Abstract

The social structures and thought patterns of the modern world are the fruits of the Enlightenment, which begins by eliminating final causal explanations in favour of purely material and efficient causes. The development and great technical success of Enlightenment procedures has, however, produced a cultural blindness about the good. Camus's novel shows us this cultural blindness through characters who themselves suffer from it; for modern man, it is almost a natural evil—we are born into it. Camus' hope must have been that the vision of the characters' incapacity might help break us from the same incapacity. What the cured life looks like Camus does not say; in the world of our plague, it appears as either odd or mystery.