Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche French writer Albert Camus and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche are

not no rmally two people mentioned in one breath. However, their body of work has a lot in common when it comes to morality. One of the most striking books in Nietzsch e's career as a philosophical writer on this theme is On the Genealogy of Morals . In an essayistic style he portrays how society changed over decades of time fr om being content with joy to utter discontent with feelings of revenge. Moral ju dgements changed enormously and Nietzsche is ought to examine the origin of mora ls questions by going back to the basic idea of good and evil. What is good, and if it is, why is that so? Albert Camus' concern directs itself into a similar direction. His major concern is the not origin of basic moral questions but rather the development that come with them, most notably freedom and the right to revolt. Camus continued to dev elop his idea of man's rebellion against the absurd in nearly all his work. An u ndertaking he had begun in his essay collection The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Sev eral years later, in 1951, the book length essay The Rebel would refresh the ide a of rebellion. It is actually implied in the title itself of the French origina l with L'Homme rvolt, whose English translation The Rebel seems to give it a more political note. Throughout, Camus examines several writers from Epicurus to Hegel, from Dostoevs ky to Breton and analyses their portrait of man. Here, his work refers several t imes to Friedrich Nietzsche and most notably his sense of nihilism, a concept ab out the ultimate negation of all values. Camus mirrors Nietzsche's own morality when he interrogates God as a moral instance. Both authors seem to start from a fairly humanistic viewpoint: God is the constructed being, a named abstraction a nd an uplifted instance to distribute what is morally right and morally wrong. When man submits to God to moral judgement, he kills Him in his own heart. And t hen what is the basis of morality? God is denied in the name of justice but can the idea of justice be understood without the idea of God? Have we not arrived a t absurdity? ... man, in order to exist, must decide to act.1 Even though the word itself is never mentioned in The Rebel, Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment seems to linger between the lines. Ressentiment, which is the f eeling the many or few in society are highly frustrated with an aspect in their lives. The cause can be simple (such as jealousy) or complex (such as a feud), b ut the reaction is the same: in order to satisfy their hurt ego, these many or f ew need to direct their resentment/ ressentiment towards the cause of their feel ings. In Nietzsche's case, it results in a revolt between the master and the sla ve. A problem he tried to solve with the invention of the superman ( bermensch'), a person superior enough to overcome his own nature of guilt, desire and jealousy . He has no feelings of resentment, because he simply does not care about anythi ng below his vision. The ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, d compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every velops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality ays No to what is outside, what is different, what is not reative deed.2 that of deeds, an noble morality de from the outset s itself ; and this No is its c

At first sight, both authors seem to strongly contrast in the idea of ressentime nt. Then the reader should remember the purpose of Camus' revolt: it is to overc ome the absurd. If we put this equation into Nietzschean logic, then Camus' chos en protagonists like Sisyphus direct their resentment towards the cause of their feelings, which is the absurd. However, instead of simply revolting against thi s abstract, Camus adds a valuable step to it: acceptance. Sisyphus, like the man in revolt, overcomes and rebels against the absurd by accepting it. In doing so

, he internalises the focus of rebellion and the absurd alone.

it becomes a struggle between the self

The sequence of events is interesting because it asks if people are able to unde rstand the abstract all by self (here justice) without another authority (here G od). By stripping off God from this thinking, man is left with absurdity as the first obstacle to overcome. According to Camus, Nietzsche is confronted with thi s attitude, which is a possible reference to the latter's famous claim that God is dead. In The Rebel there are several claims to nihilism. Nihilism is often affectionat ely said to be a preceded version of existentialism. In philosophy as well as li terature, an open discussion with '-isms' is always very dangerous because of it s lack of fixed definitions and examples. Further, Camus excluded himself from t he existentialist writers, so the only direction left is to step directly from N ihilism to the absurd. A step that is per se not wrong because both concepts dea l with the freedom of the mind. Freedom of the mind, freedom of decision and freedom as a general theme are ther efore connective points between Nietzsche and Camus. Nietzsche's idea of freedom is to overcome ressentiment and also to live out the Dionysian life force as sh own in his work The Birth of Tragedy. Camus' idea of freedom starts in the very moment one experiences bitterness. In a way, Camus' figures like Meursault, Jean -Baptiste Clamence or Sisyphus are the written outlook of ressentiment , which i n French terms is nothing more than re-sentir to re-feel. Camus now pursues a different way and saves his figures from becoming slaves in Nietzschean terms. The negative part of ressentiment is turned around into a pos itive one: these figures try to re-feel themselves but they can only do so when they accept their fate as their own and not made by society. In the end, both authors have more in common than their love for the Russian wri ter Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is not massively important for this comparison what Ni etzschean text Camus had read. Nietzsche's novels are throughout his life, lucki ly, in a state where one can say that each of his works combines his whole philo sophical outlook. However, the concept of ressentiment is visible in Camus' work s. Vice versa, Camus detects a level of absurdity in Nietzsche. The reader can s ee how the French writer took the question of morality to the next level by addi ng self-fulfilment and offered a way of leading Nietzschean slaves out of their misery. 1 Albert Camus, The Rebel; translated by Anthony Bower (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), p. 57. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals; Ecce homo; translated by Walt er Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale; edited, with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (N ew York: Vintage Books 1967), First Essay, Section 10, p. 36. Svenja Schrah | 2011