Page 14 - GALIET DIONYSUS´RETURN: Good and Evil Dithyrambs IV

mirror.”17 Properly so, Silenus’ chilling debut confirms Camus deepest fears
“If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible, and nothing has any importance. There is no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or to devote ourselves to the care of lepers. Evil and virtue are mere chance and caprice.”18
Furthermore, “since nothing is either true or false, good or bad” Camus says, “the world will not be divided into the just and unjust, but into masters and slaves.”19 Camus is right. As evidenced by history, while humanity insists on a master-slave relationship, there shall never be justice, but only injustice and with it, the seeds of rebellion. Since the history of humanity is the history of injustice, Camus “I rebel therefore we exist” clamors with pertinacity and ressentiment. It was Socrates who first inferred that a master-slave society is fallible because it responds to Thrasymachus’20 definition of the just: “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.”21
When Socrates dismisses this argument by saying that rulers are fallible and therefore liable to make decisions that are not
17 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. 8
18 Camus, Albert. The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1991. 5
19 Camus, Albert. The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1991. 5
20 Plato. The Republic. Trans. Grube, G.M.A. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, Inc., 1992. 21 Plato. The Republic. Trans. Grube, G.M.A. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, Inc., 1992. 338c
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