Abstract
In this chapter, I examine the use of what I call ‘metaphorical’ techniques (myth, fable, allegory, and parable) in the philosophical and literary works of Camus. Drawing on theoretical work from Lacoue-Labarthe’s Le Sujet de la philosophie, I argue that philosophy is bound by style, and as such, works which embrace the ambiguities of their medium are perhaps a more appropriate method of approaching the uncertainties of lived experience than contemporary analytic methods. I offer a detailed analysis of Camus’ own attempts—including myth in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, La Peste as fable, and Le Renégat as an allegory for a philosophical critique.
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- 1.
- 2.
By ‘metaphorical’ I mean to refer to works encompassing allegory, myth, parable, or fable more broadly.
- 3.
Lacoue-Labarthe formulates this in terms of fable, which makes his argument particularly pertinent to the subject of this chapter, but it is worth noting that Rorty in fact argues something similar in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Rorty 1989) which it isn’t within the scope of the current volume to examine fully here.
- 4.
Letter to his friend Claude de Fréminville, undated (translation in Todd 1998, 105).
- 5.
Letter to André Malraux, 15th November 1941 (translation Todd 1998, 134.)
- 6.
It is interesting to note that many names in La Peste are based on the names of people and places Camus encountered during one of his own periods of confinement and suffering, in a sanatorium in the French Alpes. Dr Rieux was named after a local doctor named ‘Rioux’; Paneloux is adapted from the name of area, ‘Le Panelier’; even Rambert is the name of a neighbourhood in nearby Saint-Etienne (Todd 1996, 321–322, translation in Todd 1998, 160).
- 7.
In French, ‘le mal a quelquefois un visage humain, et ceci, la Peste ne le dit pas’.
- 8.
However, I will return to the issue of French colonialism in Chap. 7.
- 9.
In French, ‘Toutes les pensées révoltées … s’illustrent dans une rhétorique ou un univers clos’.
- 10.
In French, ‘La Peste a un sens social et un sens métaphysique. C’est exactement le même. Cette ambiguïté est aussi celle de L’Étranger’.
- 11.
This is not to be confused with philosophy of existence, on the other hand, which (despite sometimes being categorised as a form of existentialism) is a theory of raising levels of consciousness via subjective-existential questioning, developed by Karl Jaspers (Jaspers 1995).
- 12.
In French, ‘l’absurde, pris jusqu’ici comme conclusion, est considéré dans cet essai comme un point de départ’.
- 13.
In French, ‘Un roman n’est jamais qu’une philosophie mise en images.
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Whistler, G. (2020). Myths, Fables, Parables, Allegories. In: Camus' Literary Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37756-4_4
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