Albert Camus and the Human Crisis by Robert Emmet Meagher
Most of us know Albert Camus from The Stranger and that novel’s meaning, like Camus himself, is usually misunderstood. Humanities professor Robert Emmet Meagher taught Camus for 50 years before retiring in 2020. He was moved to write his analysis of the great French thinker-doer at a time when the glue of our social contract came undone. Meagher found comfort in Camus’ moral clarity.
Having once been a Communist, and then a fighter against the Nazi occupation of his country, Camus understood ideologies and grandstanding leaders as destructive forces, demeaning the human spirit as well as human society. Meagher identifies the inspiration Camus found in Greek and Christian mythology, principally Plotinus and Augustine. Viewing much of the French intelligentsia with contempt, Camus held that philosophy isn’t about how to think about life but about how to live.
One mistake many readers have made is to assume that The Stranger’s doomed protagonist speaks for Camus. As Meagher puts it, Meursault, the man who thoughtlessly killed an Arab, is not Camus but his negative. The crime he committed, unexpectedly and without feeling, is meant to provoke thought, not emulation, about the weak hold of ethical and spiritual imperatives over people living an entirely physical existence.
Although Meagher doesn’t call special attention to it, The Stranger contains insights for understanding the wave of gun violence sweeping over contemporary America. Meursault’s murder was unpremeditated. He carried a revolver and reacted to a confrontation, hard words carelessly hurled, with an automatic response.
