Journal of the History of Philosophy

Notes and Discussions On the Mistranslation of La Mesure in Camus's Political Thought These reflections [that smoking may not be sinful after all] satisfied Ernest that on the whole he had better smoke [after a long difficult abstinence], so he sneaked to his portmanteau and brought out his pipes and tobacco again. There should be moderation , he felt, in all things, even in virtue; so for that night he smoked immoderately. Samuel Butler, The Way of AU Flesh 1~ It is to be expected that the understanding of concepts risks even greater ambiguity when a language translation is involved. Yet in most cases there is a range of permissible ambiguity in translation within which no sigificant distortion in the author's meaning results. However, in the case of Albert Camus's English-translated political thought we are confronted with what I see as a key term mistranslation, and one which has fundamentally misled English-speaking readers about the political and moral philosophy of an important twentieth-century thinker. The French term in question is/a mesure, a concept Camus employs in several of his political essays, but most notably in The Rebers closing chapters. It is by means of/a mesure that Camus seeks to cure the various nihilistic deformities of contemporary European thought and behavior. The problem is that several influential English translators have translated Camus's use of/a mesure as "moderation."' Consider, for example, the following examples from Anthony Bower's translation of L'Homme Rg'volt~: x) Camus: "Mesure et D6mesure" (chapter heading) (363). Bower: "Moderation and Excess" (u94). 2) Camus: "[Dans I'~ge de la technique] la n6cessit6 d'une mesure.., suscite la r6flection propre ~ organiser cette mesure. Ou cette valeur de limite sera servie, en tout cas, ou la d6mesure contemporaine universelle. ' See, for example, Anthony Bower, The Rebel (New York: Vintage Books, x956); John Cruickshank, Albert Camus (London: Oxford University Press, s959); Brian Masters, Camus: A Study (New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefieid, 1974); Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Philip Thody (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, z968). [t~S] 124 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:1 JANUARY 1992 Cette loi de la mesure s'(~tend aussi bien a toutes antinomies de la pens~e r~voltee (365). Bower: "[In the age of technology] the necessity for moderation.., gives rise to reflections on the proper way to organize this moderation. Either this value of limitation will be realized, or temporary excesses will only find their principle and peace in universal destruction. This law of moderation equally well extends to all contradictions of rebellious thought" (295). 3) Camus: "La mesure n'est pas le contraire de la rdvolte. C'est la r~volte qui est la mesure, qui I'ordonne, la d(ffend et la recrc~e a travers l'histoire et ses dc~sordres" (372). Bower: "Moderation is not the opposite of rebellion. Rebellion in itself is moderation , and it demands, defends, and recreates it throughout history and its eternal disturbances" (3ol)1 Now while "moderation" is, of course, one possible meaning of/a mesure (in French and English) I want to argue that "moderation" is not (and cannot be) Camus's intended meaning. To construe/a mesure as "moderation" works fundamentally to distort Camus's political philosophy and does so, moreover, in an especially unjust way as it tends to wed Camus to the very kind of thought he is explicitly denying. The mistranslation at issue is particularly obvious in Bower's The Rebel (the only English translation ofL'Homme R~volt~ in print), and as the latter is undoubtedly the most widely read and influential presentation of Camus's political thought my examination is restricted primarily to this principal work. In this examination I shall briefly review the essential features of Camus's political thought, including a discussion of his strong reliance on classical Greek moral philosophy (especially Plato). It is my contention that the Greek ethical concept from which Camus's/a mesure implicitly derives is sophrosyme, a cardinal moral concept which must not be translated as "moderation," but rather as "measuredness," "measure," "harmony," "limitedness," "proportion," or "rule." As for the need, in this country at least...