Caligula

Camus transforms the historical portrayal of Caligula. He suggests that the young emperor is not experiencing psychosis but is rather quite logical. Caligula says this himself: “All that’s needed, I should say, is to be logical right through, at all costs” (8).

If it were only Caligula saying such things, the reader might still suspect psychosis, but Cherea, the most level-headed character in the play, repeats and affirms Caligula’s logic: “He is converting his philosophy into corpses and—unfortunately for us—it’s a philosophy that’s logical from start to finish” (21).

Strictly speaking, to be “logical” does not necessarily mean that an argument is true—it only means that it validly proceeds from its own premises. However, Caligula believes that the logic of his position reflects its correspondence to reality. In the blasphemous litany he forces the patricians to recite, he refers to the world’s lack of truth as a “verity of verities” (41)—that is, as an ultimate truth. With this paradoxical turn of phrase, he conveys his belief that the world is meaningless. If his premise is correct—that the final reality is that “men die; and they are not happy” (8)—then life is meaningless.

Cherea, however, adds nuance to Caligula’s perspective. While he agrees with the logic of Caligula’s argument, he does not think that logic is the only measure by which a position should be judged. In reference to his own way of thinking, Cherea admits to Caligula: “My plan of life may not be logical, but at least it’s sound” (51). The implication is that Caligula’s philosophy is unsound. Regardless of its logic, or even of its truth, it is not possible for humans to build a life upon its principles. Thus, it loses its value as a philosophical system. It is unworkable in a practical sense, and perhaps even dangerous, which in Cherea’s view means that it needs to be discarded. Throughout the play, there is an ongoing dialogue about whether a position’s logic is enough to make it worth pursuing.

In the author’s preface to the play’s 1958 publication, Camus writes that “if [philosophy] exists, it stands on the level of this assertion by the hero: ‘Men die; and they are not happy’” (vi). If there is no reality beyond this life, and if death does away with all the attachments, memories, and values of life, then all those things have no lasting value. “I now know that nothing, nothing lasts,” says Caligula (71). In the emperor’s view, death is the ultimate reality, stripping away all meaning and worth.

Caligula’s philosophy allows him to deal out death without any hesitation or compunction. In his view, death is inevitable and renders everything else in his victims’ lives meaningless. Therefore, there would be no reason not to kill them whenever the fancy struck. Caligula thus exerts power by randomly executing members of the patrician class and tricking interlocutors to their deaths by entrapping them in their own words.

Caligula is convinced that death is his destiny. It appears inevitable, and so he makes no attempts to escape it beyond his idealistic pursuit of the impossible. Rather than put down the assassination coup, he destroys the evidence of its existence and allows the conspirators to keep planning, all while continuing behavior that led to the plot in the first place. As he destroys the evidence implicating Cherea, Caligula says, “your emperor awaits his repose. It’s his way of living and being happy” (54). Caligula suggests that the only practical way of living is to embrace death as one’s destiny.

Caligula finally faces his own death. Rather than end the play on that note, however, Camus provides an unexpected twist. It is evident that Caligula is dying as the curtain falls, but the final line repudiates death: “I’m still alive!” (74). Here Camus suggests that the ideas which motivated the emperor’s behavior are still alive in the world, as inescapably present as death itself.