impressive body of journalistic work. But in its monograph form, the collection addresses each of the novels Camus himself authorized for publication—The stranger, The plague and The fall—together with The first man and A happy death. We also tackle one play (The misunderstanding) and one short story (‘The guest’). The essays included here have been ordered more or less on the basis of the text(s) under consideration, with those focused on Camus’ earliest writings appearing first and those concerned with later works appearing last. Decisions about English translations have rested with the author of each individual article.

The contributions by Andrew Gibbons can be separated into two pairs of interconnected articles that open space for critical analysis of contemporary manifestations of education institutions and teaching and learning relationships. In the pair ‘Beyond education: Meursault and being ordinary’ and ‘Like a stone: A happy death and the search for knowledge’, Gibbons juxtaposes the lives of Meursault and Patrice Mersault, questioning the purpose of learning in relation to the politics of education, in the case of the ways in which a society is seen to respond to ‘the stranger’ (in the novel of that name), and the individual’s search for enlightenment, in A happy death. The relationship between the two characters across these novels is explored in terms of the assumptions that might be made about the nature of life as an educational journey. For the existential hero Meursault, assumptions are challenged by his less than ordinary ways of responding to: his mother’s death, his relationships, and then ultimately the possibility of saving of his own life. Meursault’s failure to intervene in his own life challenges both the ways in which we are ordinarily educated and the ways in which we ordinarily resist our education. This first article contributes to the critique of schooling as a disciplinary mechanism, and looks beyond this critique to the possibilities and challenges of resistance in more or less normal ways.

In the posthumously published, and arguably incomplete, A happy death, Camus develops a thoroughly different yet very recognizable character. He shares, with Meursault, Camus’ love of the world; however, he is unwilling to let this love wash over him, like a stone, and hence embarks on a journey to find his happiness: the world must be conquered by the will of a young man. Unlike his ‘brother’, this Patrice Mersault is not an outsider. In this second article the wider educational theme of the search for enlightenment is considered in relation to themes of childhood, happiness, time and death. Mersault’s search is considered in relation to other stories of the search for some great human storyline, and the possibilities of relaxing into a different kind of willing being.

The stranger, as examined by Richard Heraud in his article, is described by Camus as having a zero point; humankind’s predicament is conceived of as being without hope or cause for nostalgia. What separates this text from Camus’ philosophical tract, The myth of Sisyphus, is that Meursault, the protagonist of The stranger, suffers for his ideas, while in The myth of Sisyphus, it is Camus, the author, who must suffer for his ideas. The action and speech of both works are enframed by the supposition that there is no life after death, that one cannot believe in God and that one must act in full knowledge of the absurd fact that what one wants and how things are, are themselves incommensurable facts of one’s existence. Each man responds to this disjunction and its absurd affirmation in distinctive ways.

In Meursault’s case, it is a conscious acceptance of his situation that borders on indifference and a determination to restrict himself to the mere pleasure of the habits that his existence involves. Camus achieves this effect by delimiting the nature of Meursault’s character such that consciousness is taken up with the circumstances of his existence; or at least what Meursault thinks these circumstances are. In this event, consciousness does not imply a need to respond to the gulf that separates what Meursault wants for himself and how the world presents itself to him. The absurdity remains. In The myth of Sisyphus, Camus conceptualizes the role for thought in a more expansive manner. Here, he casts the problem of existence, which must be lived without a belief in God, as one that must be responded to with the question that seeks a positive truth in relation to whether or not life has value. Camus concludes that our answer can be neither philosophical suicide nor suicide itself, but must be a gesture of revolt. This revolt involves both an embrace of the incongruity that produces the absurdity of his need not being met by a reasonable explanation and a defiant gesture that leaps for a positive truth via his pursuit of adventures of consciousness.

The stranger speaks to a problem in education through the manner in which the reader is asked to empathize with a character who refuses to ask questions of himself and his world. How would one teach a student who presumed such indifference? Would there be anything to teach? The myth of Sisyphus, while a philosophical tract, is also a work of art and, as such, beckons to the reader’s capacity to understand his or her situation as a philosophical situation and one for which there is not a systematic approach: an exceptional response is always required. Camus presents a challenge to education in the ways that it is contemporaneously conceptualized—as a unique capitalist enterprise—in that he alludes to the idea that we might need to suspend our focus on the outcome, the consequences of which we cannot know, if we are to explore the nature of the positive truth that can be found in the question of whether life has any value.

Camus’ involvement with the theatre is an often neglected element of his literary life. Of his own plays, perhaps the most troubling and thought provoking is The misunderstanding. An attempt to reconstruct classical tragedy in modern form, The misunderstanding concerns a man who, after two decades abroad, returns to his homeland and is killed by his mother and sister (who do not recognize him). Peter Roberts analyses the play in the light of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. Focusing on the theme of communication, Roberts draws a comparison between the forms of misunderstanding evident in Camus’ play and those characteristic of educational environments such as schools. It is argued that what is missing in many communicative relationships in educational settings is careful attention to the Other. Interactions between key characters in The misunderstanding are theorized in terms of Levinas’ notion of the Face, and some of the ethical and epistemological implications of Camus’ play are explored.

Gibbons’ second pair of articles attends to Camus’ The plague through a close reading of the narratives of the story’s main characters, in the first article, and then a cross-pollination of these narratives through analysis of official educational responses to the tragedy of the 2011 Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake. In the first article, ‘The teaching of tragedy: Narrative and education’, elements of each man’s life are interpreted. The purpose of the article is to engage with the narratives of the town in order to sense what it is that one might learn about tragedy through this reading of Camus’ work. The article resists exploring implications, and looks to the second of the pair to extend and examine carefully how such a reading might impact on thinking about educational questions. The second article, ‘Tragedy and teaching: The education of narrative’, attends to the device of narrative as an educational method. In particular, it juxtaposes a new narrative on tragedy through analysis of a series of documents produced as an educational response to the Christchurch earthquake. The article considers just what is being narrated in these documents, by whom, and what one might learn about education through such narratives. The government narratives are then replaced by the narratives of Oran to consider alternative ways of thinking about tragedy and education.

In the next article, published only in the monograph, Peter Roberts examines Camus’ short novel, The fall. The fall takes the form of a series of personal recollections and philosophical observations by the central character, Jean-Baptise Clamence, as he sits in an Amsterdam bar. In his one-sided conversation with an unnamed bar companion, Clamence traverses a broad philosophical territory, speaking about life, death, love, friendship, freedom, faith, justice and truth, among other topics. He recounts some of his romantic conquests and his professional experiences as a lawyer. He now sees himself as a ‘judge-penitent’, and this is, in part, where the educational significance of the work lies. In The fall, Camus presents us with a character who is arrogant yet vulnerable. Through the words and implied actions of Jean-Baptise Clamence, Camus provides a model of confessional pedagogy and prompts the reader to reflect critically on his or her own strengths and weaknesses. The fall also allows us to reconsider the relations between literature and philosophy as genres of writing.

Camus was a careful writer for whom every word mattered. Nowhere is this more evident than in the stories he published in Exile and the kingdom, one of the best known of which is ‘The guest’. In the other article that appears only in the monograph, Roberts examines this story in close analytical detail. The article ponders the ethical dilemmas faced by the character Daru, a teacher in an Algerian school, when he is asked to host an unidentified Arab prisoner accompanied by a gendarme. Having looked after the prisoner for the night, and provided food and money for him, Daru leads his guest to a point where potential freedom beckons in one direction and imprisonment in the other. The prisoner chooses the path that will lead to the latter. A thoughtful reading of the story is furnished by Daniel Muhlestein, who applies Althusser’s distinction between repressive state apparatuses and ideological state apparatuses in investigating the prisoner’s decision. Roberts argues, however, that an Althusserian framework is inadequate in dealing with the ethical and educational questions raised by the story. The alternative reading offered in this article focuses on the moral complexity of the key characters and, from this analysis, draws out some broader implications for teaching and learning.

The final article, also by Peter Roberts, is devoted to The first man, the manuscript for which was found in the wreckage of the car in which Camus died. Strongly autobiographical in its content and more lyrical in its style than anything else Camus wrote, The first man sat unpublished for more than 30 years. When the book finally appeared, it was received with great interest, particularly in France. The first man centres on the life of Jacques Cormery, who is essentially the young Camus, as he grows up, attends primary school, mixes with other family members and friends, and prepares for his secondary education. The article adopts a Taoist perspective in examining the novel, paying particular attention to Jacques’ relationships with two other key figures: his mother and his teacher. This, it is argued, is a novel sustained by pivotal tensions: between the old and the new, between acceptance and resistance. A crucial element in Jacques’ education is love: not only the love demonstrated by his mother and teacher but also his love of all that is safe and familiar in his home town. The article also considers the symbolic importance of the Taoist notion of ‘the Great Mother’ in understanding the text, and, in keeping with the aim of this collection as a whole, reflects on the value of literature for educational inquiry.