The central question in the postwar French literary world was whether literature should “engage” with society or safeguard the autonomy of the work and a universal ethics.

 The central question in the postwar French literary world was whether literature should “engage” with society or safeguard the autonomy of the work and a universal ethics. Sartre saw “literature as action,” insisting that writers bear responsibility toward history and should spur readers to practice. Political neutrality, he argued, amounts to complicity. From the journal Les Temps modernes (1945–), he intervened in contemporary struggles—colonial questions, labor conflicts, and more. The blind spot of this view is the risk that ideals may end up justifying real violence. Camus, by contrast, in The Rebel (1951) criticized revolutionary violence and historical determinism, proposing an ethics of “rebellion = measure.” No end, he held, can outrank human dignity; murder as a means must be rejected. In 1952, Francis Jeanson’s scathing review of the book ran in Les Temps modernes; after a volley of open letters, Sartre and Camus broke off relations. Camus’s stance—shaped also by his Algerian background, rejecting violence on both sides—was attacked by the left as “impotent morality,” yet supported as an ethical brake on totalitarianism. The core of the dispute is a difference in value ordering: Sartre prioritizes historical efficacy (solidarity and responsibility), while Camus prioritizes universal justice and individual conscience (limit and measure). Sartre kept asking about the efficacy of “writing = action,” demanding choice and solidarity from readers. Camus set as a minimum justice that “no one becomes either executioner or victim,” valuing acknowledgment of human limits over political victory. The controversy split the postwar intellectual community, made the norm of engagement visible, and helped shift the center of gravity toward currents privileging the autonomy of works and language (the nouveau roman, structuralism). In short, the conflict exposed a lasting choice for literary practice—“action or conscience?”—inscribing this tension on the field thereafter.