The Stranger as a Response to Kierkegaard

 The Stranger is a novel filled with existentialist themes informed by the personal philosophy of its author, Albert Camus. I’ve done a lot of reading into existentialism in the past (not actual books mostly just random Wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles), and in many ways I think The Stranger can be read as Albert Camus’s personal response to existentialist philosophers before him. 

One of the first examples that came to mind when I thought about existentialism was Soren Kierkegaard, who is often considered the first (and arguably most important) existentialist philosopher. Though Meursault’s tirade against the chaplain and irate rejection of salvation establishes a dichotomy in the novel between religion and existentialism, it’s important to note that existentialism and a belief in God are not in any way incompatible. Kierkegaard wrote extensively about Christianity and emphasized the role of individuality and existentialism within faith. 

Thinking a lot about how Kierkegaard’s view of God differed from Camus’s, I believe that The Stranger’s characterization of Meursault is a direct critique and response to  Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Kierkegaard is most famous for his magnum opus Fear and Trembling, which focuses on how faith and ethics influenced Abraham’s decision to sacrifice his son Isaac. Forgive me as I poorly attempt to summarize it in this blog post.  

One of Kierkegaard’s most influential ideas in Fear and Trembling was his division of life into three stages: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Within The Stranger, these three stages manifest in various ways through the central characters:

1. “The aesthetic is the realm of sensory experience and pleasures. The aesthetic life is defined by pleasures, and to live the aesthetic life to the fullest one must seek to maximize those pleasure.” To me, the aesthetic stage is most obviously characterized by Meursault. Throughout the novel, Meursault fails to develop a sense of morality, and instead lives his life obsessed with obtaining sensory pleasures. In the first part of the novel, Meursault holds neither personal goals nor a substantive meaning to his life; instead his existence is characterized by a need to experience pleasure. Meursault does not develop any conventional emotional goals, and instead fixates on sensory experiences like smoking cigarettes, eating food, admiring the beauty of the sky, or having sex. 

2. “The ethical life serves the purpose of allowing diverse people to coexist in harmony and causes individuals to act for the good of society. The ethical person considers the effect his or her actions will have on others and gives more weight to promoting social welfare than to achieving personal gain.” The ethical life in The Stranger is embodied by the regular citizens of Algiers. But more than anything else, the jury at Meursault’s trial embodies the idea of ethical life to the extreme. The testimony at Meursault’s trial focuses not on the effect that Meursault’s crime had on the murder, but how his existence provided a threat to the societal structure upholding the French colonies. The trial hyperfixates not on ways Meursault is harmful, but ways in which he is different: not crying at his mother’s death, showing emotional callousness by smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee at her funeral, and defying standards by starting a sexual relationship with Marie in the days following are all ways in which Meursault’s refusal to abide by society’s conventions threatens the ideas held by adherents to the ethical life. 

3. “Kierkegaard considers the religious life to be the highest plane of existence… In the religious life, one is ruled by total faith in God. One can never be truly free, and this causes boredom, anxiety, and despair. True faith doesn’t lead to freedom, but it relieves the psychological effects of human existence.” The religious life is embodied by the chaplain near the end of the novel, who believes that a belief in God will save Meursault’s life and give his existence meaning. The chaplain could be seen as living the most fulfilled life out of all characters in The Stranger according to Kierkegaard’s framework.

Another one of the most important ideas in Fear and Trembling is the Knight of Infinite Resignation. In the book, Abraham is ascribed the title for his seemingly absurd sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham sacrifices his son and thus sacrifices what is most important to him out of an undying personal faith to God. There is obviously much more Kierkegaard says about this, but for the sake of trying not to make an already long blog post longer, this idea stood out to me a lot when thinking about Meursault. First of all, why is Meursault not a Knight of Infinite Resignation? Meursault’s crime on the beach is completely absurd just like Abraham’s actions in sacrificing his son, both are completed with a jarringly little amount of hesitation, and both Meursault and Abraham are ready to sacrifice what is most valuable to them (in Meursault's case, his life). The possible parallels between Meursault and the archetypal Knight of Infinite Resignation give us a further look into how Camus’s philosophy differs from Kierkegaard’s: Abraham, the embodiment of the religious stage, commits his sacrifice out of a devotion to God, while Meursault, the embodiment of the aesthetic, shoots the Arab out of an unquestioned devotion to his impulses. These similarities indirectly critique the blind faith that existentialist philosophers before Camus placed in God by comparing Meursault’s crime (one which seems to be pretty stupid) to Abraham’s sacrifice on God’s command. To an atheist, the claim that God instructed you to commit a crime could appear just as absurd and meaningless as Meursault’s ramblings about the sun appear to readers of The Stranger.

What's Jake's problem with Robert Cohn?

     When I first read the opening chapter of The Sun Also Rises, I was quite a bit confused. The first chapter of the novel is seemingly detached from the rest of the novel. When reading the first chapter in isolation, one would assume that the rest of the novel would revolve around Robert Cohn. Despite this oddity, I love the way the novel starts out: rather than give us a traditional introduction to each character and their background, Jake Barnes's biting tirade against Robert Cohn reveals a great deal about his status as a narrator and the setting of the novel.

From the very start of the novel, Jake makes note of the fact that Robert Cohn was Jewish, and subsequently uses that fact to belittle and insult him. Barnes insists that Cohn picked up boxing to deal with his feelings of “inferiority and shyness” as a Jew. He goes on to diminish Cohn’s achievements as a boxer, criticize his ambitions as a writer, and extensively mock his previous relationships. As the perfect foil to Jake, Robert Cohn’s descriptions highlight Jake’s weaknesses and insecurities. This could explain the fixation that Jake (and other characters) have on Cohn being Jewish. While Robert is able to channel his insecurities over his background into a successful boxing career, Jake has no such positive outlet. Similarly, Jake is deeply disturbed and angered by various minorities throughout The Sun Also Rises. From the very first chapters of the novel, we see Jake disgusted at the gay men that Lady Brett Ashley is surrounded by. Later on, Jake is deeply upset at the black drummer that Brett seems to be friends with. Jake parallels his own struggles with his injury which rendered him impotent (which damages his relationship with Brett) to the minority status of these men, which subsequently angers him: while these minorities are experiencing relative acceptance in the progressive setting of Paris, he is completely unable to overcome his injury: he feels estranged from society due to the fact that he can’t have sex and has to internalize this disability instead of seeking support from others.

Why does Jake mock Cohn’s boxing career so much? Jake is an avid follower of bullfighting, a grandiose display of masculinity, and is infatuated by Pedro Romero due to his prowess. Despite this, he feels nothing but contempt towards Robert’s boxing career even though Cohn is a champion in his own right. The two sports revolve around combat and have something admirable in their brutality. Jake reaches the cynical conclusion that Cohn’s boxing career is motivated by a deep insecurity over his identity, yet makes none of these assumptions about Pedro Romero: he just sees him as a stud. The key difference between Jake’s admiration for bullfighting and his seeming contempt for boxing can be explained by his jealousy of Robert. 

The novel makes repeated references to the fact that Robert wasn’t part of the war: fundamentally, I think Robert Cohn serves as a cruel reminder to what Jake could have been if he hadn’t been in the war. His hopes of romance and heroism are likely similar to what Jake experienced before the war, before his injury distorted his amorous ambitions into the meaningless hedonism which dominates his life in Paris. This could also be why Robert is the only sober character in the novel: while it might make him appear somewhat weird to the reader at first, he is the only character that doesn’t rely on alcohol as an escape from his wartime trauma. Similarly, Robert’s lack of humor is due to the fact that he doesn’t need to use irony as a coping mechanism in the way that other characters do. 

While Robert still has his shortcomings as a character (he seems a little bit annoying) the cruel depiction that he gets in the first chapter seems to be mostly informed by Jake’s own cynicism, jealousy, and self-doubt.