Nietzsche

History of European Ideas 25 (1999) 39}53

Camus reading Nietzsche: Rebellion, memory and art
William E. Duvall
Department of History, Willamette University, 900 State Street, Salem, OR 97301 USA Received 25 June 1999; accepted 10 September 1999

Keywords: Camus; Nietzsche; Rebellion; Memory; History; Art

It is hardly surprising that a French writer, in a book intended to be a serious philosophical statement, should choose Rene Descartes as the "rst philosopher to H mention. It is more striking that Friedrich Nietzsche is the second philosopher Albert Camus cites. Only a few pages into The Rebel he o!ers a quotation from Nietzsche which sets the tone for his entire discussion of rebellion: ` &My enemies,' says Nietzsche, &are those who want to destroy without creating their own selves' a [1]. Almost three hundred pages later Camus concludes the essay with a metaphor Nietzsche uses frequently, that of the archer's bow, string drawn back, straining, ready to launch an arrow straight and true. Camus sees in this an appropriate symbol of the `supreme tension,a creativity and freedom which characterize the position of his rebel [1, p. 306, 2}4]. Throughout the book the presence of Nietzsche is clear, and not only in the awkward and troubling essay speci"cally devoted to Nietzsche or in the fact that Camus mentions him frequently and uses repeatedly the phrase `will to powera [1, p. 41, 47, 81, 103, 107, 175, 220, 225]. The present essay, by focusing carefully on The Rebel, attempts to show that Camus's very de"nitions of rebellion and revolution are structured in relation to Nietzsche's thought while at the same time they contest, resist and reject the German philosopher whom Camus regarded as so important a mentor. For Camus, a key to healthy rebellion is memory; this essay further explores Camus's preoccupation with memory as it is tied to rebellion and to his thinking about history, art and Nietzsche.

 No citation from Nietzsche's works is given.  For