Camus, Albert. Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism.

Rubin, Michael

CAMUS, Albert. Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism. Translated with an introduction by Ronald Srygley, Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy: Studies in Religion in Politics. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007. xii + 148 pp. Cloth, $29.95--Albert Camus is typically classified as a modern thinker, but the place to which his thought always returns is not the inception of modernity, but "the passage from Hellenism to Christianity," which in his Notebooks he calls "the true and only turning point in history." (Camus, Albert. Notebooks 1942-51. Translated by Justin O'Brien. New York: Paragon House, 1991. p. 183). For Camus, it is only here that one can gain perspective on modernity, by seeing how Christianity responded to Greek questions while irrevocably changing how those questions were asked. This intellectual revolution is the subject of Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, written to fulfill the thesis requirement for Camus' diploma d'etudes superieures at the University of Algiers, but it is also the subject of Camus's entire career: according to the translator, "Camus never ceased to address the problem he first explored in Christian Metaphysics." Hence, this new translation--which both strives for greater literalness and provides more references to Camus's poorly cited sources than the existing McBride translation--fills a pressing need for a critical edition of a work that holds a key to understanding Camus's later writings. This book should dazzle not only Camus scholars, however, but anyone intrigued by Hellenism's influence on and reaction to the evolution of Christian thought.

In its four chapters, Christian Metaphysics describes "four stages in one common Greco-Christian evolution": Evangelical Christianity, which "spurned all speculation but asserted, since the beginning, the themes of Incarnation"; Gnosticism, the heresy seeking "a special solution in which Redemption and knowledge are joined"; Neoplatonism, "the effort of Greek philosophy to give the problem of the period a specifically Hellenic solution" by "attempting to reconcile rationalism and mysticism"; and Augustinianism, the blossoming of Christian thought that Camus calls "the second revelation," and which "achieved the reconciliation of the Word and the flesh." The two middle stages, though non-Christian themselves, nevertheless provide Christianity with crucial guidance for its development. Gnosticism, by reducing salvation to initiation and knowledge, "reveals to Christianity the path not to follow" in assimilating Hellenism, and ensures "that Christian thought will take from the Greeks only their formulas and their structures of thought." Neoplatonism serves "to assist [the] relaxing of Reason" and thus prepare metaphysical structures, like the principle of participation, that Christianity can use to "resolve its great problems ... of the Incarnation and the Trinity."

For Camus, what drives this evolution forward is the tension between two poles: the Greek conviction in the sufficiency of Reason for man, and "the theme of the Incarnation," which is "the irreducible originality of Christianity." The Greek and the Christian thus have different routes to God. While "Plato, who had wanted to unite the Good to man, had been constrained to construct an entire scale of ideas between these two terms," for Christianity "it is not reasoning that bridges this gap, but a fact: Jesus is come." Each finds the other's aspirations as bizarre as they are threatening, and thus strives to integrate and subordinate them to his own. Hence, Neoplatonism absorbs spirituality into Reason by identifying "the destiny of the soul and the rational knowledge of things," while Christianity is determined "to soften progressively Greek reason and to incorporate it into its own edifice, but in a sphere in which it is inoffensive."

It is interesting to this reviewer that Camus does not give equal emphasis to how Christianity freed Greek Reason as well as constrained it. After all, Camus does note that "Hellenism cannot be separated from this hope, about which it is so tenacious, that man holds his destiny in his own hands." Yet he does not observe how this conviction is itself a prison, barring Reason from considering the real possibility that the universe is too much for man by himself. If one has to believe

that one can find happiness in the world, one must reject as unthinkable that the world could have not existed, or that moral evil is a part of it. As Camus observes, "to stake all on contemplation is only valid for a world that is once and for all eternal and harmonious." By reassuring man with God's intervention in history, Christianity frees him to consider the world, not as he wants it to be, but as it is: contingent, insufficient, and in need of redemption.

Why Camus does not acknowledge Christianity's liberating effect on Reason is not evident from Christian Metaphysics, but for anyone wishing to unravel this riddle in his thought, reading this book is a good start.--Michael Rubin, Fredericksburg, VA.