The Portrait of an Outsider

Abstract

The 1957 Literature Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus’ The Outsider is an experiment in "obstinate honesty and logic", as Camus himself describes the book that establishes the Truth of the Absurd. The Truth of the Absurd explores "conscious death" for the Absurd Man who will be, at first, acutely conscious to unhappiness from missing Liberty and Truth in Life for he feels that there is nothing – let alone the little goals we set for ourselves in Life, and happiness therefrom – that cannot be made defunct by the ineluctable reality of Death. He will detach from this moral framework, murder to reset the existing framework to start from nothing, feel the agony of imprisonment and soon to be guillotined, know hope of living a second time – whatever little is left of it – and, be happy in spite of death approaching, and thereby, re-establish the moral framework on its pillars of Truth and Liberty. The significant here is to challenge death by searching for happiness, in spite of death. Ignorance implies happiness bypassing death.

key words : Albert Camus The Outsider Secular Humanism The Myth of Sisyphus Zur Genealogie der Moral