Camus and Sartre.(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: I enjoyed M.P. Lamb's letter (December 2003) regarding Albert Camus and my essay "Sisyphus and the Meaning of Life" (October 2003), even though it charges me with perpetuating two common misconceptions about Camus and his work.

First, Lamb observes that Camus denied being an existentialist and ultimately broke with his one-time friend, Sartre. The tenor of the argument is that I have misleadingly conflated the philosophical positions of the two thinkers.

Second, Lamb charges that I have failed to note the emphasis on action in Camus's thought and his own life, giving an impression of him as offering no more than a romantic inner freedom.

At the least, I can say something in mitigation of both charges.

I recognise, of course, that the concept of living "authentically" needs to be used with care, since this is Sartre's word (probably borrowed, as Lamb suggests, from Heidegger). However, I wrote the following, choosing my words with some care:

 
   It is a theme in the writing of 
   Camus, and in much of the 
   existentialist writing of the 
   period, that living authentically 
   (as it is sometimes put) 
   demands the acceptance of 
   distressing truths about reality 
   and the human condition. 

In particular, I used the words "as it is sometimes put" for good reason. I was aware that Carnus himself did not put it that way, and did not wish to convey a different impression. Perhaps I too hastily yoked together some of Camus's views and those of Sartre. I am not so sure of this, however, since, whatever Camus himself may have claimed, there is truth in the widespread perception that his and Sartre's views had much ...