 Hi, my name is Monty Johnson. I teach philosophy at the University of California, San Diego And this is the fourth of my lectures on alberca moves the plague la peste originally published 1947 I'm using the translation by Stuart Gilbert published in 1948 So this is part four and part four comes after the Pedestal climax chapter of part three where the graphic description of math's death was provided now we get self-revelations and Transformations of the main characters their perceptions of themselves and of their friends Strangers in the world are revealed reflected and changed in various ways as a result of the plague and and the chapter culminates in a very philosophical discussion and conversation between tarot and Rio and Because of this philosophical content, I will spend most of the presentation discussing that But first we have a description in chapter 19 after briefly describing the exhaustion of the essential frontline health care workers Rio and his friends during September and October Chapter 19 mostly consists of tarot's observations about coddard The criminal fugitive smuggler black marketeer He's a vicious and unhappy man who is thriving in a city Or almost everyone except the health care heroes seems to be slouching towards Vice lethargy and unhappiness because of the horrible circumstances Many people are brought down to coddard's level Fear and cowardice are becoming widespread in commonplace So in this circumstance coddard himself Finally feels like he belongs and he actually sympathizes and understands the feelings of other people For the first time the world and other people make sense to him even while it's turned upside down for them Coddard was already cut off from other people Before they all became cut off from each other and now that they have become cut off from each other He has become connected to them like an experienced older sibling or elder and yet ironically He's described as mostly enjoying Associating with the youths and their youthful pursuits going to bars restaurants and clubs where Social distancing regulations are ignored and even flaunted now in Chapter 19 we also get a description of a theater piece Coddard invites to row to the theater to see a performance of Gluck's orpheus Which a troop that has become trapped in oron is performing continuously Now orpheus describes the painful separation of orpheus and his lover Eurydice Eurydice has died and departed for the underworld orpheus's laments begging the Lord of the underworld To release his dead lover these laments hardly aroused the emotion of the audience in oron Because they have become indifferent to this kind of separation as a defense mechanism against their own all-too-real suffering But they are finally jolted and surprised at the third scene when Eurydice is Slipping finally away from her lover and the actor playing orpheus Chose this moment to stagger grotesquely to the footlights his arms and legs splayed out under his antique robe and Fell down in the middle of the property sheepfold at the same Moment the orchestra stopped playing the audience rose and began to leave the auditorium Slowly at first and finally the crowd Stampeded toward the exits wedged together in the bottlenecks and pouring out into the street in a confused mass with shrill cries of dismay So the mythological story about the separation of lovers due to death Which normally has a very mythological and perhaps Distant feel to it to this audience seems to be stark realism Because it's a dramatic picture of their life in these days plague is on the stage in the guise of a disarticulated mummer the actor or Mime Represents all of their memories and so at the climax of this play where this grotesque Display takes place. We have a kind of second climax of the novel itself after the description of death in the pedestal part three and We reflect on this Allegory which is an allegory, but it's assumed this frightening realist dimension Occurring within camoos plague, which is itself a very realistic description of the plague but at the same time an allegory for the plague of fascism and politics The separation of lovers is here used to depict or represent Not just the misery of being separated from lovers But the permanent misery of being separated from someone you love permanent separation being a kind of death now Character development chapter 20 Discusses Rambeir It takes place in early September and so it chronologically proceeds chapter 19 But whereas chapter 19 was general and updated us on several characters Chapter 20 is focused on Rambeir Rambeir continues to work under Rio with the voluntary sanitation squads Learning that he has a fortnight to wait until the guards will at last have an opportunity to help him escape through the front gates at Midnight undercover of darkness Now on the appointed day Rambeir visits the doctor at a place where tarot is acting as Rio's secretary They have a brief conversation in the office under masks Quote whenever any of them spoke through the mask the muslin or gauze Bulged and grew moist over the lips. This gave a sort of unreality to the conversation It was like a colloquial of statues and if you've ever spoken to other people wearing a mask It's a very unsettling effect. You can't read their lips or see their lips move their facial expression is obscured and it greatly inhibits communication and Connection But now that Rambeir has finally reached the end of his elaborate quest to escape from the town and the plague Which has been described over several chapters He unexpectedly announces that he's decided to stay and fight the plague Because despite his desire to reunite with his lover a desperate desire he says quote if you win away he would feel ashamed of himself and That would embarrass his relations with the woman he loved so again he acts out of shame But Rio Replies that there's nothing shameful in preferring happiness to the misery of their current situation and Rambeir agrees, but he replies that it may be shameful to be happy by oneself one can't be entirely happy When knowing that one has committed a shameful act in order to secure that happiness or pleasure and So Rambeir has changed and he's exhibited self control over his desire and found a way to intelligently pursue that desire but in a way that's moderated by virtue by a Sense of shame in the first place But the result is that he will enjoy a greater share of happiness in the end Then if he had directly pursued the object of his desire without moderating it through a sense of shame now in chapter 21 the pathetic death of Othans child jocks is the backdrop for a crisis of faith on the part of Father Pantelou Recalled that Othan had been dismissive of the rats in the plague Even refusing to socially distance when his wife was under quarantine, but eventually When she was he had to be isolated at the municipal stadium, which has been converted into a mass isolation ward his wife and daughter remain at the quarantine hospital and his son jocks is at The is being treated by Rio He's suffering from the plague and his case is so bad that the medical team has decided to test out the Experimental plague serum on him in a last-ditch effort to save his life and the extreme Misery and suffering of this child is graphically described and Pantelou who has been serving with the voluntary Sanitation squads Sinks to his knees and exclaims my god spare this child desperately Praying to his god Now in the aftermath of this everybody's in a bad mood Rio and Pantelou have a terse exchange of arguments The child was clearly innocent Pantelou acknowledges this but explains That sort of thing is revolting because it passes our human understanding But perhaps we should love that which we cannot understand and this enrages Rio who replies No father. I have a very different idea of love and until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture so you should not Love this even if it's caused by God and even if you should love God a scheme of things where God causes the torture of children that cannot be loved So Pantelou alleges that Rio like him is working for man's salvation, but Rio replies to this. No, I don't aim so high. I'm concerned with man's health and for me his health comes first and Pantelou's ministering to their salvation is not nearly as useful or effective or in the end Sensible so Chapter 22 Then is focused on father Pantelou. It's the end of father Pantelou in the previous chapter 21 We've seen his faith tested when he witnesses the agonizing death of Othan's son jocks but From the day on which he saw a child die Something seemed to change in Pantelou and his face bore traces of the rising tension of his thoughts Pantelou tells Rio that he's working on a radical essay entitled is a priest justified in consulting a doctor and When Rio expresses interest in the topic Pantelou tells him to attend his upcoming sermon So the change in Pantelou's own view of things is represented by the differences between the first sermon the first sermon was Given in part 2 chapter 11 it described the plague as a divine punishment for your religion a kind of collective punishment for people not being religious enough and In this second sermon in chapter 22 The plague is instead described a bit differently as a test of religious faith Can one maintain faith in the face of these horrors? Whereas the scientific approach tries to explain the cause of the plague itself and this is what Rio and His associates are interested in Pantelou instead stresses Learning the lesson that the plague has to teach He distinguishes between things that we can grasp is coming from God and things that we cannot For example a libertine burning in hell and a child suffering are both evils But the former is something we can grasp we can think of it as being a punishment But the latter we cannot grasp and cannot understand since the child is innocent Now Pantelou does not say Does not take the easy way and say that the child's suffering will later be compensated for by some kind of eternal Eternal bliss for who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can Compensate for a single moments of human suffering Rio asks So as a result we have to accept all suffering as coming from God and being due to God Even though we can't grasp the cause and so a time of Testing has come for all of us. We must either believe everything Believe what the church is telling us or deny it all Taro later summarizes Pantelou's position as a Christian should either lose his faith or should consent to the things that are happening like innocent children dying Pantelou refuses to lose his faith in God. Therefore, he must embrace even a child's suffering as having some kind of positive meaning That God has some intention with this that we simply cannot grasp and so Pantelou rejects the naturalistic approach to understanding how the disease afflicks people as a result of physical processes and It's really a pretty random thing. Some of them are innocent some of the innocent are afflicted whereas some of the guilty like Cotard aren't afflicted with it and the doctors natural scientific explanations can make sense of this but Pantelou has a crisis of making sense of this within his own Theistic worldview and So he's been forced to the conclusion that we must accept even these horrible senseless things as somehow coming from God and being meant by God and thus to answer the question in his article a priest is not justified in consulting a doctor So when Pantelou becomes ill He refuses to consult a doctor in accordance with his principles When he finally consents to being brought into the hospital just to be in accordance with the civic regulations Rio can't actually diagnose the illness. It seems that Pantelou has a serious illness But it's not the plague. He doesn't show any of the symptoms of the plague Still his condition steadily worsens Rio offers to stay with him in what seemed to be his last hours, but Pantelou refuses saying Priests can have no friends. They've given their all to God So he dies clutching a crucifix the perfect representation of innocence suffering a Divine mystery in which he's put all his faith Chapter 23 begins on November 2nd All souls day the day of the dead nicer cooler weather has come on But the cemeteries remain Unvisited flowers are no longer brought to the graves. The day of the dead is every day now the citizens Do some absurd things like buying and wearing oiled raincoats even in fair weather because of a Report and a rumor that these have been used effectively against the plague and were 200 years ago Meanwhile, health care workers must all wear masks and protective gear because the pneumatic form of the plague is becoming more common than the bubonic one so the contagious danger is even worse and shops profiteer from Selling these things that are supposed to be like Protection but also have raised prices on essential food stuffs The result is that the poor are hurt Disproportionately also because they've all become unemployed and there's a growing sense of Injustice that just makes everybody much more upset Meanwhile the newspapers Maintain a kind of optimism as does One of Rio's associates doctor Richard. Dr. Richard points out that the graph After its long rising curve had flattened out So they've flattened the curve of the death rate. It's still horribly high But people who are desperate for good news are relieved to hear that the rate of increase in death has slowed But just before the authorities are set to announce a Relaxation of the public health restrictions the optimist. Dr. Richard is himself Ironically carried off by the plague Now the municipal stadium once used for sporting events has become a guarded isolation camp to row and Rambar visit it those Quarantined sit in the stands silently watching a field Once a host to exciting spectacles of sport is now pitched with tents on which there is no movement or action whatsoever just people killing time and staring off into space There to row and Rambar Encounter Othon who asked them if his son Jacques Suffered before dying. He's got the news that he died but since he is in isolation. He wasn't able to be there They reply to him that they thought that he had not suffered In fact, he had suffered so badly that it provoked a crisis of faith on the part of father Pantalo as we saw Now after this to row and Rio go late one evening to visit the Spaniard asthma patient and while there they're invited to go upstairs and enjoy the view from chairs on the terrace above and as they do to row Warmly asks Rio to take an hour off for their friendship in which they have a very philosophical conversation to row begins By telling about his late father who as a prosecuting attorney had brought his son to watch him at court one day the young boy Fixated on the defendant perceiving him not as a criminal, but just an extremely unfortunate person he experiences a terrifying intimacy with the man and a resulting alienation from his father who the Hemantley and with great Rhetorical and oratorical power manages to get the man convicted and sentenced to death His father is then required to be at the execution Which to row describes as what would better be called murder in its most despicable form Toro runs away from home Abandons his middle class upbringing and becomes an impoverished drifter He says my real interest in life was the death penalty to my mind The social order around me was based on the death sentence. And so he joins up with other radical activists Needless to say he says I know that we too on occasion pass sentences of death Suggesting that he engaged in some kind of supported terroristic activities But I was told that these few deaths were inevitable for the building up of a new World in which murder would cease to be but he becomes Disillusioned with these tactics and the means don't seem to him to justify the end and Here we cannot help but see a hint of autobiography Because Camus of course was part of the French resistance and was forced to consider how his own pacifistic views and views about murder and the death penalty Related to resistant Plots for example to kill Germans bombed German soldiers He discusses such moral Issues in his letters to a German friend the friend had become a Nazi and Camus discusses why he thinks participating in resistance efforts Could be justified now to row describes Witnessing another execution later in life and seeing the agonized look on the condemned man's face Makes everything real before his eyes and he's forced to reflect on his own connections to murder Quote I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the death of thousands of people That I'd even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles Which could only end that way Concepts like necessity force majeure Etc are abused in order to excuse murder Which seems more and more common so that he says there's a sort of competition for who will kill the most Recall that this is being Written during and immediately after World War two But and ask yourself whether this competition of who will kill the most has Changed since then Finally he says quote as time went on. I merely learned that even those Were better than the rest who could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill Because such as the logic by which they live and that is why we cannot stir a finger in this world without risk of Bringing death to somebody so we're implicated in the network of causes and institutions so that we are Connected to People being put to death people being killed in war and so on and so this occasions a Reflection on what we might call plague ethics Having come to the realization that everyone by being part of an unjust society is implicated in murder to row is ashamed He compares the moral Copability to this to being plague stricken quote. I realized that we all have plague and I have lost my peace I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague stricken So that is why I resolved to have no truck with anything which directly or indirectly for good reasons or bad Brings death to anyone or justifies putting another to death now this of course since all organized society is connected with institutions and practices that Implicate us in murder Requires him to live apart from society. He says once I definitely refused to kill I do myself to an exile that can never end and thus his route his life as a Rootless drifter who just happened to wander to Oran before the action of the novel starts Tarot wants to become a kind of saint despite his disbelief in God. He pursues moral purity by a radical change in his lifestyle quote that too is why this Epidemic has taught me nothing new except that I must fight at your side referring to Rio. I Know positively. Yes, Rio. I can say I know the world Inside out as you may see that each of us has the plague within him No one no one on earth is free from it And I know too that we must keep endless watch on ourselves last in a careless moment We breathe in someone's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe the rest health integrity purity if you like is a product of the human will of a Vigilance that must never falter the good man The man who infects hardly anyone is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention And it needs tremendous willpower a never-ending tension to the mind to avoid such lapses Yes, Rio. It is worrying business being plague-stricken. It is still more wearying To refuse to be it That's why everyone in the world today looks so tired Everyone is more or less sick of plague This is an absolutely key Philosophical message that resonates to this day Just as those who are stricken with plague don't choose to be infected and don't choose to harm others Those of us who live in and partake in an unjust society Don't choose or intend to harm others, but we bear responsibility for this harm And so we can be expected to take enormous Precautions and pains in order to avoid doing so just as those who may carry the plague can be expected to take enormous Precautions and pains not only to avoid infecting others, but also to help prevent further infection and Save those who are infected. So we're expected to Self-isolate observe stay-at-home orders wear masks socially distance and to the extent that we consciously and self-consciously do so and are careful to do so then we Minimize our connection with this chain of causes which results in other people's deaths But that means that doing the opposite of those Refusing to socially distance going to underground clubs Refusing to wear masks protesting stay-at-home orders Not staying isolated when we're sick that these directly and morally Implicate us Now it's interesting to Rose ethics could be compared to Socrates in the Gorgias Socrates in the Gorgias says that he can imagine nothing worse than putting another man to death unjustly and That he'd rather have harm inflicted upon him than inflicted on another in the least bit so to row is willing to Sacrifice his prosperous lifestyle and become a rootless Drifter in order to minimize the possibility that he's putting another man to just to death unjustly or We may compare his view as we did a Couple of in in part two Compare it to Epicurus and Lucretius who described the tranquility that follows from avoiding any wrongdoing and that's the pangs of conscience and fear of punishment and claims that this tranquility is worth the sacrifice of ambition and desire for worldly success or We may compare him to Hobbes who discerns that the first law of nature is to always pursue peace and Abandon any right of nature to kill another person even for your own protection so this These philosophical reflections almost close out this part, but the part ends with some glimmers of Tranquility some even possibilities of happiness that seem to follow from the Careful philosophical knowledge and reflection that the characters to row and Rio have They cap off their philosophical discussion With going out to the sea for night swimming There's a brief and unexpected feeling of tranquility a kind of windfall of happiness for them They swim together and feel at once Isolated from the world and at last free of the town and the plague They have a very strong fellow feeling and can already see that they will cherish the memory of this brief respite Despite the horrors to which they must now return Such are their thoughts as they pass the plague watchman in returning to town In town Rio is plunged back into constant work He helps Othon secure release from the municipal stadium Quarantine camp with some unexpected difficulties But once he does Othon decides not to return to work But rather to take leave from work and to Rio's astonishment to return To the camp as a volunteer and he says I know it may sound absurd But I'd feel less separated from my boy So Othon this Official in the city has had a complete turn around from not wanting to bother With the rats or the plague not acknowledging that they were a problem Refusing to social distance refusing to wear a mask as The members of his own family become sick and his son actually dies from it. It changes him completely and he decides to Surround himself with the plague but focus on those less fortunate with then him try to help others and that Makes him feel better Now as a dismal Christmas time approaches Cotard meanwhile has illegal enterprises that are flourishing Grand his neighbor, however, is not doing very well Rio finds him wandering in the town and they share together a moment of anguish It turns out that grand is delirious with illness Rio diagnoses him with the plague the case looks bad and Toro offers to stay with grand on the night that Rio predicts that grand will not survive But in the morning it has turned out that grand has survived and will live on and so be able to do his solid and continuous work and over the next couple of weeks there are More pleasant recoveries and surprises like this and even the rats seem to be returning only this time their appearance is a sign of a slow return to normality