Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2013

Vol. 45, No. 4, 461474, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2012.718150

Confronting the Absurd: An educational

reading of Camus The stranger
AIDAN CURZON-HOBSON
Otago Polytechnic

Abstract
This article examines the concept of the stranger and the experience of strangeness in Albert
Camuss The stranger. These themes have a range of synergies with educational thought.
They also lead us to other concepts that may have a place in educational debate, in particular the concepts of the absurd and rebellion. This train of thought also has potential for educational practice. If we accept that strangeness has a positive place in education, Camus is
insightful in allowing us to examine its pedagogical foundations and the wider conditions necessary to give rise to the experience of strangeness.
Keywords: Camus, The stranger, absurd, rebellion

Introduction
There is no doubt that within Camuss work are educational themes such as authenticity, truth, care, community and hope. Across the wider stranger literature these
themes are also prevalent, as superbly examined by Colin Wilson (1956).
There is not, however, an already agreed educational reading of Camus or an
established body of literature around the applicability of this work to educational
practice, policy and philosophy. We are only just beginning this project, a handful of
articles and writers beginning an original and exciting excavation. A good summary of
works to date is found in Roberts (2008). An aim of this article is to increase the
interest in this wider project.
Albert Camuss The stranger (1942/1982) is a good place to start drawing these
threads together. However, I have also included reference to other works below to
support the confronting spirit found in the main work. This will allow us to identify
specific characteristics of the stranger that resonate with established goals of education
and what, in turn, might be the traits of a learning environment that embody or are
oriented to this disposition. In some respects this is an attempt to describe the pedagogy of the stranger.

2013 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

462

Aidan Curzon-Hobson

It is important to note that the breadth of Camuss work describes a great diversity
of reactions to the absurd, most of which are negative. This reflects Camuss goal
not to advocate one response to the question of strangeness but to examine in a way
that forces the reader to question his or her own response. But I also believe there is
a train of positive thought through his work, an ethic of sorts around the importance
of the stranger and how this disposition provides for what Camus, perhaps implicitly,
would demand of our society and education. This article suggests what this positive
philosophy might look like and it borrows from Camuss discussion on the stranger,
the rebel and the artistsuggesting that across these is a set of themes or attitudes
or behaviours that might apply also to the teacher, the student and the learning environment. This suggested pedagogy of the stranger or sense of strangeness and its
intended disposition (a confrontation with the absurd) reflect precedence for the following traits:

the absurd
doubt
strangeness
limits
ambiguity
dialogue
solidarity
creativity
diversity and hope.

Across each of these concepts I have interpreted Albert Camuss work as dedicated to
the stranger, to hope and to humility. I believe that across his fictional characters and
their conflicts, as well as inside his wider (non-fiction) prose and personal life choices,
Albert Camus examines a humanity wrestling with its own sense of individual and
communal strangeness. In all of these contexts the work of Albert Camus has been,
and will continue to be, a vehicle for exploring objectively the stranger as a literary or
existential theme and also eliciting in readers the real, lived experience of dislocation.
While licence has been taken here perhaps to overemphasize the positive philosophy
of Albert Camus, I believe it is in keeping with his overall intent, particularly in his
later writing.

The Absurd
Taking our first step of analysis, we find the stranger connected to the absurd; the
absurd as the vehicle, the shadow behind the stranger, the dislocating influenceperhaps even its home. The interaction of the stranger with others leads them,
in turn, to the absurd. It is the absurd that one could argue is Albert Camuss modus
operandi for creating a sense of strangeness both within his own characters and in the
experience of the reader.
Given this, the intensity to which Camus draws the reader into the absurd is perhaps
greater than any other writer. Certainly across other writers studied in this monograph

Confronting the Absurd

463

they all confront the reader in a way that creates strangeness, questioning through nihilism, the religious, the metaphysical and the existential, all of which posit a challenge
that can unsettle. These all evoke the absurd, but perhaps it is Camus that forces the
most overt confrontation. These contexts provide for a moment when the consciousness recognizes the failure of our rationales and in turn our own minds to grasp coherently a meaning that will transcend. Like the characters of Dostoevsky, Camus is
interested in how different minds react from this moment of awakeninghow does
each character reconcile a demand to know and an unforgiving universe?
In this sense the absurd is educational. It throws the individual into the moment
when he or she may recognize the gap between our sense of certainty (and therefore
hope) and what the world makes of it. Normally these two poles are in alignment and
our projects around meaning, knowledge and value achieve some leverage in the
world. But the absurd is the moment when we gain no traction giving rise to the feeling of strangeness. These moments can happen when faced with the unusual or the
unfamiliar, although across Camuss work they most often arise when his characters
are involved in their normal day-to-day activities.
Given this, I see at times in Camuss work a concept of the absurd as something of
volatile educational potentialcharacters who choose to face the absurd take a step
into pure reflective, disruptive energy. Some try to find a way out, others reconcile.
But for Camuss characters which either intentionally or unwillingly remain under its
gaze it transforms everything. Meursaults step is recorded by Camus thus:
And because I couldnt stand this burning feeling any longer, I moved forward. I knew it was stupid and I wouldnt get out of the sun with one step.
But I took a step, just one step forward. And this time, without sitting up,
the Arab drew his knife and held it out towards the sun. (Camus, 1942/
1982, p. 60)
Doubt
So in the broadest sense, Camuss characters bear witness to the absurd as the great
educatorthe catalyst for fundamental doubt and, in turn, lucid reflection. Meursault reflects on this disjuncture:
I realized that Id destroyed the balance of the day and the perfect silence
of this beach where Id been happy. And I fired four more times at a lifeless
body and the bullets sank in without leaving a mark. And it was like giving
four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 59)
As broader evidence of this, stories such as The plague and The fall, the plays Caligula and The misunderstanding all hinge on moments where the absurd, in one way or
another, is made manifest. They, in turn, record our struggle with doubt. As Camus
describes, whether one turns away or embraces, it is doubt which educates in these
contexts for the bane and the enlightenment of man (Camus, 1947/1960, p. 297)
and it is doubt created by the absurd which both imperils and liberates our most
heartfelt projects; a form of never-ending defeat (p. 124). Whether it is in Paris,

464

Aidan Curzon-Hobson

Amsterdam, a courtroom, the church or the desert; these are all sites chosen by
Camus for the awakening to doubt.
Reading the absurd as the condition to be confronted, which I believe suggests
something educational, Camus is offering us the stranger as the vehicle for this type
of transforming thought and action. His body of work is a record of ourselves and our
reactions at perhaps our most profound and important learning moments: the
moments in which, in the face of the absurd, we become lucid of a different kind of
doubtthe benign indifference of the universe (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 117)a
space where our keenest efforts are rendered illusory. Importantly for Camus, this
does not reduce our demand for meaning and value; it just provides us with no
recourse. Whether as his characters portray we shrink from the challenge, launch into
irrational or rational escapism, embrace or turn away from the absurd, one cannot
help but find within it a capacity to unsettle and render strange that which seemed
familiar.
Strangeness
In The stranger we find it is our failed sense of solidarity that creates doubtdelivered by Meursaults interaction. This particular type of (existentialist) doubt brings
with it the more complex sensation of strangeness; where expected reactions based on
tradition and norms are unsettled. For Meursaults lover Marie this is experienced
when Meursault responds indifferently to her questions about marriage; his managers
sense of self-worth is questioned when he asks Meursault for his thoughts on promotion to Paris; the constant bewilderment of the magistrate, his lawyers benevolence
turning to frustration, and the chaplains anger and eventual distaste. Each of these
scenes records how Meursaults interaction creates a sense of disjuncture in others.
The reaction of justice to his strangeness is perhaps the most extreme:
I tried to listen again because the prosecutor started talking about my soul.
He said hed peered into it and found nothing, gentlemen of the jury. He
said the truth was that I didnt have one, a soul, and that I had no access to
any humanity nor to any of the moral principles which protect the human
heart. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 98)
Conversely, Meursault himself experiences a strong sense of strangeness as he
becomes increasingly affected by the reactions and expectations of those around him.
He finds peculiar and detached the processes of the courtroom, the change in behaviour of those around him from tolerance to cruelty, the elaborate preparation given to
his trial, the passing of time, the expectations of others; all of these leave Meursault
with a sense of contradiction that he finds anything from unsettling to despairing. His
experience of himself as a stranger seems to come from this sudden awareness of the
other. In some ways he is thrown (in the existential sense) into a contradiction
between his own sense of value and the indifference of others towards it:
It was at that point I noticed a row of faces in front of me. They were all
looking at me: I realized they were the jury I just had one impression: I
was in a tram and all these anonymous passengers on the opposite seat were

Confronting the Absurd

465

scrutinizing the new arrival to find his peculiarities. I know it was a silly idea
since it wasnt peculiarities they were looking for here, but criminality.
Theres not much difference though and anyway that was the idea that
came to me. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 81)
In this sense Meursault is the object of strangeness, but this is the exception
through The stranger. He is predominantly the catalyst, the harbinger of strangeness.
Like the rats in The plague, the meteor in The state of siege, the enticing disingenuous
monologue of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, the icons of Exile and the kingdom, and even
the tremendous outpouring of love and care in The first man, these are interactions
that can carry the absurd awakening to others. Each of them creates the awareness in
others of the disproportion between their intent and the reality of others, of our need
to relook at something that once was assured and sensible, of our experience of contradiction where once was unquestionable order.
Strangeness therefore represents the emotional upheaval when the individual is conscious of a demand that cannot be met. Strangeness is the emotional marking of this
lucidity. It is the sense that ones demand for unity, meaning and valuehuman
insurrection according to Camusis simply a protest without outcome. The experience of strangeness as we see it through Camuss characters and in particular Meursault is best described in The rebel: he does not ask for life, but for reasons for living
(Camus, 1951/1956, p. 101).
We could therefore say that the stranger might represent an important catalyst for
self-reflectionnot as destructive as the absurd generally, instead an emotional state
subtly awakening in others new spaces for thought and action.

Limits
But what particular awareness does this sense of strangeness lead to? In terms of
Camuss positive philosophy and the link with education, I believe a key idea is that
of limits, best embodied by Meursault in his outburst against the chaplains demand
for faith: Willing as I was, I just couldnt accept such as absolute certainty (Camus,
1942/1982, p. 105). For Meursault, absolutes cannot be sustained in the absurd
moment. The absurd experience might lead one (to escape) to absolutes as embodied
by the chaplain, but for those living within the absurd, a context of contradiction and
doubt, a recourse to absolutes is not an option:
Then, for some reason, something exploded inside me He seemed so
certain of everything, didnt he? And yet none of his certainties was worth
one hair of a womans head. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 115)
In fact, it is the recourse to absolutes that Meursault and Camuss rebel cannot
abide by. They, like our liberating pedagogues, prefer to live in the context of doubt
and ambiguity. This suggests a confrontation of sorts:
The first and, after all, the only condition of my inquiry is to preserve the
very thing that crushes me, consequently to respect what I consider essential

466

Aidan Curzon-Hobson
in it. I have just defined it as a confrontation and unceasing struggle.
(Camus, 1942/1955b, p. 34)

By staying in this confrontation we are forced to respect limits via contradiction and
ambiguity. This is the demanding, sometimes terrifying context that the stranger lives
within, the unsettling dwelling that Meursault inhabits.
But it is not only unsettling for him. It is this rejection of absolutes and the
demand for limits and moderation that perhaps threaten his societys sense of order
the most. It could be argued that it is the indifference to its principles rather than
the opposition which his accusers cannot condone. An opposition based on a clearly
articulated, explicit revolution seems like it would be an easier proposition for his
court to understand and hence reform (the impending parricide trial, for example,
seems less of a crime for the officials). Perhaps then Meursault is demonstrating to
us, like some educational philosophies and institutions, that it is the power of doubt
that holds the greatest yet most disruptive potential. It provides unsettling ambiguity.
Father Paneloux, in The plague, seems to learn from this doubt. Meursaults chaplain
refuses:
Do you want my life to be meaningless? he cried. As far as I was concerned, it had nothing to do with me and I told him so. But across the
table, he was already thrusting the crucifix under my nose and exclaiming
quite unreasonably, I am a Christian. I ask Him to forgive your sins I
noticed that he was calling me by my first name, but Id had enough.
(Camus, 1942/1982, p. 68)
Meursault in this scene is demanding we restore a humility to our knowledge and in
particular its application through principles. He is recoiling from a doctrine without
limit. In some way this reflects Camuss wider challenge to the way knowledge is
legitimated and enforced in society. One could argue that Meursaults death penalty
is part of a societys need to correct an imbalancea disjuncture produced by the
unsettling awareness of the limitations of thought, law and moral frameworks. We can
see this reaction across Camuss work in his portraits of official personnel: under the
banner of justice they will commit murder and enforce silence, showing an indifference to limits, preferring servitude and a unity enforced by physical and ideological
terror. Camus argues for something different:
Moderation, on the one hand, is nothing but pure tension. It smiles, no
doubt, and our Convulsionists, dedicated to elaborate apocalypses, despise
it. But its smile shines brightly at the climax of an interminable effort: it is
in itself a supplementary source of strength. (Camus, 1951/1956, p. 301)
Ambiguity
Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined, writes Camus in the The myth of
Sisyphus (1942/1955b, p. 12). In this sentence, as above, he is exalting the path that
leads to danger through original reflection where ones place, knowledge and truth are
ready to be questioned. It leads us, as Camus describes, to a recognition that a habit

Confronting the Absurd

467

once regarded as important and necessary suddenly loses its rationale where in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger (p. 13).
For Camus this signals a first step to enlightenment, an awareness of limits, a call to
reason, action and to empowering relationships with others. It is a process through
which we might think differently; challenging the repressive projects that once seemed
untouchable, not in the face of something greater but in recognition of their contradictions and limits, once hidden, now apparent.
I would like to call this a step into ambiguitya form of confrontation where the
absurd remains present. Camus warns that this is not always an easy step to take; that
instead we can remain tempted by a hope that will quell both the challenge and the
rise of the absurd in our consciousness. While we might be easily cast into the abyss
of the absurd and the experience of strangeness it is not an easy place to remain:
Eluding is the invariable game. Hope of another life one must deserve or
trickery of those who live, not for life itself, but for some great idea that will
transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it. (Camus, 1942/
1955b, p. 15)
This might reflect aspects of Meursaults experience of strangeness in the courtroom when he is asked to recall conversations, preferences and desires (marriage,
work, white coffee, the murder, the lifeless body, the sea and sky). He sees these
instances as passing, ambiguous moments in life, beyond the capacity of himself or
the courtroom to reduce. He feels unable to play the game expected of him:
He asked me if I had felt any grief on that day. This question really surprised me and I thought how embarrassed Id have been if I had to ask it. I
replied though that Id rather got out of the habit of analysing myself and
that I found it difficult to answer his question. I probably loved mother
quite a lot, but that didnt mean anything Here the lawyer interrupted
me, looking very flustered The only thing I could say for certain was that
Id rather mother hadnt died. But my lawyer didnt seem pleased. (Camus,
1942/1982, p. 65)
And further on, Meursault reflects on the importance of context and ambiguity
over principle:
When I was first imprisoned, though, the worst thing was that I kept thinking like a free man but there were others unhappier than I was. Anyway
it was an idea of mothers and she often used to repeat it, that you end up
getting used to everything. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 75)
In these passages Meursault does not want to be disruptive or resist but in truth he
cannot find an enduring meaning which can easily, definitively explain under the gaze
of the absurd. But those around him require a different outcome; they need to elude
this ambiguity by establishing the overarching rationale. They must explain his behaviour in accordance with the principles of societyexplanations which construct and
constrain behaviour within manageable frameworks.

468

Aidan Curzon-Hobson

But these constructions fail to engage the ambiguity Meursault sees in life and that
is typical of the stranger. More than this, as his outburst with the chaplain demonstrates, he believes that they are axioms leading to a betrayal of life. He believes
without ambiguity that there is nothing left but the communique and the enforcement
of principles. Hence, Meursault represents the importance of ambiguity in creating a
sense of disjuncture through which the world can appear different and spaces for liberation might be discovered. However, he finds that the courtroom is no place for this
sense of strangeness:
He asked me in the same weary manner whether I regretted what Id done.
I thought it over and said that, rather than true regret, I felt a kind of
annoyance. I had the impression that he didnt understand me Anyway,
the tone of the examinations gradually changed. It seemed as if the magistrate had lost interest in me and had somehow classified my case. (Camus,
1942/1982, p. 69)
And before sentencing:
The judge replied that he would be happy to have me specify the motives
which had inspired my crime. Mixing up my words a bit and realising that I
sounded ridiculous, I said quickly that it was because of the sun. Some people laughed. My lawyer shrugged his shoulders and immediately afterwards
he was asked to speak. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 99)
These are examples of the stranger whose sense of ambiguity is rebuffed and perhaps despised. The stranger is largely a record of this conflict; The first man and The
plague and The myth of Sisyphus provide the more positive examples. In these works
the power of ambiguity is demonstrated and described as the potential to lose the
illusory meaning with which we had clothed the world (Camus, 1942/1955b, p. 20).
In ambiguity habit and stage-scenery disappear: The world evades us because it
becomes itself again (p. 20). It is at this moment of brave consciousness that one
chooses a response to remain in the absurd or to flee. Camus suggests that genuine
liberty can survive only if one retains the ambiguity within the absurd; the denial of it
leads to nothing but servitude. In terms of rejecting ambiguity, he signals the courtroom as societys most effective apparatus:
How can we be surprised that such a claim should have developed in the
world of court trials? They reject the man of today in the name of the man
of the future. (Camus, 1942/1955a, p. 189)
Dialogue
But how, against these apparatuses of repression, are these traits of ambiguity,
strangeness and moderation created? Isolated in his cell, consciousness and the mental
gymnastics of Meursault might be sufficient. But I believe that Camus advocates for
the collective endeavour: dialogue and solidarity. It could be argued that Exile and the
kingdom is Camuss greatest study in this. In this work and The stranger, he shows

Confronting the Absurd

469

how dialogue leads his characters to question, to look at contradiction and have ambiguity constructed. The absurd is carried by dialoguethe conversations humble our
thoughtconstructing new limits through community.
This dialogical encounter based on a particular concept of hope might be a similar process to that which we find so strongly in the work of educational philosophy, in particular the work of Paulo Freire and Martin Buber. For these writers,
as for Camus, it is only through dialogue that one can find collective value, agreement around meaning, the instrument to challenge truth and the vehicle for resisting the metanarrative. Dialogue for Camus is the essential force behind rebellion.
Without dialogue Camus believes we are left with only the communique. He
describes this as a community devoid of creativity and without an effective capacity
to find a common ground in anything except the scaffold and its silence (Camus,
1951/1956, p. 279).
Camus is signalling here (amongst other things) a societys failure to build a community based on dialogue and its contrasting passion (and perhaps preference) for
silence and order based on fear. He describes this elsewhere as a mutual understanding and communication able to survive only in the free exchange of conversation
(Camus, 1951/1956, p. 283). For Camus, what is essentially lost is the opportunity
for ambiguity and creative contradiction. Dialogue cannot exist with a person who
has been reduced to servitude (p. 283). There is no space for such a person to speak
within the communique and it is through speaking that the stranger can give rise to
the absurd and one can draw others into the absurd experience and a communal
sense of strangeness. It is in dialogue that we learn to be humblelearn that our
knowledge projects are already humiliated. Camus goes further in explaining this, and
one cannot miss the link here to similar statements in established educational
literature:
Instead of the implicit and untrammeled dialogue through which we come
to recognise our similarity and consecrate our destiny, servitude gives sway
to the most terrible of silences. If injustice is bad for the rebel, it is not
because it contradicts an eternal idea of justice, but because it perpetuates
the silent hostility that separates the oppressor from the oppressed. (Camus,
1951/1956, p. 283)
Solidarity
In the context of The stranger we can see this through the character interaction and
the link between dialogue and solidarity. Camuss characters demonstrate how dialogue depends on solidarity to exist and solidarity reproduces the conditions necessary
for dialogue. I believe the most touching example of this in The stranger is Meursaults
connection with the caretaker when he visits for his mothers funeral and then later in
the courtroom when the caretaker is called as a witness. In the initial scene, the caretaker is about to unscrew the coffin for Meursault to see his mother when Meursault
stops him. In a context of high anxiety and fear, a simple exchange generates empathy, compassion and acceptance:

470

Aidan Curzon-Hobson
He was just going up to the coffin when I stopped him. He said, Dont you
want to? I answered, No. He didnt say anything and I was embarrassed
because I felt I shouldnt have said that. After a moment he looked at me
and asked, Why not? but not reproachfully, just as if he wanted to know. I
said, I dont know. He began twiddling his white moustache and then,
without looking at me, he announced, I understand. He had beautiful
bright blue eyes and a reddish complexion. He offered me a chair and then
he sat down next to me. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 12)

This is a quiet, committed form of solidarity, where perhaps we find the genuine limits to freedom that need to exist for a community to retain its capacity for doubt,
lucidity and rebellion. This starts with simple compassion based on immediate, lived
needs. It is about the time and place and the relationships needed to sustain happiness for that momentthe rejection of meaning that transcends this immediate context. Although the strangers demand is there for unity and meaning it can only be
found in the particular. In The stranger there are countless scenes where the moment
resonates with meaning, highlighting the love found in the particularan opening up
to the benign indifference of the universe.
This is solidarity found in the particular. For Camus this cannot be based on
principle and he rejects those principles that seek to construct an ideological and
physical totality. Enforced by an abstract sense of justice the ambiguity of the world
remains hidden. And Camuss characters illustrate that ambiguity is ever present
and judgement, according to the absurd, is a far more complicated thing than our
everyday justice. Meursault embodies this method, unwilling to judge according to
the principle:
On my way upstairs, in the dark, I bumped into old Salamano, my next
door neighbour. He had his dog with him. They have been together for
eight years he beats the dog and swears at it. Then they both stop
on the pavement and swear at each other, the dog in terror, the man in
hatred Its been going on like that for eight years. Celeste always
says, Its dreadful, but in fact you can never tell. (Camus, 1942/1982,
p. 31)
This demand for ambiguity, an unwillingness to judge according to principle, are
key themes of the stranger. Difference and lack of justification are the terrible consequences of absurd freedom. This disposition of the stranger unsettles those who live
by principle. In the context of Meursaults promotion his boss is left bewildered:
I replied that you could never change your life, that in any case one life was
as good as another and that I wasnt at all dissatisfied with mine here. He
looked upset Id rather not have upset him, but I couldnt see any reason
for changing my life I very soon realised that none of it really mattered.
(Camus, 1942/1982, p. 44)
For Camuss characters choice cannot be made on principle alone. It is only
through solidarity and consequent dialogue that meaning is found and this, in turn, is

Confronting the Absurd

471

where abstract principles can be mediated or at least subjected to the lived reality of
the community. These are the spaces where our terrible freedom to construct meaning is recognized (and demanded of us). Without this sense of solidarity and space,
Camus argues that servitude, falsehood and terror will dominate, each of which are
the cause of silence between man, obscuring them from one another (Camus, 1951/
1956, p. 284).
In the context of rebellion Camus explains it thus. Again, one might see the synergies with established educational thought:
Rebellion itself only aspires to the relative and can only promise an assured
dignity coupled with a relative justice. It supposes a limit at which the community of man is established. Its universe is the universe of relative values.
(Camus, 1951/1956, p. 291)
Creativity
Creativity has a special place in Camuss argument for the dialogical, critical encounter. I believe that it is a key process through which the sense of strangeness is
experienced, although The stranger has little if any explicit reference to the concept. It
does, however, suggest the creative disposition and its place in connecting with the
unknowable:
The hero of the book is condemned because he doesnt play the game. In
this sense, he is an outsider to the society he lives, wandering on the fringe,
on the outskirts of life, solitary and sensual But, contrary to appearances,
Meursault doesnt want to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses
to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened. (Camus, 1942/
1982, p. 119)
Looking at creativity across other works by Camus, he describes it as the heat of
battle embodying the incessant movement of contradiction (Camus, 1951/1956,
p. 283). Camus advocates aspects of the artistic tradition to enlighten and unsettle,
leading us back to the origins of rebellion (p. 258).
In reflecting on the strangers capacity to unsettle through the novel or art generally, Camus offers us an interesting insight. Painting for Camus in particular lends
itself to forging creative space in which dialogue and community might evolve. In this
form he believes one can find a record of the unique, the specific, the opportunity to
record the shop floor, the worker in the street and the poverty of a room. This is the
subject content that Camus argues is the most appropriate context for art and the
stranger. It records dialogue and ambiguity, and in doing so demands of its viewers a
dislocation of sorts in defence of the particular rather than the abstract. Its value is
that it is a highly ambiguous and perhaps dislocating activitygiving rise to the
absurd: art realizes without apparent effort the reconciliation of the unique with the
universal of which Hegel dreamed (Camus, 1951/1956, p. 256). In this sense art
does no favours for the absolute, it cannot support a totalizing principle. The tightrope of the stranger and Meursault resonates here:

472

Aidan Curzon-Hobson
To create beauty, he must simultaneously reject reality and exalt certain of
its aspects art disputes reality but does not hide from it. (Camus, 1951/
1956, p. 258)

In the novel, Camus gives the stranger much greater attention, and again here we
can see a pedagogy of sorts outlined for a confrontation with the absurd. Both reading
and writing the novel is for Camus a potential act of rebellion as it holds the promise
of fundamental questioning and the dislocation of certainty (see, for example, his
commentary on Kafka and hope in the appendix to The myth of Sisyphus). More than
other forms of creativity, Camus believes that the novel is the first to be repressed
through the totalitarian revolution. For this reason it stands out historically as an
important stage for the stranger brave enough to exercise a freedom oriented to solidarity. The reader of the novel is in turn also a rebel or an outsider questioning his or
her sense of unity. This is not always assured, but creativity embodies choice. Like an
educator:
By the treatment that the artist imposes on reality he declares the intensity
of his rejection. (Camus, 1951/1956, p. 268)
Hence, could it be that education, like art and creativity in general, is the mediating
process where lived experience is elevated for the stranger?
Real literary creation uses reality and only reality with all its warmth and its
blood, its passion and its outcries. By doing this it adds something that
transfigures reality. (Camus, 1951/1956, p. 269)
Diversity and Hope
This is perhaps the most complex theme across the work of Albert Camus. Similar to
the characteristics discussed above, diversity and hope are a source of challenge for
Camus against the totalitarian approaches found in the political and social apparatus
of society:
So for me Meursault is not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in
love with the sun which leaves no shadows So one wouldnt be far
wrong in seeing The Stranger as the story of a man who, without any
heroic pretensions agrees to die for the truth. (Camus, 1942/1982, p.
119)
This signals a humility in relation to hope, a call to humble arms against totalizing
ideals in particular the enforcement of justice or a history as all-encompassing ideal
(or ends). Hope in particular is seen by Camus (although often only explicitly discussed in the negative sense of nostalgia) as the conduit for moderation, care and
love. Remaining in the face or confrontation with the absurd:
The wondrous peace of this sleeping summer flooded into me So close
to death, mother must have felt liberated and ready to live her life again.
No one, no one at all had any right to cry over her. And I too felt ready to

Confronting the Absurd

473

live my life again I realized that Id been happy, and that I was still
happy. (Camus, 1942/1982, p. 117)
Hope in this sense is a demand and openness for the absurd and the stranger. As
above, this is not the same concept of hope that Camus targets as inauthentica
form of bad faith. It is instead a hope for a diversity that comes with the sensation
of strangeness, inherent within an interaction with others and the shadowing of
individual thought and action. This is a disposition that is unwilling to relinquish
ambiguity and therefore, deliberately, lives in diversity:
To work and create for nothing, to sculpture in clay, to know that ones
creation has no future, to see ones work destroyed in a day while being
aware that, fundamentally, this has no more importance than building for
centuriesthis is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. (Camus, 1951/
1956, p. 103)
This quote reflects strongly some of the themes already established in educational philosophy and it reflects the humility found in the stranger and the conscious rejection
of ones ability to grasp and construct a totality. This suggests a sense of oneself constantly in change, an existential state of becoming rather than arrival, and it brings to
mind Camuss scathing attack on those who usurp the ambiguity of meaning and history to fulfil their need for absolutes:
Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity. And diversity is
the home of art Thus I ask of absurd creation what I required
from thoughtrevolt, freedom, and diversity. (Camus, 1942/1955b, p.
107)
Camus explains this hope for diversity using language such as utter futilitylost
causesand his story of Sisyphus signifying nothing demands that the efforts of
the stranger too should be exerted towards accomplishing nothing (Camus, 1942/
1955b, p. 108). This is not nihilism but a warning that meaning must be found, for
the stranger, in diversity and community. The stranger has no recourse. His characters refuse nihilism and exalt our best efforts but recognize the failure and the indifference that others (and the universe) will show in the future towards them. It is a most
lucid form of learning embodying the disjuncture of the stranger. Could this be relevant for both the teacher and student?
The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks and this
fate is no less absurd [than that of Sisyphus]. But it is tragic only at the rare
moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods,
powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition;
it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute
his torture at the same time crowns his victory. (Camus, 1942/1955b,
p. 109)

474

Aidan Curzon-Hobson

This might again reflect the disposition of the stranger (and perhaps our liberating
educators and students) who transform, knowing the futility of effort, our understanding of ones self in the world, questioning the conditions under which we live and
demanding the limits which we cannot exceed. In confronting the absurd in this way,
by learning as a stranger, educators and students might be considered Camusian-type
rebels as they explore diversity and the fundamental questioning across the existential,
political and metaphysical.
Conclusion
I began this article wondering whether there was a place for Camuss stranger in education and reflecting on The stranger for hints as to what this picture might look like.
Meursault shows us clearly the contradictions and the perils of the stranger in society.
But by highlighting this and by drawing on some of Camuss positive philosophy,
would it be possible now to state that, given the summary, we can start to trace a
coherent set of characteristics: that across the concepts of the stranger, the rebel and
the artist, there is a picture of what Camus would demand of the teacher, the student
and the learning environment? All of these characteristics reflect the importance of
certain traits of the stranger and the sense of strangeness. They mirror Camuss positive reflections on his own education in The first man and have synergies with educational philosophy.
The stranger would certainly be at the heart of this picture; creative and strong in
the face of doubt, lucidity, ambiguity and contradiction. The strangers demand
would be a confrontation, for a pedagogy based on limits and moderation, underpinned by a lucidity of the absurd. Given this, does it not fit what many demand
already of educationthat in the face of overwhelming odds and unknowability we
find moments of fundamental yet (humiliated) insight?
The absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols.
In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little
voices of the earth rise up. (Camus, 1951/1956, p. 110)

References
Camus, A. (1955a). The artist and his time. In A. Camus, The myth of Sisyphus (J. OBrien,
Trans.) (pp. 185192). London: Penguin. (Original work published 1942)
Camus, A. (1955b). The myth of Sisyphus (J. OBrien, Trans.). London: Penguin. (Original
work published 1942)
Camus, A. (1956). The rebel (A. Bower, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. (Original work
published 1951)
Camus, A. (1960). The plague (S. Gilbert, Trans.). London: Penguin. (Original work published
1947)
Camus, A. (1982). The stranger (J. Laredo, Trans.). London: Penguin. (Original work published
1942)
Roberts, P. (2008). Bridging literary and philosophical genres: Judgement, reflection and education in Camuss The fall. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40, 873887.
Wilson, C. (1956). The outsider. New York: Penguin.

Copyright of Educational Philosophy & Theory is the property of Routledge and its content
may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright
holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.