Dr. Peter Francev's Address to The Albert Camus Society 2020

Albert Camus, Edith Stein, and the Problem of Empathy in The Plague

Abstract: Whilst there is no mention of the phenomenology or ethics of Edith Stein (1891-1942) in the fiction and non-fiction of Albert Camus (1913-1960), one can easily surmise that Camus, being a part of the Parisian café scene during the years leading up to, including and beyond the second world war, would have encountered some discussions of Stein’s thought through Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) or Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), prior to his falling out with both men. It is then the purpose of this paper to set out and accomplish several things: firstly, I would like to provide a very brief historical introduction to Stein; secondly, I should like to offer readers a concise summary of Stein’s principle text on empathy (On the Problem of Empathy)[1]; finally, I would like to offer an exposition and analysis of Stein’s concept of empathy, from a phenomenological perspective, in Camus’s novel The Plague[2]. To say that 2020 has been an ‘uneventful’ year is a gross understatement. Clearly, the Covid-19 pandemic affected us in ways which we could have never imagined. One benefit of the pandemic, as you are probably aware, is, once again, the intense interest in The Plague[3]. As I plan to illustrate, the novel contains six major and minor characters (Dr. Rieux, Paneloux, Tarrou, Rambert, Grand, and Cottard) from which Camus utilizes in order to demonstrate an individual’s interaction with empathy in the midst of an epidemic; however, I would like to first look at Stein in order to provide the framework for the novel’s analysis.

[1] Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. Translated by Waltraut Stein (Springer: The Hague, 1964).

[2] Albert Camus, The Plague. Translated by Stuart Gilbert (Vintage: New York, 1948).

[3] According to the NY Times, The Plague has seen a resurgence on the best seller list. In addition to Vintage having an extremely difficult time keeping the novel in stock, Camus scholars Dr. Robert Zaretsky and Dr. Peter Francev were interviewed by National Public Radio’s Salt Lake City affiliate regarding Camus’s life and the significance of The Plague, respectively.