Was Meursault a sociopath?

This novel shouldn't be considered a classic. It's intellectually very shallow

Authentic lifestyle is not necessarily contrary to social order.
Social order and it's set of morals may be just or not, but it is more important that a person within this society first develops his own understanding of morals and only then decides whether he is fit in this given society or not.
Abel may be "good" in his adhering to God, but his life is non-authentic if his adhering to God was not a conscious decision. And this decision of his must be free.

right,i get it

You're intellectually very shallow.

I understand it’s about absurdism but the protagonist doesn’t act like a human bean. We all have a conscious at the very least, like after you shot a guy by accident you don’t unload the gun into him

I don't think he shot him by accident. And after you've killed him why not empty the gun into his chest?

The scene was weird, i think he was blinded by his sweat and quick drawed the gun instinctually. Also you wouldn’t empty the gun in a person if you are normal because
A. You’d be in shock
B. Most would hope that the person they accidentally shot survived

Mersault isn't most people, as was established by then

Sociopaths aren’t most people. He shows signs of antisocial personality disorder so it isn’t far fetched

I'd say he's more of an outsider than a sociopath

It doesn't matter and trying to "diagnose" a fictional character is dumb as fuck. The point was that he felt like an outsider to society (a better translation of the title would be "The Foreigner").

He acts just like a human being, your perception of how a human being acts is muddled with your idea of how someone in our society *should* act.

It was clearly stated why he killed an arab.
Because it would make no difference for Mersault whether he would kill him or not.
He kinda tested his own freedom by killing him. An obvious parallel to Raskolnikov. Mersault's freedom of action is not constrained by other's freedoms or even lives. He could literally do whatever the fuck he wanted, because his understanding of morals was radically individual. His moral code (or lack of it) was outside of socially accepted behaviour.

>his understanding of morals was radically individual.
is this some sort of French way of saying he was an asshole

From your comfortable position inside society yes, from his position out in the void he did nothing wrong because "wrong" isn't a meaningful concept

Meursault is an amalgam of nihilism and nihilism is one of the recurring themes of french existentialists who inherented it from the philosophy of le moustache guy.

>your comfortable position inside society
i literally have crazy asshole disease my man. It still sounds like French for being a dick

My point is that you, in whatever way, exist in a situation where you have a moral framework. Meursault doesn't because he, at least subconsciously, sees the Absurdity (in the Camus sense of the word) of the universe.

Yeah but you can be a nice person or an asshole while thinking it's all meaningless, it's mostly a matter of your personal emotions or even your taste. Being 'radically individual' sounds like a rationalization of being an asshole, not some awareness that everything is in a sense absurd, because being aware that empathy is absurd doesn't make it disappear.

But how do you really know what is "nice" and what is "asshole"? I mean, if you seriously think about it and not just adopt a made-up view from society.

If you make other people suffer is a good first approximation to being a dick.

But does their suffering even matter? Any action, nice or not, can potentially make people suffer. Besides, you can't really know if it's really you who inflicts suffering. And what makes suffering bad? What is "bad"? Or my god there so many questions someone pass me my inhaler i can't even breathe of all that existential freedom slowly filling my tiny room.

>can't even breathe of all that existential freedom slowly filling my tiny room
And it smells like Gitanes.

your edges cases and fretting about whether suffering actually matters don't change the basic definition- if you make people feel shitty, which is usually not very ambiguous, then you're a dick

I get where you're coming from, but I don't think that this is actually some ungraspable concept, it might not be internally coherent at all times, but there is a kind of agreed-upon core meaning to it.

There is no "rational proof" that "making people feel shitty" is a decent base for building a moral code (what if by making people feel shitty I do them good?). In fact, there can't be any "logical base" for any sort of ethics. Either you believe in God or in categorical imperative (in other words, make a flippy-flip of faith) or you will eventually descend into nihilism. That is what all the fuss is about.

>There is no "rational proof" that "making people feel shitty" is a decent base for building a moral code
I said nothing of the sort. I was defining what an asshole is, and saying that people generally agree on the definition

>I said nothing of the sort
Only you did but in layman terms:
>if you make people feel shitty then you're a dick
What is it if not a rational criteria for a moral code?
>I was defining what an asshole is, and saying that people generally agree on the definition
People in Germany generally agreed one day that Holocaust is okay. They changed their mind later but this is still saying a lot.

I would say those two cases are very different precisely because 'okay' is a moral term while 'asshole' is not.

Asshole might have moral connotations, but you can construct a morality where being an asshole is good so long as you're an assertive asshole(or whatever). The actual definition doesn't really change though because the word is not really ambiguous

Well, "asshole" generally means someone bad, and "bad" is a moral term.

brain fuckin arabs whenever and wherever you encounter them

people confuse this book as some sort of work on meaning and alienation. in reality it's a call to action.

Would "the weirdo" be an acceptable translation of l'etranger?

Has anyone here read Bartleby the Scrivener? That's my favorite contrast to The Stranger. The two have an ostensibly aloof and absent affect. Bartleby chooses to disengage with the world, and remove all investiture in it, becoming a problem for others. The Stranger seems similar, but Mersault cannot help but engage with the intrusions of reality. Flies, the want to smoke, the heat of the sun. Other people bring him no meaning, but simplicities such as hunger are immediate and recognized. Bartleby dies of starvation. Mersault is put to deaath. Both, I think, are intended to be artistic martyrs, but I find Melville's beats Camus'.

Bartleby dies in such a way as to express a perfect void. Like pushing a needle through the fabric of being, he reduces and compounds until he forms a shriveled singularity, collapsing into nothing. Mersault, what? Is executed for killing another? Of course he does not recognize the other, but this does not negate the fact of the other's being.

And what are we to make of the cursing of the priest? This, to me, practically ruined the book. Camus constructs this almost perfect sensitive. One who does not touch, but is touched. At the last minute, he crumbles this entire construct by giving Mersault

>An opinion

Even one. Nevermind that's its tepid tier atheism, but the character hollowing haunts me. Like watching someone collapse theeir house of cards with glee, ruin a beautiful painting. Perhaps that might be the artistic angle of another, but in Camus' case I do not believe this is so.

This thread is a great example of why STEMlords should never even try and debate philosophy.

i will rek you in philosophical debate user get at me

Oh yeah? Then what's the meaning of life
I warn you, I have a black belt in philosophy and WILL ask you "why" until you get tired and leave

>the meaning of life
to fuck bishes, next question

Meursalt lashes out at the priest because in his realisation of impending death, he starts to look for something to cling to. Meursalt doesn't care about life or death until his death is near at which point he starts to cling onto anything, hence attacking the priest, a representation of what Meursalt is against. Someone else in an earlier thread explained it better so I'd recommend searching the archives for it if you care.

N-nani?! He's good!

By calling him a sociopath, you're still trying to assign some reason for the murder of the Arab, which goes explicitly against Camus' philosophy. One must imagine Meursault to be a complete normie to comprehend Camus' philosophy of the Absurd.

Read my mind. They're too busy sucking Elon Musk to really think about this stuff

nononono, the is born of the RELATIONSHIP between man's call for purpose and the unreasoning silence of the universe. The Stranger is the cautionary tale of a man who turns away from revolt against his absurd condition, acting as unreasonably as the world itself. He is NOT the absurd man. Please read the Myth of Sysiphus

Meursault just didn't give a fuck, and he also did nothing wrong

No, because it means the foreigner, i.e., the arab, but you can also see Mersault as the foreigner.