Means That Cannot Be Excused
In Camus’ essay “Letters to a German Friend,” he displays his grievances with Nazi Germany. The essay is framed through the lens of a Frenchman sending a series of four letters to an old German friend.
However, the two individuals featured in the essay represent more than just two people. They represent the ideologies of their respective countries during World War II. Over the course of the four letters, Camus expresses his philosophical disagreements with the German ethos.
Camus’ understanding of the German mindset at the time was one that favored brute force and greatness over all else. This perspective is one Camus fought against his entire life. Greatness was of no interest to Camus if the means by which it was attained violated his moral and ethical predispositions.
The essay begins:
You said to me: “The greatness of my country is priceless. Anything is good that contributes to its greatness. And in a world where everything has lost its meaning, those who, like us young Germans, are lucky enough to find a meaning in the destiny of our nation must sacrifice everything else.” I loved you then, but at that point we diverged. “No,” I told you, “I cannot believe that everything must be subordinated to a single end. There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don’t want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.”
There’s so much to extract from this small paragraph.
Just as the German friend mentions, we are all living in a world that appears to have lost its meaning. In other words, there’s no objective meaning. And if even if there is, it’s inaccessible to the human mind. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t make meaning.
This is just what the German friend does. He creates meaning by suggesting that “anything is good that contributes” to Nazi Germany’s greatness. Presumably, this includes the Holocaust and the slaughter of innocent civilians. In other words, the end justifies the means for Germany.
But this isn’t just the opinion of the Frenchman. It’s the view of Camus and what he presumes to be the general position of France. The Frenchman replies that there are means that cannot be excused on the way to greatness. Though he doesn’t lay all of them out, one of the concepts repeatedly mentioned is justice.
Camus consistently calls attention to the inability of Germany to adhere to any form of justice. Germany is willing to lay waste to the whole of Europe so long as it secures their superiority. There was no other country in Europe willing to decimate their neighbor for mere political power. And France was at the top of this list.
The idea of excusing potentially evil means for a potentially great end has its political uses, to be sure, but there’s also something to be said for means and ends as they relate to the individual.
In a world where objective meaning has melted into oblivion, it can be easy to take on an egoist perspective. To surrender civic duty for selfish aspirations.
Since nothing really matters in the end, we might as well do anything and everything we want. This is the mindset of the egoist. It was also the mindset of the Germans.
It’s a strange type of hedonism. But Camus, surmising that no objective meaning was within the individual’s grasp, never gave into the hedonistic temptation. He never surrendered his morals and ethics because, for him, there was nothing greater.
For Camus, there were still unshakable virtues that every individual ought to value. Among them were justice, happiness, love, selflessness, and beauty. There was metaphysically or ontologically higher than these virtues. And even if God was discovered to exist, we would only discover than He was nothing more than the absolute embodiment of these unshakable virtues.
But even if God has silently slipped behind the curtain of the cosmos, it doesn’t follow that suddenly there’s no meaning. It only means that it’s on us to make meaning.