Philoscopia

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Meursault

He feigns neither the emotions nor the reasons expected of him: a strange sincerity that lays bare the weight of convention.

novel · 1942

The Stranger, by Camus

An office clerk in Algiers and the narrator of , Meursault is a man without a story and without illusions, who says he does not know whether he loved his mother and sees little reason to change his life. He inhabits present sensation, the sun, the sea, tobacco, a stranger to social play-acting and to the language of expected feeling. places him in a world without providence or any beyond, indifferent to the fate of men: he embodies , the one who lives without cheating about this divorce between human longing and the silence of the world.

7 / 80 axescoverage 9%

Wikidata

Relation to oneselfRelation to othersRelation to the worldAbsurdism — The meaning of life (Structuring position)Living in the present — Temporal orientation (Structuring position)Freeing ourselves from the fear — DeathTragic thought — Tonality of reality (Structuring position)Truthful rigorism — Sincerity (Structuring position)Atheism — Existence of GodThe primacy of feeling — Status of emotionsAbsurdismLiving in the presentTruthful rigorismAtheismThe primacy of feeling7OF 80 AXES9% covered
radius ∝ commitment◎ structuring position○ rim = uncovered
The essentialsthe positions at the core of this system of thought

  1. The world has no providence and no design: it is tenderly indifferent, and the same sun that fulfills can crush.

    Tragic thought90%Tonality of realitysee the position →

  2. One says only what one feels, even when lying would save: to feign a grief or a love is impossible.

    Truthful rigorism95%Sinceritysee the position →

  3. Only the instant of sensation counts: no project, no future to build, for one never really changes one's life.

    Living in the present80%Temporal orientationsee the position →

  4. All lives are worth the same and nothing really matters: no higher aim comes to justify existence.

    Absurdism90%The meaning of lifesee the position →
Relation to truthWhat can be known0/0 positioned
— no positions recorded
Relation to oneselfWho I am, how to live4/4 positioned
Major
0
10
90
0
Justification

Faced with every major choice, Meursault answers that at bottom it does not matter: to marry Marie or not, to take the Paris post or stay, one can say yes without anything really weighing in the balance. This is not a calculated indifference but a lived self-evidence: no life seems to him justified by a higher aim or by any , so that all are worth the same and no end comes to order them.

Part I, chapter 5: his answers to Marie about marriage and to his boss about Paris · Part II, chapter 5: his reaffirmed indifference to any higher aim

Major
80
10
10
Justification

Everything that occupies and fulfills Meursault holds within the instant of sensation: swimming with Marie, the cigarette smoked beside the coffin, the Sunday spent watching the street from the balcony. When his boss offers him a post in Paris, he declines it with no project or ambition, judging that one never really changes one's life. Deprived of that present, he uses memory only to kill time, a sign that he had lived until then with no recourse to any future or any past.

Part I, chapter 5: the refusal of the Paris post · Part I, chapter 2: Sunday on the balcony, pure presence to the street scene · Part II, chapter 2: the inventory of his room's memories to fill time

Major
60
40
0
0
Justification

Part II, chapter 5

Major
+0.8
Justification

Meursault never looks for a meaning or a hidden intention in events: things happen to him as the sun warms or the sea bears him up, with neither benevolence nor hostility. The very star that makes the swim voluptuous bears down with its blind force on the beach: the mark of a universe without providence, where no harmony watches over men. Before this world he holds himself with no revolt and no metaphysical consolation: a calm lucidity that expects from nature no tenderness it does not have.

Part I, chapter 6: the sun, a blind force neither benevolent nor hostile · Part I, chapter 2: the distant, sensory gaze upon the world

Relation to othersWhat we owe each other1/1 positioned
Major
−0.9
Justification

When Marie asks whether he loves her, Meursault simply answers that he probably does not, rather than saying what she hopes to hear; he plays no grief at his mother's funeral and admits he would rather not have seen her dead. He can no more cheat to save himself than to please: to say what he feels, and nothing else, is for him a necessity stronger than his own interest.

Part I, chapter 4: to Marie asking whether he loves her, he answers that it means nothing, but probably not · Part I, chapters 1-2: the absence of any feigned grief at his mother's funeral

Relation to the worldWhat there is2/2 positioned
Major
+0.9
Agnosticism (Huxley)
Justification

Meursault simply declares that he does not believe in God and holds the question to be unimportant. His whole life unfolds without the slightest religious reference, and he declines, steadily but without hostility, the consolations of faith that others try to impose on him.

Part II: his straightforward answer to those who urge him to believe · Part II, chapter 5: his steady refusal of religious consolation

1 more
inferable
+0.4
Educating the emotions
Justification

His conduct is never governed by rational deliberation but by bodily states: fatigue at the funeral, the sun and heat that overwhelm his conduct on the beach. He reports his affects without mastering or judging them, yet he grants them no moral truth either: a de facto, sensory sentimentalism, never claimed as a doctrine.

Part I, chapter 6: the beach scene, under the sway of the sun · Part I, chapter 1: the vigil and the funeral, dominated by fatigue and heat