The Crisis of Man 1946 In spring 1946 Albert Camus was invited by the foreign ministry''s French cultural relations department to give a series of lectures in North America. During the sea crossing, he drafted "The Crisis of Man," which he read out in French in public for the first time on March 28, 1946, at an evening event at Columbia University, New York, addressed also by "Vercors" ( Jean Bruller) and "Thimerais" (Léon Motchane). Camus gave this lecture again throughout his visit to the United States, in a slightly expanded version, the typescript of which was discovered recently in the archives of Dorothy Norman (Beinecke Library, Yale University). This is the version reproduced in translation here. The chief editor of the journal Twice a Year , Norman published "The Crisis of Man" at the end of 1946, in a translation by Lionel Abel. Ladies and gentlemen, When it was suggested to me that I should give some lectures in the United States of America, I had scruples and hesitated. I am not the right age for giving lectures, and feel more at ease in reflection than categorical assertion, because I do not claim to possess what is generally called truth. When I expressed my scruples, I was told very politely that the important thing was not for me to have any personal opinion.

The important thing was for me to be able to pro- vide those few elements of information about France which would allow my audience to form their own opinion. Whereupon I was advised to inform my listeners about the current state of French theater, literature and even philosophy. I replied that it would perhaps be just as interesting to speak about the extraordinary efforts of French railwaymen, or about how miners in the Nord are now working. It was pointed out to me very pertinently that one should never strain one''s talent, and that it was right for special interests to be addressed by people competent to do so. With a long-standing interest in literary matters while I certainly knew nothing about shunting, it was natural that I should be told to talk about literature rather than about railways. At once I was enlightened. The important thing in fact was to talk about what I knew, and to give some idea of France. This is exactly why I have chosen precisely to speak neither about literature nor about theater.

For literature, theater, philosophy, intellectual study and the efforts of an entire people are merely the reflections of a fundamental interrogation, a struggle for life and man, which constitute for us the whole problem of today. The French feel that man is still threatened, and they feel too that they will not be able to go on living if a certain idea of man is not rescued from the crisis with which our world is wrestling. And that is why, out of loyalty to my country, I have chosen to speak about the crisis of man. And as the idea was to talk about what I knew, I thought I could not do better than to retrace as clearly as possible the spiritual experience of men of my generation, since that experience has covered the full extent of the world crisis, and can shed some dim light both upon absurd fate and upon one aspect of today''s French sensibility. I should first like to situate this generation. Men of my age in France and in Europe were born just before or during the first great war, reached adolescence at the time of the world economic cri- sis and were twenty in the year when Hitler came to power. To complete their education, they were then offered the war in Spain, Munich, the 1939 war, defeat and four years of occupation and clandestine struggle. So I suppose it is what people call an interest- ing generation, which is why I was right to think it will be more instructive for you if I speak not in my own name, but in that of a certain number of Frenchmen who are thirty today, and whose intelligence and hearts were formed during the terrible years when, along with their country, they fed off shame and lived off rebellion.

Yes, it is an interesting generation, first and foremost because, confronted by the absurd world that its elders were creating for it, it believed in nothing and lived in rebellion. The literature of its age was rebelling against clarity, stories and even sentences. Painting was rebelling against subjects, reality and mere harmony. Music was rejecting melody. As for philosophy, it taught that there was no truth, only phenomena; that there might be Mr. Smith, Mon- sieur Durand and Herr Vogel, but there could be nothing in com- mon between these three specific phenomena. The moral stance of this generation was still more categorical: nationalism appeared to it like an outworn truth, religion like an exile; twenty-five years of international politics had taught it to doubt all pure creeds, and to think that nobody was ever wrong since everybody could be right. As for the traditional morality of our society, it appeared to us what it still is: that is to say, a monstrous hypocrisy.

So we were thus in negation. Of course, this was not new. Other generations, other countries have lived through this experience in other periods of History. But what is new is that these same men, strangers to all values, had to resolve their personal position regard- ing murder and terror. It was then that they came to think that there perhaps did exist a Crisis of Man, because they had to live in the most agonizing of contradictions. For basically they entered war as you enter Hell, if it is true that Hell is renunciation. They did not like war or violence, but they had to accept war and inflict violence. They felt hatred only for hatred.

Yet they had to learn that difficult knowledge. In total contradiction with themselves, without having any traditional value at their disposal, they had to resolve the most painful of problems ever posed to men. So here you have, on the one hand, a remarkable generation as I have just defined it and, on the other, a crisis embracing the world and human consciousness, which I shall now seek to characterize as clearly as possible. So what is this crisis? Well, rather than characterizing it in gen- eral, I should like to illustrate first by four brief stories from a time that the world has begun to forget, but that still sears our hearts. 1. In the Gestapo building in a European capital, after a night of questioning, two suspects still bleeding have been left tied up and the building''s concierge dutifully clears up around them, her mind at peace since she has doubtless eaten her breakfast. Reproached by one of the victims, she replies indignantly with a phrase which, translated into French, might go more or less like this: "I never inter- fere with what my tenants do." 2.

In Lyon, one of my comrades is dragged from his cell for a third bout of questioning. Since his ears have been torn during an earlier interrogation, he is wearing a bandage around his head. The German officer taking him is the very same one who was already there at the earlier sessions, yet it is he who asks with a trace of affec- tion and concern in his voice: "And how are your ears, then?" 3. In Greece, following a Partisan operation, a German officer is getting ready to have three brothers whom he has taken as hostages shot. Their elderly mother throws herself at his feet and he agrees to spare one of them, provided she herself makes the choice. Since she is unable to decide, aim is taken at them. She picks the eldest, because he is head of the family; but by doing so she condemns the two others, just as the German officer wished. 4.

A group of deported women, including one of my comrades, is repatriated to France via Switzerland. Barely have they entered Swiss territory than they notice a civil burial. And the sight alone causes them to break out in hysterical laughter. "Look how they treat the dead here," they say. If I have chosen these stories, it is not because of their sensational character. I know that the world''s feelings must be spared, since it usually prefers to close its eyes in order to keep its peace of mind. But it is because they allow me to reply otherwise than with a con- ventional "yes" to the question: "Is there a Crisis of Man?" They allow me to reply, as all the men about whom I was speaking replied: yes, there is a Crisis of Man, since the death or torture of a human being can in our world be examined with a feeling of indif- ference or friendly interest, or experimentation, or mere passivity. Yes, there is a Crisis of Man, since the execution of a human being can be envisaged otherwise than with the horror and shock it ought to provoke; since human pain is accepted as a somewhat tedious chore, on the same level as buying food or queuing for every gram of butter.

It is too easy, in this respect, to blame Hitler alone and say that, since the beast is dead, the poison has disappeared. For we well know that the poison has not disappeared; that we all carry it in our very hearts; and that this can be felt in the way in which nations, parties and individuals still look at each other with a residue of anger. I have always thought that a nation stuck by its traitors along with its heroes. But a civilization too, and white civilization in particular, is as responsible for its perversions as for its successes. From this viewpoint we all stick by Hitlerism, and we need to seek the more general causes which made possible the terrible evil that began to ravage the face of Europe. So let us attempt, with the help of the four stories I have recounted, to enumerate the clearest symptoms of this crisis. They are, first and foremost: 1. The rise of terror, following a perversion of values such that a man or a.