Abstract
Without the idea of God, and the moral values and law that derive from divine authority, how does Man determine the limits of his actions? Are moral values and principles of justice simply human constructs created to protect society that do not realistically reflect the truth about human nature? Without the concept of the sacred, where does authority reside and what constitutes the boundaries that humans must not transgress? In Caligula, Albert Camus confronts these questions and takes them to their ultimate logical conclusions. The character he creates in order to do this, as I will seek to show, is the figurative equivalent of a system of thought most eminently articulated by the Marquis de Sade in his ..