Critical thinkers and the Tractatus logico-philosophicus (seminar 5)

The existentialism of Sarte:

Sartre’s first forays into philosophical thought in academia found expression in two pre-war essays published in 1936 called The Transcendence of the Ego and Imagination: A Psychological Critique. Like Heidegger, Sartre complained that Husserl hadn’t taken phenomenological reduction far enough.

In his essay Imagination: A Psychological Critique Sartre attacks the idea that imagination is the surveying of contents of an interior mental world. Sartre argued that imagining relates us to extra-mental objects rather than internal images and does so no less than perception albeit differently. 

Sartre argues that emotions are not passive internal sensations, that instead they are a way of apprehending the world. That is to say emotions help us to understand the world around us thus act in active way to interact with and help with our interpretation of the world as we experience it. Apparently not one for technical explanations Sartre describes emotions as ‘a magical transformation’ of situations we find ourselves in. By this he means that our emotions, due to their active subjective nature affect our perception of the world. So for example depression makes one’s actions feel like the epitome of futility.

The shift in Sartre’s work was apparent with the publishing magnum opus, Being and Nothingness in 1943, which in contrast to his earlier Husserlian work took inspiration from Heidegger instead. 

‘Being’ for Sartre is the precursor to and reason behind all different things that can be found in the consciousness. Things themselves are sorted into categories based on the will of the mindm however if one were to strip off such distinctions we have (pure) being.  Being is everything of the mind, without cause except that of its own if it so desires. This he refers to as en-soi.

Pour-soi is the ‘for-itself’ aspect of the human consciousness – in simplisitic terms perhaps the id.

En-soi and pour-soi are the two key concepts of Being and Nothingness. The only difference between the two is negation, that En-soi is of no cause but pour-soi is for itself. In terms of the consciousness negation is when in articulating the world, there is a distinction between what is and what is not, the latter being a negation of the former. Thus Sartre prescribes importance to the objectification of nothing.  It is only due to negation that nothingness comes into the world, without the process of articulation and thus negation there is no nothingness apparent. 

This is not to say nothingness doesn’t exist, simply that it isn’t apparent until observed. It brings to mind the proverb; ‘if a tree fall in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a noise.’ In a sense this quote plays in the self-importance prescribed to humans in that one might mistakenly answer no because they have not heard it. But it does make a sound and in the same way nothingness would exist without humans for there exists a distinction between all things whether it be predators and prey or spoons and forks. 

Sartre claimed that human life was not determined in advance by any cause natural or otherwise. Thus human beings have freedom but in the paradoxical state that through having freedom it the necessity of choice that the consciousness brings (thus negation and nothingness). People try and hide because absolute freedom is scary, thus we hide by adopting roles offered by morality, society or religion. However such methods are doomed to failure (according to Sartre) for man exists in the paradoxical state that he is both aware of his freedom whilst striving to reduce it in the knowledge this cannot occur. Sartre calls this condition ‘bad faith.’ Alternatively one can accept and confirm their freedom and acknowledge the inherent responsibility that accompanies it.

Jacques Derrida

Derrida attached great importance to the distinction of language though did not trouble himself with definitions. He would introduce new terms, utterly unneeded and poorly defined by Derrida himself such as defference, which combined the notions of deferring and difference. He described defference as that which is ‘conceived prior to the separation between deferring as delay and differing as the actual work of difference.’ Such new terms, whilst he attempts to define them and solidify their meaning thus validating their existence in the first place remain largely open to interpretation in the fact it doesn’t fall neatly into any categories that exist. 

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

The Tractatus is a book consisting of one chapter, one page and 7 propositions. Every proposition is designed to be self evident, every word  having a meaning and a meaning behind that meaning and so on to the degree that this miniscule piece of literature is also accompanied by pages upon pages of footnotes so that one might fully understand how much weight each of the 7 statements carries and how it is self evident. Each proposition follows on from the next ending with a final quote and no further explanation (footnotes aside).

The aim of the Tractatus was to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science through a hierarchal series of supposedly self-evident statements.

To describe the meaning of each statement in detail is an impossible task due to the gargantuan amount of work behind every word let alone the entire proposition itself.

For example the first proposition is simply: 'The World is everything that is the case'

However if one is then to look into the footnotes they will see the heirarchy of propositions that follow on from one another and often require more elaboration themselves. The further you attempt to understand the piece the deeper into his work you must go and to this end it is truly philosophical in that each reading will find you examining his points in a different light.

An example of this complexity can be seen followin on from the second proposition: 'What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.'

Facts are a state of things, and a state of things is a combination of objects. Objects themselves are simple non-composite things because they make up the substance of the world.

And an object takes form through the possibility that a state of events (structure) will occur. However cannot be both form and matter and so exist in a state of flux, both changing and unstable. Meanwhile the structure of a fact consists of the structures of states of affairs.

And so it continues like this giving true credence to the 7th propostion which simply states: 

‘Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent’

This proposition describes the limitations of language –  one shouldn’t attempt to use language  to clarify unfalsifiable propositions. If there are no facts then one should be silent, just because we can speak of that we do not know doesn’t mean we should and gives a semblance of authority and existence to that which deserves neither.

Other Critical Thinkers:

Edmund Husserl:

Edmund Husserl looked at the notion of intentionality, the idea that what characterises mental phenomena as distinct from the physical is that the mental is directed towards objects.

A thought is made up of two things; content and a possessor.

Content is what the thought is about, specifically what it is about i.e. you are thinking about e.g. a sheep and not a table.

The possessor is the person who is thinking of the content.

Husserl states that a thought is an act with a matter. I.e. that the thought was intentional towards an object, in this example; a sheep.

Husserl is responsible for founding the school of philosophical thought known as phenomenology which is the study of the conscious experience.

The aim of phenomenology was the study of the immediate data of the conscious. 

Husserl wrote in 1901 that: ‘It makes no essential difference to an object presented and given to consciousness whether it exists, or is fictitious, or is perhaps completely absurd. I think of Bismarck, of the tower of Babel as I think of Cologne Cathedral, of a regular thousand-sided polygon as of a regular thousand-faced solid.’

He is stating that the intentionality of thought does not distinguish between reality and constructs of the mind. That is to say that if one were to think about aliens and then think about a bagel, there would be no difference in the intentionality of thought. Furthermore, this means that the intentionality of thought of an object is indistinguishable from that of a hallucination of an object. Thus the experience is the same irrespective of how that experience of the subject is had whether that be in reality, hallucination or dream.

Subsequently Husserl believed that one should suspend their judgement of existence i.e. of the natural world so that a phenomenological analysis can deal with one’s subjective perception of an experience in its purest form.

Martin Heidegger:

Heidegger was a pupil of Husserl who focused on the question of being through his work in extentialism and phenomenology. 

Heidegger felt that phenomenology didn’t go far enough, that before we can study experience we must study the concept of Being which precedes the link between conscious and reality.

Thus whilst Husserl based phenomenology on the study of conscious, Heidegger focused on the study of Being.

To do this, Heidegger had to invent his own terminology including the concept of ‘Dasein.’ Dasein is a being that is capable of asking philosophical questions.

It differs from Descartes’s Cartesian ego in the fact that the Cartesian ego is simply a thinking thng whilst Dasein incorporates thinking as only one of its features of being and only one way of interacting with the world.

Dasein can be defined as caring, as only through caring will a being be interested in the world enough to ask philosophical questions. 

Dasein is temporal in nature, distinct from substance in the fact it represents the continuation of life. Thus in defining Being, Heidegger notes  that the future has priority over past and present, that goals determine the significance of the present. Consequently the view of the past is negative in the fact it brings up guilt and anxiety. This is because one must make the distinction when examining life, between what a person is, and what they might have been. 

Dasein operates within a biological, social and cultural context and according to Heidegger, Dasein has three fundamental aspects:

Attunement: Situations we are in manifest themselves at an emotional level e.g. dangerous or boring and thus we respond to them with a mood of appropriate emotional reaction.

Dasein is discursive: That Dasein operates within which discourse is conveyed through language and culture.

Understanding (in a spatial sense): That activities are directed towards goals, some of which will make sense of a life within its cultural context.

Heidegger claims there is no such thing as human nature which dictates the activities of the individual. Dasein itself is existence.

Logic and Language

Logic:

Induction and Abduction in Pierce:

Pierce investigated the structure of scientific inquiry. Whilst deductive logic assists us in organising our knowledge, reasoning that extends our knowledge, which Pierce called ampliative inference he split into three categories.

Ampliative inference is a statement that takes a conclusion, or several and from that derives a generalised conclusion that whilst not empirical, appears to be correct.

The closest term that comes to mind when trying to explain ampliative arguments is the term ‘educated guess.’ Because whilst the overall conclusion is a priori in nature, it is itself based upon empirical knowledge.

So an example of such an argument would be: ‘Fire ants and army ants from colonies, therefore all ants form colonies.’

Thus whilst the conclusion inferred is logical, it is not valid because not all species of ant have been discovered, though from the empirical information we have, the most probable conclusion is the above.

Pierce stated ampliative inference can be split into three categories, these being; induction, hypothesis and analogy, all of which depend on sampling.

In relation to deductive arguments:

Deductive reasoning is where the conclusion is necessarily true if the premise is true. However deductive arguments may have false premises.

For example: ‘All men are mortal; Cleopatra is a man; therefore, Cleopatra is mortal.’

The premise is that all men are mortal and that Cleopatra is a man. Whilst based on knowledge of the time one might view these both as true i.e. there have been no immortal men and Cleopatra dressed as a man to gain more respect thus one could mistake her as such. They do not by themselves prove the conclusion ‘Cleopatra is a mortal’ and are instead at most equal to substantiating evidence which itself is not empirical in nature.

This statement is in fact another example of an ampliative argument whereby two known conclusions are used to derive a third which is based off of the two conclusions rather than evidence such as death which is empirical.

Pierce goes on to define the methods of scientific enquiry. The method of scientific enquiry is as follows: Scientists create a hypothesis based upon a theory or problem, acknowledging past explanations for the phenomena. From the hypothesis they create a prediction, i.e. if my hypothesis states this, then this what I expect to occur. The hypothesis is then tested and the observations should either confirm or refute the hypothesis.

From here a new hypothesis can be created and tested. So if the experiment was a success, the hypothesis will reflect the observations made and be tested again. If it refutes the hypothesis then the hypothesis will be changed to reflect that and the method of scientific enquiry begins again.

Pierce simplified this into three stages called abduction, deduction and induction:

The abductive phase is whereby the inquirer chooses the theory they wish to investigate. The theory chosen however must fall within certain parameters or as Pierce calls it ‘the rules of the logic of abduction.’ That the theory must be empirically testable and cohere to existing knowledge in an objective capacity.

The deductive phase is where the inquirer creates a way of testing this theory. Dedction follows abduction through the verification or falsification of the predications created which will either confirm or refute the hypothesis in question.

The inductive phase is where the results of the test are evaluated. Induction as described by Pierce seems to go at odds with deduction for he states that we only infer provisionally and whilst through constant experimentation our conclusions will become indefinitely close to the truth, the fact we must continue to experiment and going at odds with even our oldest theories means there is no deduction to be had but ampliative inference.

Thus I believe that when Pierce talks of deduction he talks of it strictly in the context of the experiment. That an experiment for example has proven something to be true, but when this result is placed in the context of the wider world we can only infer from it, leading to quantitative induction or simply induction whereby mathematical probability alone dictates this is the most reasonable conclusion to draw. That is until new evidence comes along that may support or refute that which commonly accepted as knowledge.

Consequently in science there is no such thing as fact but only theory, deductive reasoning only goes so far. However even without deduction we can hold something to be true due to the evidence that supports it and the probability that it is indeed correct such as theories concerning evolution, gravity and plate tectonics.

As well as quantitative induction there is also qualitative induction which is to infer characteristics of one individual to another Pierce demonstrates this with the concept of the mugwump:

‘He has high self-respect and places great value on social distinction. He laments the great part that rowdyism and unrefined good-fellowship play in the dealings of American politicians with their constituency.... He holds that monetary considerations should usually be the decisive ones in questions of public policy. He respects the principle of individualism and of laissez-faire as the greatest agency of civilisation. These views, among others, I know to be the obtrusive marks of a ‘mugwump.’’

The idea behind a mugwump being you understand what a mugwump is and the characteristics associated with it, thus when you meet someone who displays similar characteristics you believe them to be a mugwump. This is called hypothetic inference whereby you infer characteristics a person has not shown through the ones they have shown. For example let’s say a mugwump has 5 characteristics and you meet a person who displays 3 of these, you then infer that they are a mugwump and thus have the other 2 characteristics as well.

The saga of Principia Mathematica:

Before one can understand the various truth tables one must understand all the symbols that it is comprised of:

Firstly a proposition is a statement which is established and held to be true only with evidence i.e. a proposition is established through deductive logic. Thus propositions are Boolean in that they can only be true or false.

Negation:

~ is the sign used for negation (not).

Negation in logic is where a proposition is held to be true then the opposite must be false and vice versa. So the negation of a proposition can only be true when it is false.

An example of negation would be:
Proposition: This is a book
Negation: This is not a book

Disjunction:

V is the sign for disjunction (or).

Disjunction is where two propositions are joined by ‘or’ to form a proposition which is only false if both of its component parts are false. However whilst seeming contradictory both component propositions can be true at the same time.

For example:
Proposition one: The cat hasn’t been fed.
Proposition two: The cat is just hungry
Compound proposition: The cat hasn’t been fed or the cat is just hungry.

Truth functional:

A horseshoe shape or an arrow represents the truth functional (if). (I can't import the symbols from word for some reason).

A truth-functional is where the truth value of a proposition depends on the truth of its component parts. If one part is false then the overall proposition is false. Negation also falls under truth function as if something is true the negation is false.

Conjunction:

Conjunction is represented by p.q or p & q (and).

Conjunction is whereby a proposition is made up of two component propositions which mst both be true for the proposition to be true.

For example:

Proposition one: Ants are small
Proposition two: Ants are fast
Compound proposition: Ants are small and fast.

Whilst both propositions might be true, if one were false then the compound proposition is false as it is based on the predicate that both component propositions are true.

Principia is an axiomatic system in which logical truths are by rule from a select few axioms. Whereas Frege’s initial set were ‘if’ and ‘nt’ from which all others could be defined, Russell and Whitehead took ‘or’ and ‘not’ instead.

Wittgenstein developed an alternative to axiomatic systems which was the truth table, a new way to give logic a rigorous form in an easily understood format.

p             q             p & q
T             T             T
F             T             F
T             F             F
F             F             F

The table demonstrates conjunctive statements, how their component values reflect the truth or false value of the overall proposition. The compound proposition is thus a truth function of component propositions.

Of Wittgenstein’s truth tables emerge the concepts of tautologies and contradictions. A tautology is a proposition which is true for all truth possibilities of its component propositions and similarly in contrast a contradiction a proposition false for all truth possibilities.

Tautologies are the equivalent to axioms and theorems of Frege’s system and vice versa. However the truth table is superior to the axiomatic system in several ways. For example it represents all logical truths on the same level whereas Frege’s system is based on an arbitrary set of axioms.

A problem of language and the theory of descriptions:

A problem arises when something non-existent is used in a phrase, because by talking about such a concept you are giving some sort of existence to it. So for example the statement: ‘Golden frogs do not exist.’ Denotes some sort of existence to the idea of a golden frog which you deny.

Thus the theory of descriptions exists to counter such problems by removing conjunctive declarations from propositions. 

For example a sentence that does not have the word ‘and’ such as: ‘The black cat caught a mouse’ can be simplified too: ‘A Black cat exists and it caught a mouse.’

We denote the generic ‘cat’ as p and specific ‘black cat’ as q so that the statement can be simplified further as:

‘There is an entity p such that the statement; ‘q caught the mouse’ is true if q is p and false otherwise; moreover p is the black cat.

‘Moreover’ means that the ‘black cat’ exists (or existed or will exist).

So using this method we can deconstruct the statement; ‘golden grogs do not exist’ in the same way.

A continuation of the study of Tabloid Nation

In 1928, Ruth Synder was the first woman to be executed by electric chair, at the momen of her execution, a Daily News reporter posing as a witness took a picture with a hidden camera.

The next day the Daily News ran the headline ‘DEAD!’ with a full page image of the charred remains of Synder.  With this issue the paper broke all records with over 300,000 extra sales proving the appeal of raw, shocking images complimented by a large, bold, black headline.

Following his take over of the Daily Mirror in 1934, Harry Guy Bartholomew immediately planned to change the paper into a New York style tabloid such as the Daily News and its rival the Daily Graphic he had always so admired. 

The Daily Graphic and Daily News focused on sensationalist stories, images of nude or semi-nude girls with stories of scandal to match. In contrast Rothermere had demanded the Daily Mirror remain focused on right wing politics such as ‘Imperial Tariff Protection.’

Before Bart could transform the Mirror into a tabloid in similar vein to the aforementioned he had to first deal with the conservative men who dominated the board of directors. Bart made an ally of King who controlled the board whilst Bart worked on the editorial side.

The hiring of Basil Nicholson brought radical changes to the Mirror, including a page and a half of comic strops which helped to increase circulation figures for the first time in years. 

However Nicholson unfortunately had no sense of tact and quickly found himself on the wrong side of Bart, he was promptly sacked and replaced by the younger, ambitious Hugh Cudlipp, 22 years old coming straight off the Sunday Chronicle. Aon the Christmas of 1935, Cudlipp became the features editor of the Daily Mirror.

Bart’s aim was to make the paper non-political and instead appeal to the young working class men and women of the day. There was no sense continuing to preach right wing politics to a generation hit hardest by the economic depression of the thirties.

By 1937 Bart had transformed the paper from a bastion f right wing politics, into a ‘daily affront to bishops, magistrates, schoolmasters, the retired elite and the combined forces of the officialdom and respectable society.’

The paper focused on human interest stories with little to know politics or foreign news. Cudlipp used reader’s letters as a cheap source of material and valuable market research which revealed that the paper was now appealing to thousands of working class women whom the paper was able to thus target specifically with such campaigns as to improve the conditions of secretaries. 

Dorothy Dix was the psyedonym of American writer Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer who provided female readers with an agony aunt feature. Complimenting this was freelance writer Godfrey Winn’s entertaining feature about his life.

Meanwhile Bart and Cudlipp catered to the male audience with more pictures of girls for whatever reason they could.

With such sensationalist stories and expert catering to their audiences  the paper began to make strong profits for the first time in a decade.

In 1938 after Bart turned down the job, Cecil King became editorial director of the Pictorial.

Bart, whilst having needed King’s support to become editorial director of the Mirror now began to plot against his former ally.

King needed an editor to work under him at the Pictorial and Bart garaciously allowed him to take anyone he wanted. However he had already told all potential candidates that if they were to join King they would have their careers destroyed. Whilst many turned King down due to the overhanging threats issued by Bart, Cudlipp jumped at the chance much to Bart’s utter outrage.

On the Pictorial Cudlipp pushed the sensationalism and sex even further than before to compete with the News of the World. However Cudlipp also introduced a sharp political edge which was to attack the Conservative government at the time, chastising it and other papers for their lack of backbone in standing up to Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

In July of 1938 King and Cudlipp visisted CHurchull at his home and planned out a political campaign against appeasement, instead demanding the creation of a large army, air force and navy to be ready to fight Germany if the need arose. Churchill was signed up as a columnist for both eht eMirro and the Sunday Pictorial.

When war inevitably broke out the following year Cudliipp was conscripted into the army and the Mirror was almost shut down due to the charges of undermining public morale and thus the war effort.

During the war the paper seeked to emulate I’s status and popularity it had become known for during the First World War. It did this by being a ‘soldiers paper.’ Patriotic, sharing news from home for the troops and news from the front for families.

Dudlipp meanwhile edited the Union Jack, the British Army’s own paper to boost morale and spread propaganda in the same way the American Army’s own The Stars and Stripes did. 

Following the death of the Chairman of the Mirror’s board of directors a brief power struggle had ensued. Bart had secured the position of chairman whilst King become the head of advertising and finance director.

The Mirror had a decisive impact on the general election of post WW2 Britian. By focusing on the wives left at home they created a landslide win for Labour, ousting Churchill and the conservatives as wives believed they would be voting the way their husbands wished whilst many soldiers voted Labour as well.

Bart planned to get rid of both Cudlipp and King. He sacked Cudlipp after goading him into a drunken argument . Fortunately for Cudlipp, the Mirro’s greatest rival at the time The Express was ready to take him on at once.

King moved to get rid of Bart, he managed to turn the board against him and in a unanimous vote Bart was forced out. Bart retired to a a cottage in Norwolk where within a few months he had drank himself to death.

Lecture one: Television and the consumer society

Television was the third great phase of telecommunications to emerge in the United Kingdom with public television broadcasting beginning in 1936 and continuing through to present day. It has undergone enormous growth and change in the past 76 years and now in the year 2012 will we see the death of analogue television, the original terrestrial transmission used for broadcasting, now surpassed by digital which has both technological and long term economic advantages.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had began to test television as early as 1926 but it wasn’t until 1929 that the first official broadcast occurred. Having been established in 1927 to develop the rapidly growing new format of radio, the BBC was in a good position to make a foray into television as well.

Unlike radio which had great use beyond consumer purpose (i.e. military and business), television had no such prior base from which to expand from and thus its expansion in the United Kingdom was slow. Even as late as 1951 only 9% of British homes contained a television. Nonetheless television continued to gain traction and to this end the UK was the first country to have a regular daily television schedule direct to homes, by 1955 emerged commercial television which defined the split between content and advertising and the subject and content of the advertisements themselves.

Commercial television grew and new channels began to appear, whilst the BBC was funded by a license fee and thus acted to serve in the best interests of the public who funded it, new commercial television had no such obligations. They were driven by profit and profit came by advertisements, advertisers of course only being attracted to a large viewership, the larger the audience, the greater number of people an advertisement will reach. Thus began the importation of specifically American culture, and to a great extent what was popular there became quickly popular in the UK though in similar fashion the rights to a show may be bought so that a more culturally relevant show might be created to have a greater appeal to the home audience whilst losing none of the inherent attractiveness of the show itself. 

Commercial television occupied a niche that Radio and newspapers had been unable to fill, the youth demographic. Women were also a key demographic and one largely contested between all three mediums. It is youths and women however who possessed the most in the way of disposable income and thus were the key demographics for advertisers and consequently commercial television in general.

Seminar Paper: The Outsider

The Outsider (also known as The Stranger) is a novel written by Albert Camus, a French Algerian and published in 1942. It is his first novel and one of his most successful works, though he was not simply defined as an author; he was also a journalist and philosopher, themes of the latter which feature prominently in his work.  

The story follows a young man named Meursault in a first person narrative following events preceding the murder he commits and after. The story begins as he learns of his mother’s death, he attends a funeral but does not appear be grieved and returns to normal life as if nothing had happened, sparing little thought toward his now deceased mother. 

He takes a vacation with his friend Raymond and girlfriend Marie. Some of Raymond’s enemies followed him and eventually a fight breaks out at the beach. Later, Meursault returns to the scene and meets one of the Arabs who they fought earlier and shoots the man dead. His trial follows and then several months in prison pass before the jury decides on capital punishment, decapitation by guillotine. In his final hours Meursault accepts the irrationality and indifference of the universe and realises he is happier for it.

Camus’s work was directly influenced through his experiences. As a native of French occupied Algeria we see the relevance of Arabs in his story. None of the Arabs have names, as if Camus is not even justifying them with a name and when Meursault kills the Arab his trial is more focused upon his character than his crime. There is even a heavy inclination that if he had pleaded self defence, prayed for forgiveness or taken some other redeemable action in the eyes of the court then his crime might have resulted in a far lighter sentence if not escaping punishment entirely. Such as when Raymond got off without charges after beating his Arab girlfriend, highlighting the injustice in French colonial Algeria and perhaps Camus’s favouritism towards the colonists. 

The Outsider, like Albert Camus himself is largely seen as existentialist. Camus himself denied such a label preferring the term Absurd, a belief system he had created himself. The difference between the two systems is relatively minor but distinct. Further to this whilst one can examine The Outsider in terms of existentialism, one will not learn as much as if they were to examine it for themes of absurdism, which is arguably the dominant philosophy prevalent through the book.

Absurdism was created as a belief system by Camus through the trials he endured in World War 2. As part of the French Resistance movement he, like all of Europe saw the untold death and destruction and like others attempted to understand it, to rationalise it and find some sort of meaning beyond mere survival, which many like himself had been reduced to during the war. He concluded that there is no greater meaning than that which we make for ourselves by existing. It is the conflict between the human want and need to seek out meaning in life conflicting with the fact it cannot be found. Absurdism is accepting this absurd state of nature, to stop looking for meaning that does not exist. To instead live our lives in the freedom this knowledge gives us, that we create a meaning to life personal to ourselves which makes it worth living. It is this realisation, that the universe is indifferent to our own feelings that brings Meursault happiness in his final hours as he waits for his execution.

Absurdism in itself is not an original concept and can be first seen in the works of 19^th Century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who wrote about the absurd and the absurdity of life. However it wasn’t until Albert Camus that it was formalised as a belief system by itself. Whilst existentialism does indeed share a lot of the values of absurdism, a key difference is that existentialism allows for theism whereas the prevailing view of absurdism; that the universe has no meaning, does not. 

Camus describes three ways of solving the dilemma of one’s meaningless existence and those are suicide, acceptance and religion:
-Suicide is simply removing yourself from an absurd universe, but in doing so you are committing an absurdity yourself.
-Acceptance is simply the acceptance of absurdity, acknowledging the irrational, indifferent nature of the universe.
-Religion is the fallback if one cannot accept the absurd and so they accept religion even though the acceptance of the meaning of existence beyond our current existence is absurd in itself. 

Thus religion is only compatible with absurdism insofar as it is itself absurd, especially absurd to take the irrationality of the universe and then apply meaning to it. Because the belief system of absurdism is predicated on the idea that one should accept the absurd and continue regardless, creating one’s own meaning and identity through their defiance of the absurd in their continued existence. 

This contrasts greatly with existentialism which can be split into two camps of either theistic or atheistic existentialism, it allows for the freedom of a subjective viewpoint where the absurd demands objectivity to the degree of being able to acknowledge and accept the absurd, failing this they might elude the absurd through religion or cheat it by death. Thus whilst many are quick to label Albert Camus and the novel The Stranger as existentialist works, I feel clear the difference is of such importance that a distinction should be made, even if absurdism as a belief system itself is vague in itself.

Other than Christianity, Camus does not specifically mention any philosophy or religion and so instead it is absurdism that resonates the most throughout the piece and can be clearly seen clashing with the ideals and values of Christianity.  We see in the book that the irrationality of the universe conflicts with the self imposed rationality of human society. Meursault does not take action for any rational reason, he is neither moral nor immoral, an amoral person who acts for reasons which are sometimes not even discernable to himself. He does not know why he shot the Arab again after shooting him once, but the rational nature of society demands an explanation for why this is so.

This clash between the rational and irrational is seen most clearly following Meursault’s arrest as he had just committed the most irrational act of all, killing a man with no want or reason and then shooting him four more times. The court proceedings are formal, both the prosecutor and defence presenting a case that attempts to explain and frame his actions in a rational way. There are many moments where Meursault has the opportunity to do something one might deem rational, he could have pretended to have found God or shown remorse for his actions. These would be deemed rational courses of action as they invoke positive benefits for him by appealing to the want of rationality in others. His defiance however makes him fall outside the natural order of things, an outsider whose irrationality clashes with the rational order men have created. Because his thoughts and actions do not appear logical he appears to be a threat and is treated as such by society, which ultimately results in his death.

The indifference of the universe and the meaningless of life is reflected in the way Meursault observes and is detached from events, people and emotions around him. At his mother’s grave he does not weep as one might expect him too, when Marie asks him if she loves him he does not say yes. Like the universe, he is honest in his simple detachment from everything else. He has peace within himself and can speak and act honestly with no thought to the consequence of his actions, because he as much detached from the consequences as he is from everything else. Whilst he has at many points what one might say are ample reasons to lie, he never does so, the thought of lying never even crosses his mind and he speaks simple bare truths, more concerned with the physicality of things rather than creating or maintaining emotional attachments.

Death is another theme of novel which ties in closely with absurdism. The notion of death frightens a great many people; because of this many turn to religion to provide the comfort and protection they need, so that they can be stronger in life through less fear of death. Despite this prevalent belief in the afterlife by the religious, a place supposedly better than life, people still know and seem to acknowledge the finality of death in the novel. 

For despite notions of an afterlife, the idea that the loved one is in fact in a better place waiting for you, it is still expected for one to mourn the death of a loved one at their grave. The funeral in the story itself marks the underlying truth of the sheer finality of death, if people truly and unequivocally believed in the afterlife, then in a rational universe they might act the same way as Meursault or perhaps even be happy. Thus absurdism is clear in the act of being expected to mourn for the loss of a loved one, by those who demand you would also accept there was nothing final about her death and it has in fact made her better off. 

In the novel Christianity presents itself as the alternative and opposition to Meursault’s absurdist philosophy. In the first instance where Meursault talks to the Christian magistrate he has the option multiple times to repent or simply lie to appease the judge’s Christian sensibilities and be rewarded with a lighter sentence. In the story, Christianity plays the role of one of the rational orders of society like the court proceedings themselves. A societal construct that removes chaos, (which according to absurdist philosophy could be interchangeable with the word ‘freedom’) and brings rationality by presenting an ordered universe that has meaning, which therefore gives meaning to our actions. 

Thus when Meursault defies the Magistrate he is also defying Christianity and what is deemed to be a rational order. The absurdist views the universe as irrational and Christianity opposes the idea of a meaningless universe and thus opposes it. Consequently the confrontation between Meursault and the magistrate can be seen as a personification of the dismal of religion by absurdism. They are two incompatible belief systems which are each an enemy if not a threat of each other in their own right. The rational order cannot sway Meursault in his defiance of rationality and as such he is seen as alien, something to be feared and punished accordingly.

Similarly this rejection of Christianity has greater meaning a second time at the end of the novel where the Chaplain tries to get him to repent, to be saved before he is executed. Still Christianity presents its rationality, an ordered universe with meaning and no absurdity and still Meursault rejects it. One could argue through his rejection of the increasingly desperate Chaplain he is rejecting death itself, or the notion that death is something to be feared. Whilst death fits into the rational order of Christianity, it only does so on the predicate that one truly believes in something beyond it. Thus his rejection marks his acceptance of the finality of death, a notion very few people, in the story at least can even comprehend. Meursault accepts his position and realises he is happy because he understands the universe has never been for or against him, it is simply indifferent.