History without a value to transfigure it, is controlled by the law of expediency.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- History needs moral value to avoid being driven solely by practical convenience.
- In plain terms
- Without values, history is ruled by what is convenient.
- What can you take from it?
- Moral values guide historical progress.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What values should guide our future?
- Is efficiency enough for progress?
Another view
Convenience often drives real historical change.
More from Albert Camus
Historical thought was to deliver man from subjection to a divinity; but this liberation demanded of him the most absolute subjection to historical evolution. …
Permalink to quote #141 History, undoubtedly, is one of the limits of man's experience; in this sense the revolutionaries are right. But man, by rebelling, imposes in his turn a limit…
Permalink to quote #143 Historical reasoning is not a type of reasoning that, within the framework of its own functions, can pass judgment on the world. While pretending to judge it, …
Permalink to quote #140
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