| Author Quoted | Albert Camus |
| Title Quoted | homme revolte |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1966/08/09 |
| Imprint | [Paris] : Gallimard. [1951] |
| Quotation | I am not clear in what "live and act like atheists" presents a difficulty. How does an atheist act? Well, the way you put it, it is quite true that atheists don't necessarily have peculiar ways of acting in so far as they are just people like everyone else. Perhaps I should have qualified and spoken of those who devote themselves to carrying out a policy of military atheism"”and I suppose this is just religion in reverse. But again, as I don't have the text and forget exactly what I said, I can't clarify. All I can say is that I probably had in mind the kind of atheism which draws practical nihilistic conclusions from a somewhat high-powered animosity against the god-image (see Camus' The Rebel which explains this very well). This kind of atheism is aggressive, nihilistic, committed to deliberate terror etc. More common in Europe than here. When I think of all my nice warm atheist friends with whom I get along very well, I can see your point. |
| Quotation Source | The Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / [S.l.] : Flame. 1990, p. 341 |
| Letter to | Mark K. Stone |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
(If there is a link above showing up as a number, click it to open another window with a full text version.) |