This book is based on a doctoral dissertation, and the scrupulous footnoting and detailed referencing required by the genre occasionally makes things heavy going for the reader. Still, the effort is worth while since, unlike some theses, this one does not limit itself to offering pedantic corrigenda of the work of others but genuinely breaks new ground. For one thing, it concentrates on Camus's non-fictional works, a relatively neglected part of his oeuvre. For another, it tackles head-on the central theme of those writings: the concept of justice, particularly socio-political manifestations of justice. Here Orme distinguishes four modes: socio-economic, political, institutional and constitutional justice.
Socio-economic justice is concerned with the protection of the weak and vulnerable members of society. As for political justice, 'a political system may be deemed just when it possesses an integrity' (pg. 20) which is not compromised by considerations of factional or party advantage (here Camus chiefly has totalitarian regimes in his sights). Institutional justice is concerned with crime and punishment; it is here that 'Reflections on the Guillotine,' Camus's masterly rebuttal of the argument for judicial killing, comes into its own. Constitutional justice, finally, is inextricably bound up with a commitment to liberal-democratic values in government and administration.
Orme surveys, in chronological order, all of Camus's writings on justice, starting with the early journalism in Alger republicain and culminating in a balanced critique of the flawed late masterpiece, The Rebel. He shows, in particular, how the Algerian war presented Camus with an acute dilemma: as a man who perceived injustice primarily in personal and practical terms ('I cannot stop myself,' he said, 'from being drawn to the side of those . . . who are humiliated or degraded,' p. 21), he was devastated by the horrors inflicted on the land of his birth by insurgency and counter-insurgency. Justice for the rebels meant injustice for the settlers, and vice versa. The only way the contradiction could be resolved was for one side to prevail; we know now (as Camus, perhaps fortunately, never lived to find out) which side defeated the other. What is certain, from Orme's careful analysis, is that Camus would no more have deemed the current regime in Algeria 'just' than he would have approved of any prolongation of the manifestly 'unjust' pied-noir exploitation of the indigenous population of his homeland.
More broadly, this book helps us to understand, and sympathize with, the difficulties that any writer of a liberal-democratic outlook faces when dealing with the harsh realities of politics (what Harold Macmillan famously referred to as 'events, dear boys, events;). Voltaire in France was outraged by the flagrant injustice of the Calas affair, Swift in Ireland by the cold indifference of absentee landlords, Orwell in Spain by the Communists' cynical betrayal of the republican cause, and Camus by the vengeful nature of the death penalty. There is, alas, little evidence that the denunciations of literary moralists like these great writers bother the Pol Pots or Kim II-Sungs of the world. But that is no reason for letting tyrants off the hook. As Orme shows, Camus's scrupulously honest probing of liberal dilemmas will remain relevant long after today's dictators are consigned to the dustbin of history. In confronting their successors, freedom-loving people will, long into the future, be able to draw inspiration from Camus's meditations on justice.
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