Existentialism Made Easy

Existentialism is an often discussed and less often understood artistic and philosophical movement of the 20^th century.

The question at the heart of the movement is: What happens when truth becomes a construct, as opposed to a divine decree? What happens when meaning is reliant upon interpretation?

Following Nietzsche's presumption that "God is dead" and that man must therefore create his own morality and his own meaning, Existentialism explores the intellectual and emotional challenges man faces in the absence of a relationship with the divine.

One rather pointed idea that arises from the Existentialist conversation is the suggestion that truth is impossible to grasp.

If there is a truth (or a set of truths) "out there", we may not be capable of accessing it. This is true for several reasons, including the supposition that any truth we believe in is also a truth we have manufactured.

Because the mechanisms of our own thinking are often hidden from our conscience minds, even self-constructed truth leaves us in a position of discomfiting mystery.

There is a distinct possibility that we are married to the absurd by the limits of our awareness and ability to be honest with ourselves.

Albert Camus' The Stranger has become one of the most renowned texts of the Existentialist movement, probably the best known in the USA. In this novel we are presented with the example of an individual of confused motives, a man who leads us to question how well any of us know ourselves.

In this novel, the philosophical tenets of existentialism are made plain, or nearly plain. And what the story means, fundamentally, remains open to interpretation.

Mersault is a man whose mother dies just before The Stranger opens.

Mersault attends her funeral and begins to feel oppressed by the elements.

Right away we are led to the question his self-awareness. Is he reading his oppression correctly? Is he bothered by the sun and the heat or is he bothered by the loss of his mother and the realization of the inevitability of death? Is Mersault confused about his own feelings?

As the novel moves on, we discover that Mersault has a meager and highly materialist internal dialogue. Are we to believe that in its meagerness his self-awareness is accurate and that in its focus on the physical it is complete?

The central action of the novel is a murder, one that opens the door to Existential questioning.

Mersault kills a man who is, essentially, a stranger to him.

A considerable portion of the novel is dedicated to the exploration of Mersault's motives for committing this murder and we are directly led to question our position in relation to the "truth" of the matter as an audience.

Mersault shoots a man and says that it is because the sun was in his eyes and he had just wanted to lie down. It bears mentioning that the weather on the day of the murder matches the conditions of the day of Mersault's mother's funeral.

Before the murder, Mersault is seen languishing in a depression. At his trial, the judge attempts to read Mersault's mourning into the depression and subsequent murder, yet Mersault resists this interpretation.

Is Mersault correct about his motives? Was this an absurd act, without meaning, without any reasons deeper than the weather?

Or is the judge correct in suggesting that Mersault was affected by his mother's death?

Can we really know who is right?

Perhaps we cannot know.

This, arguably, is the Existentialist point of the novel. We are removed from the possibility of accessing the truth, if it exists "out there" anyway.

The Stranger presents a neat, narrative exploration of the Existentialist dilemma which poses that a single physical act is open to interpretation and debate, ad naseum.

Readers can choose to agree with Mersault's ahistorical self analysis. Readers can choose to agree with the jury's historical interpretation of Mersault's action.

However, both visions remain conjectural. There is no "knowing" the ultimate and "real" motivation for the murder on the beach.

It happens. There is a murder.

And it means whatever we say it means.

The question remains unanswered as to how we may take comfort from this flexibility, this availability of meaning, this opportunity to construct our own truth.

Learn more with these references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism