Philosophy of War and Peace: Anthropocentric Dichotomy of Love/Humanity as Motivation of Heroism (Based on “Letters to a German Friend” by Albert Camus)

Abstract

The article considers the humanistic anthropocentric position of the French writer and philosopher A. Camus in his “Letters to a German Friend” (1943–1944). During the World War II the writer experienced a real existential drama of conscience caused by situation in the occupied France. The country experienced horror and humiliation of temporary occupation and managed to turn its defeat into victory. Fascism in the eyes of the prominent humanist writer and philosopher of France is revealed in the context of the philosophy of war/peace. This context is specified by a number of statements, such as love/hate, violence/nonviolence, etc. ‘Disturbed Conscience’ of A. Camus, in spite of patriotic reasons, sought intercourse between different pairs of opposition: strength/weakness, heroism/cowardice, etc. The oppositions we/you, our/your appeal to such concepts as the price of sacrifice, the price of loss, the price of victory.
 The monological epistolary genre allows showing the psychological and moral reality of the war, with possible shifts in time and appeal to the Other. A. Camus strengthens the existential problem, the core of which is the opposition “Me – Other” (according to M. Buber and E. Levinas) and “Me like the Other» (P. Ricker). In fact, he initiates a new ontological and linguistic reality embedded in the paradigm of a new/other discourse of war. The binary oppositions similar/unrelated, friend/foe, one’s own/alien, hero/traitor, winner/ defeated are being demounted in the field of psychology of violence reflected by the author within the psychology of nonviolence. At the same time, the basic oppositional pair patriot/collaborator is integrated into a complex system of psychological controversies being the ground of Camus’ psychology of nonviolence. The writer expands a number of oppositional concepts adding the dichotomy of ‘two Europes’. He anthropologizes the considered problems to the highest extent, placing a man with the whole complex of human values in the center of his ‘arguments of conscience’.