Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;The thesis is divided into five chronological sections, each comprising two chapters devoted to a parallel study of Camus's circumstantial journalism and his artistic and philosophical writing. This method of investigation serves to identify the problems he experiences in the creation and formulation of moral values, and thus emphasises his difficulty with the question of ends and means. ;In the 1930s and early 1940s, evidence is found of a marked contradiction between Camus's philosophical thought and his journalism. In his circumstantial articles, he postulates a belief in a set of intuitive moral values, while, in his artistic and philosophical work, he describes a world bereft of ultimate meaning and purpose. ;In the postwar world, Camus seeks to reconcile these conflicting views. Because absurdism is found to lead to an intellectual impasse on the question of moral ends and means, he subordinates it to his moralism. Consequently, man is erected into an absolute value and is prevented from being made subservient to ideological theory. ;Camus's attempt, in L'Homme Revolte, to establish a theory of revolt which is both moral and effective is frustrated by his virtual rejection of murder as a political weapon. Man is not only a value in himself, but the source of all values, and this leads Camus to argue that the rebel who consents to murder must also consent to die himself in order to re-establish the pre-eminent value of human life. ;In the 1950s, Camus's moral idealism is seen to be politically impotent on the specific question of the war in Algeria. Faced with the confusion in his thought between the rival claims of efficacy and morality, Camus finishes his investigation as he begins it: unable to establish an effective theory of revolt whose methods and goals are acceptable under external moral scrutiny