The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1951

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3 Summary: “Historical Rebellion”

In Part 3, Camus writes in more detail about the divide between rebellion and revolution, which he considers to be two different things, though the former sometimes morphs into the latter. While rebellion is more spontaneous and disorganized, and is born as a reaction against lived realities, the more abstract nature of revolution is problematic, as “a revolution is an attempt to fit the world into a theoretic frame” (233). In many revolutionary ideologies, there is a fixation on the idea of “the end of history,” in which, if the revolution achieves its aims, an ideal world can be achieved. Camus argues that this utopian thinking is a very dangerous tendency, as it can lead revolutionaries to justify all kinds of crimes committed in the name of a perfect future they think they can achieve.

Camus also writes in more detail about the history of modern revolutions, which he sees as beginning with the French Revolution and the execution of King Louis XVI. Camus interprets this event as both a political event (the overthrow of an absolute monarchy) and as a metaphysical event (the rejection of the idea of the Divine Right to Rule and the idea of God having a representative on earth in the form of a king). In rejecting the old absolutist system and the traditional Christian worldview that infused it with meaning and authority, modern revolutionaries have grappled with a new problem: there is now no clear basis for morality. In the 20th century, this vacuum left by traditional authority was filled with nihilism and other ideologies, such as Marx’s communism.

Camus then discusses Marx’s thought, especially the way thinkers like Marx promise a heaven on earth, an ideal society that can end all injustice and create a perfect world for all. Camus interprets the main flaw in Marx’s thought as being, at heart, much like the main flaw in Nietzsche’s: His utopian streak opens the door to all kinds of abuses. Camus then writes about the 20th century’s tragic experiments with totalitarianism—both Nazi and Soviet—lamenting the fact that the century is defined not by greater freedom but by greater oppression.

Toward the end of Part 3, Camus compares rebellion to revolution once again, arguing that it is better to reject ideals of a perfect, future society in favor of embracing who men really are and what they need right here in the present. Furthermore, Camus argues that true rebellion is not the result of history’s inevitable stages but an act in defiance of history: True rebellion is born when a man embraces his free will and recognizes that he has some control over his own destiny.

Part 3 Analysis

Camus argues that because revolutions are often based upon rigid, utopian thinking, they inevitably lead to abuses in the name of an ideal man and an ideal society that do not and cannot exist. He warns, “When revolution is the sole value, there are, in fact, no more rights, there are only duties” (351-52). Instead of giving men greater freedom and justice, revolutions swiftly teeter on the brink of oppression and tyranny in the name of pursuing their ideals: “There comes a time […] when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution” (230). While true rebellion upholds the dignity of all, revolution descends into us-versus-them violence, in which all who are seen as standing in the way of the perfect future are persecuted or eliminated.

In speaking about the history of rebellion, Camus makes two important arguments. His first argument is that the killing of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution was a watershed moment in the sense that it represented the definitive rejection of an older, Christianized worldview in which the king was God’s representative on earth: “The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in their most profound manifestations, are centuries that have tried to live without transcendence” (312).

However, this absence of transcendence has had dire consequences, as the unthinking fervor of old religious thought was merely transferred to secular revolutionary ideologies instead. Camus stresses this point by describing revolutionary convictions using religious terminology: “The idea of progress alone is substituted for divine will” (420), he claims, while writing elsewhere that “[t]he future is the only transcendental value for men without God” (362). While Christianity promised a perfect afterlife for all believers, revolutionary thinkers like Marx promise a heaven on earth at some unspecified future date. According to Camus, that is one of the most dangerous qualities of revolutionary thought, as “it proceeds to identify the future with ethics, [and] the only values are those which serve this particular future. For that reason, utopias have almost always been coercive and authoritarian” (452). In trying to achieve an ideal society, many revolutionaries only succeed in creating a new kind of nightmare.

Toward the end of Part 3, Camus pushes back against the nihilistic and utopian tendencies in revolutionary thought. He writes, “Undoubtedly, [revolution] has nothing but scorn for the formal and mystifying morality to be found in bourgeois society. But its folly has been to extend this scorn to every moral demand” (548). The corrective to this is clear to Camus: “instead of killing and dying in order to produce a being that we are not [i.e., an ideal man in an ideal society], we have to live and let live in order to create what we are” (548).