Mother or Justice?

[Morty]

Albert Camus was once asked to choose between his mother and justice. Claiming human emotion was more important than some ephermal idea, he chose his mother. "I love justice, but I will defend my mother before justice." he said.

I'd also choose my mother. There is no doubt. It may be practically wrong, it may be selfish, but it is my final answer. You could give me 100 different reasons not to choose my mother, and it would change nothing.

[Io.]

Morty,

I think you have an interesting debate here and I like your reasoning but I'm a little unsure as to how I should interpret 'justice.' Is it merely supposed to be the /idea/ of justice? Here's an unrealistic situation:

My hypothetical mother is in breach of the law

However, all of my friends, relations and loved ones stand wrongfully accused of heresy/treason and will be sentenced to death unless I testify.

Now, in the name of justice I will support them, but only because I stand to lose more if I choose to save my mother, therefore the choice is a matter of value, to which, according to my own interest, I will choose who to save, with the possibility that justice is the outcome.

Maybe you could conduct something hypothetical, perhaps a case where I should testify or condemn in a situation which I do not feel so personally attached to.

Io.

[Scheherazade]

Albert Camus was once asked to choose between his mother and justice. Claiming human emotion was more important than some ephermal idea, he chose his mother. "I love justice, but I will defend my mother before justice." he said.


That is an interesting quote by Camus. Made me think of 'The Outsider' and wanted me to read and find out more about Camus' bio.

My choice... it would depend on many things... Justice for what? Under what conditions?

[musi]

my mother..
probably because i think she is the greatest woman on the planet and i've known her for quite a while :) , which makes me believe she is quite unlikely to do anything against justice..

but it is a tough question, really. i mean, if i were in a situation to choose between mother and justice, represented by another person i love, that could be really trying.. then the details would really decide it for me or my mother's opinion..

[dumptruckrabbit]

Is this sort of a hypothetical situation where you choose between your mothers’ death and the disappearance of justice? Well what would a world without justice be? What I have to consider is whether a world without my mother would be worse for me than a world without justice. I suppose I could also consider if it would be worse for other people, but I wont, because that wouldn’t change my mind, I’m selfish. Unfortunately for this argument, however, I’m having difficulty imagining a world where an abstract concept goes missing. But just because I feel I should say either way, id probably pick justice, as a world without my mother doesn’t strike me as all that bad, I’m not very close to the lady. Although, I would feel some grief at her death and I’m not sure how id feel about the death of an idea. I guess that’s what Camus was suggesting about the importance of human emotion over abstract concept. Overall I think its a problematic question, cant really be answered satisfactorily.

[utopian]

Camus rewrote the question, for he was not asked to choose between justice and his mother. When Camus went to Stockholm to get his Nobel in Literature, he was criticized by an Arab student who asserted that Camus didn't care about the plight of Arabs in Algeria. Camus replied: "I have to denounce blind terrorism in the streets of Algiers, which might one day strike my mother or my family. I believe in justice, but I'll defend my mother before justice."

This was not interpreted as being ambiguous or a simple criticism of terrorism as a tactic. It indicated that even though justice was on the side of the Arab nationalists, Camus sided with the French colonialists. Even after France moved towards independence for Algeria, Camus planned to campaign against it.

In my opinion, Camus's remarks were demagogic. Instead of discussing the plight of Arabs, he beat his breast about his family. It is akin to those members of the middle- and upper-class who chose Pinochet over the fear of communism in Chile. While many recognized the injustice done to the poor, they sided with Pinochet's repression while claiming to defend God and the family.

[Unregistered]

Well. Camus was an existentialist. For him, justice is an outside notion - a secondary one (not immediate). Thus he chooses that which gives justice meaning if it is ever to exist - his self (mother) and his own engagement with it.
The devotion to the mother is the priority that gives justice meaning in existence, as it relates to humans and not itself. Justice is meaningless without mother and self (the subject's relation to it, fleshed out absolutely).
Camus showed, by example, that the Arabs could only beat their own breasts -about family- and not about justice. Justice can be bloodthirsty. It deals balancing things that cannot truly be balanced. Family is salvation - it does not balance, it dedicates and proovides the feeding ground for existence. An individual's relation to the family, as a priority that takes precedent over everything, leads them away from the defense of an abstract that thinks in principles. You don't count the bodies of your family members. The idea of family taking precedent has to be internalised first if it is ever to spread to our conceptions of our enemies.
Camus might say to the terrorists of the time: "I represent injustice, but you have taken it further and intensified it. In this way you have been colonized by me. Each act of violence is the affirmation of your tendency to be better than your master in this game. Why take on the face of my injustice - you cannot destroy it by doing so, you can only become it. I will not let my injustice be intensified. Let us finish the game, and think of our mothers." The mother represents the unification of man. Camus would have stopped advocating French rule if he could see that the slaves had stopped trying to outdo their masters in injustice - if they had shown the bravery of being the sons of mothers and not the sons of injustice.

sis