Resistance, Rebellion, and Death is a 1960 collection

1960 in literature

The year 1960 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*November 2 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case in the United Kingdom....

 of essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s written by Albert Camus

Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

 and selected by the author prior to his death. The essays here generally involve conflicts near the Mediterranean

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

, with an emphasis on his home country Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

, and on the Algerian War of Independence

Algerian War of Independence

The Algerian War was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria's gaining its independence from France...

 in particular. He also criticizes capital punishment

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

 (Reflections on the Guillotine) and totalitarianism

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...

 in particular.

Camus

Camus

-People:* Albert Camus, French author, philosopher and journalist* Charles Étienne Louis Camus, French mathematician* Jean-Pierre Camus, French bishop and writer* Louis-Auguste Camus de Richemont, French military chief and baron d'Empire...

 proclaims the call to justice and the struggle for freedom also declaimed in the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

, particularly the minor prophets. But he does so in a modern context, where God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

 is silent and man is the master of his own destiny. Although he sees no messianic age

Messianic Age

Messianic Age is a theological term referring to a future time of universal peace and brotherhood on the earth, without crime, war and poverty. Many religions believe that there will be such an age; some refer to it as the "Kingdom of God" or the "World to Come".- Terminology: "messianic" and...

, he proclaims the hope that by continuous effort, evil can be diminished and freedom and justice may become more prevalent.

Also collected here, in the essay "The Artist and His Time," is the address Camus gave in December 1957 at the University of Uppsala, entitled "Create Dangerously". The speech is reminiscent of Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

's great essay, "What is Art?

What Is Art?

"What Is Art?" is an essay by Leo Tolstoy in which he argues against numerous aesthetic theories which define art in terms of the good, truth, and especially beauty...

", in that Camus speaks of the social context of art, concluding that "the only justification [for the artist]...is to speak up for those...who cannot do so."

Essays contained in the book

• Letters to a German Friend
• The Liberation of Paris
• The Flesh
• Pessimism and Tyranny
• The Unbeliever and Christians
• Defense of Freedom
• Algeria
• Hungary
• Reflections on the Guillotine
  Reflections on the Guillotine
  "Reflections on the Guillotine" is an extended essay written in 1957 by Albert Camus. In the essay Camus takes an uncompromising position for the abolition of the death penalty. Camus's view is similar to that of De Sade who also argued that murder premeditated and carried out by the state was the...
  
  
• The Artist and His Time

Quotations

• There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice

  Justice

  Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...

  
  . I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive. (p. 5)

• We had much to overcome-- and, first of all, the constant temptation to emulate you. For there is always something in us that yields to instinct, to contempt for intelligence, to the cult of efficiency. Our great virtues eventually become tiresome to us. We become ashamed of our intelligence, and sometimes we imagine a barbarous state where truth would be effortless. But the cure for this is easy; you are there to show us what such imagining would lead to and we mend our ways. (p. 7)

• We had to make a long detour, and we are far behind. It is a detour that regard for truth imposes on intelligence, that regard for friendship imposes on the heart. It is a detour that safeguarded justice and put truth on the side of those who questioned themselves. And without a doubt, we paid very dearly for it. . . . I have never believed in the power of truth in itself. But it is at least worth knowing that when expressed forcefully truth wins out over falsehood. This is the difficult equilibrium we have reached. This is the distinction that gives us strength as we fight today. (p.8-9)

• Nothing is given to men, and the little they can conquer is paid for with unjust deaths. But man's greatness lies elsewhere. It lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition. And if his condition is unjust, he has only one way of overcoming it, which is to be just himself. (p. 39)

• Our poisoned hearts must be cured. And the most difficult battle to be won against the enemy in the future must be fought within ourselves, with an exceptional effort that will transform our appetite for hatred into a desire for justice. (p. 62)

• The world needs real dialogue

  Dialogue

  Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

  
  , that falsehood is just as much the opposite of dialogue as is silence, and that the only possible dialogue is the kind between people who remain what they are and speak their minds. (p. 70)

• I share with you the same revulsion from evil

  Evil

  Evil is the violation of, or intent to violate, some moral code. Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of good. Definitions of evil vary along with analysis of its root motive causes, however general actions commonly considered evil include: conscious and deliberate wrongdoing,...

  
   ... I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation when faced with force ... What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today. (p. 71)

• Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. (p. 73)

• And what I know--which sometimes creates a deep longing in me--is that if Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices--millions, I say--throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and men. (p. 74)

• There are some of us who do not want to keep silent about anything. It is our whole political society that nauseates us. Hence there will be no salvation until all those who are still worth while have repudiated it utterly in order to find, somewhere outside insoluble contradictions, the way to a complete renewal. In the meantime we must struggle. (p. 82)

• Totalitarian tyranny is not based on the virtues of the totalitarians. It is based on the mistakes of the liberals

  Liberalism

  Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

  
  . (p. 83)

• I cannot forgive contemporary political society: it is a mechanism for driving men to despair. (p. 83)

• Freedom

  Freedom (political)

  Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...

  
   is the concern of the oppressed, and her natural protectors have always come from among the oppressed. (p. 89)

• We notice that everywhere, together with freedom

  Freedom (political)

  Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...

  
  , justice

  Justice

  Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...

  
   is profaned. How then can this infernal circle be broken? Obviously, it can be done only by reviving at once, in ourselves and in others, the value of freedom--and by never again agreeing to its being sacrificed, even temporarily, or separated from our demand for justice. (p. 93)

• Freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties. (p. 96)

• We shall be sure that freedom is not a gift received from a State or a leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all. (p. 97)

• The freedom of each finds its limits in that of others; no one has a right to absolute freedom. The limit where freedom begins and ends, where its rights and duties come together, is called law

  Law

  Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

  
  , and the state

  State (polity)

  A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...

  
   itself must bow to the law. (p. 101)

• When one knows of what man is capable, for better and for worse, one also knows that it is not the human being himself who must be protected but the possibilities he has within him--in other words, his freedom. (p. 102)

• I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love. (p. 103)

• Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worst. (p. 103)

• We shall deny to the very end that a press is true because it is revolutionary; it will be revolutionary only if it is true, and never otherwise. (p. 104)

• People are complaining almost everywhere that the sense of duty is disappearing. How could it be otherwise since no one cares any more about his rights? Only he who is uncompromising as to his rights maintains the sense of duty. (p. 105)

• If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one. (p. 106)

• It is better to suffer certain injustices than to commit them, even to win wars. (p. 114)

• I believe only in differences and not in uniformity. First of all, because differences are the roots without which the tree of liberty, the sap of creation and of civilization, dries up. (p. 136)

• The task of men of culture and faith, in any case is not to desert historical struggles nor to serve the cruel and inhuman elements in those struggles. It is rather to remain what they are, to help man against what is oppressing him, to favor freedom against the fatalities that close in upon it. (p. 141)

• Our proudest duty is to defend personally to the very end, against the impulse toward coercion

  Coercion

  Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...

  
  and death, the freedom of that culture--in other words, the freedom of work and of creation. (p. 164)

Taken from A Melange of John Elder's Favorite Quotations Page numbers reference the Knopf 1961 printing, hardcover.