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The scholarship on Albert Camus’s last completed novel has gotten it wrong. The Fall is not a confession, a Christian allegory, a musing on pride, or an expression of horror at a godless universe. The novel is a portrait of the judge-penitent; but we have as yet no sufficient explanation of what a judge-penitent is. I show that using an insight from de Tocqueville, and some observations of culture in his own time, Camus discovered the judge-penitent and recognized it as a threat to liberal society. The Fall thus belongs with Darkness at Noon and The Possessed as a novel of warning.

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The Fall and the New Paradox of Liberalism

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年

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  • Craig DeLancey

摘要

The scholarship on Albert Camus’s last completed novel has gotten it wrong. The Fall is not a confession, a Christian allegory, a musing on pride, or an expression of horror at a godless universe. The novel is a portrait of the judge-penitent; but we have as yet no sufficient explanation of what a judge-penitent is. I show that using an insight from de Tocqueville, and some observations of culture in his own time, Camus discovered the judge-penitent and recognized it as a threat to liberal society. The Fall thus belongs with Darkness at Noon and The Possessed as a novel of warning.