"First of all, what are the elements that constitute European culture? I will answer that I don't know. However, each of us has a privileged perspective, emotionally in some way (which does not prevent it, moreover, from being logical and based on observation), which makes him choose one, among others, of these elements. European culture is initially a pluralistic culture. I mean that it is the place of diversity of thoughts, contradictions, opposing values, and endless dialectic. The living dialectic in Europe is the one that does not end up in a kind of absolutist and orthodox ideology. This pluralism, which has always been the foundation of the concept of European freedom, seems to me to be the most important contribution of our culture. This is exactly what is in danger today and we owe it, in every way, to preserve it. [...]"

In April 1955, Camus came to Athens, invited by the Hellenic-French Cultural Association and its president, psychiatrist Angelos Katakouzinos, as the main speaker at a symposium on the future of European culture, with distinguished Greek intellectuals as his interlocutors, such as Evangelos Papanoutsos, Nikos Chatzikyriakos-Gikas, Giorgos Theotokas, Konstantinos Tsatsos, etc. The text, based on the recording made by Andreas Empeirikos, seems chillingly relevant today, sixty years later...