Albert Camus to the Pantheon, please

 Albert Camus

"In an effort to strengthen the French national identity president Nicholas Sarkozy has named writer Albert Camus to the Pantheon, the final resting place for social and intellectual heroes of the Republic.

In speeches and articles he [Camus] called out human rights abuses and labor camps in the Soviet Union long before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was smuggled out."

 

 The Panthéon in Paris

And so what of Sartre?

Sartre's and de Beauvoir's grave

"Albert Camus is part of the French cultural patrimony and he belongs in the Pantheon. Sarkozy would be remiss if, as president, he does not redouble his efforts to put him there. As for the French left, they ought to realize it's time to tone down the culture of complaint. The next time they gain power they can start a Twitter campaign to put Sartre in the Pantheon and see if it goes viral..."

Left and right swings the eternal pendulum of man's folly, God's elusiveness.

Camus says:

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is."

Sartre says:

"God is dead. Let us not understand by this that he does not exist or even that he no longer exists. He is dead. He spoke to us and is silent. We no longer have anything but his cadaver. Perhaps he slipped out of the world, somewhere else like the soul of a dead man. Perhaps he was only a dream...God is dead."

Read more of Eric Erhmann's musings on the virtues and travails of Camus here.