Page 10 - GALIET DIONYSUS´RETURN: Good and Evil Dithyrambs IV

Albert Camus, in The Rebel,3 effusively criticizes the Romantic Movement as one of history’s most decadent farandoles, instrumental in distorting our moral notions of good and evil and influencing nihilism. Ever since the romantic ideals of “Equality, Liberty and Fraternity” swept the French Revolution to its Reign of Terror, to Napoleon’s tyranny, to Nietzsche’s “God is Dead”, to Russia’s ardent nihilism, humanity has been faced with the “absurdity” of human existence. Ever since “man has been protesting [protests] against his condition and against the whole of creation”4 because he has been “...frustrated by the universe,”5 man has worsened his rational condition: turning to reckless desire, he has embraced the laws of universal crime.
Consequently, humanity is no longer faced with God-Man dealing with life’s endless cycle of suffering, evil and death, but with man annihilating himself and others because his life lacks meaning, force and razón de ser (reason to be). In this new epic, everything is possible: uncontrolled desires, extreme power, extreme negation and extreme despair. The new Man- God ideology, therefore, consciously assumes that man has license to commit hideous crimes to benefit humanity including suicide and mass murder leaving mere fragmentations and traces of the self.
3 Camus, Albert. The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1991.
4 Camus, Albert. The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1991. 23
5 Camus, Albert. The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1991. 23
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