Existentialism: Is a philosophy that emphasises the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe. The belief that one shapes one’s basic nature through the direction of life one chooses to live.
An existentialist emphasises freedom of choice and personal responsibility but regards human existence in a hostile universe as unexplainable.
Existence is a way of being, a structure of choices, even at the level of phenomenology.
'The Outsider' - Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French philosopher and journalist. The Outsider was the first novel Camus published. He is noted for his faith in man’s dignity in the face of what he saw as a cold, indifferent universe.
The Outsider is often referred to as an existential novel. This means that there is no higher meaning to the universe or to man’s existence, and no rational order to the events of the world. According to this meaning, human life is not invested with a redemptive or affirming purpose – there is nothing beyond man’s physical existence. Only some aspects of this definition appear in The Outsider.
Meursault could have been referred to as the ‘Outsider’ because he did not live life the way others did. He did not cry at his mother’s funeral, he did not show emotion like people would have expected him to, he did not always share his emotions and was able to deal with situations quickly and adapt. He is not like others therefore was known as the ‘outsider’.
Meursault refuses to be determined by other people - by love and marriage for example - and seeks authenticity and tries to live it. He has no guilt about his actions and he does not care about the consequences, he simply deals with them.
He is an existentialist as he determined his life on his own without considering the ‘normal’ approach to life, for example not believing in God and not turning to religion and belief in the afterlife once he is told he is going to be decapitated.
It is said that existential morality and psychotherapy aims to reduce feelings of guilt about the past and to promote ‘indifference’ towards the future. In this way the scope for freedom – making choices – in the present moment is enlarged, to which he becomes less inauthentic. The Outsider relates to this, as he has no guilt about putting his mother in the Home or killing the Arab.
To put his all into context we begin by looking at Edmund Husserl who was a philosopher who believed experience is the source of all knowledge – he was an empiricist.
He stated that consciousness is intentional and meaning is fixed subjectively. Knowing is a structure with some ideas having more priority than others: this depending on one’s intention. He was linked with phenomenology, which is a philosophical movement emphasising the study of conscious movement.
Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, it’s being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/Phenomena are in the mind and objects meaning understanding are in the mind.
‘What are ideas?’ - Husserl states ideas are intention, moods, ambiguity and the act of choosing. Ideas and meaning are a structure of subjective values. The sources of those decisions are social, interactive and convenient ‘close to hand’ objects. (‘Close to hand’ objects are those such as clothes, wallet and bag e.g.) To be authentic means being the author of your own life. If you take away human interaction and sense data the person will be lost – experience is the source of all knowledge.
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations. He claimed that when you concentrate on ‘normal’ objects you then think more about their purpose rather than them being ‘to hand’.
Time for Heidegger was ‘the structure of being’:
1) The past = guilt
2) The future = unknown
3) The present = dread
Meursault, in The Outsider, was not a clear existentialist however he did handle his death sentence in the way an existentialist would have done. He made the decision to shoot the Arab and did not feel there was any need for a lawyer as it was simple to him – he killed a man and was to pay for his actions. He understood his mother’s death when he was put in the same situation.
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