The scrupulous assassin

In the final section of The Rebel Camus asserts that since the beginning of its revolt against God, the “European mind” had believed that it had “all humanity as its ally”. However, it subsequently became apparent to the rebel that if he were not to be defeated, he must also learn to fight against men. The dilemma of the rebel is thus posed in the following terms: “if they retreat they must accept death; if they advance they must accept murder. Rebellion, cut off from its origins and cynically travestied, oscillates, on all levels, between sacrifice and murder.” Rebellion had originally pleaded the case of the innocence of man, but now “it has hardened its heart against its own culpability”. Must we, as a consequence, “renounce every kind of rebellion”, even if it means accepting a society weighed down with injustice or serving the interests of history even against the interests of man? Can the original, allegedly irrefutable rebellious proposition (“I revolt, therefore we exist”) be reconciled with killing? The original moment of revolt assigned oppression a limit, “within which begins the dignity common to all men”. It defined a “primary value”, in that “it put in the first rank of its frame of reference” a point of contact between human beings, “which makes men both similar and united”. It posited a profound solidarity and “compelled the mind to take a first step in defiance of an absurd world”.