ERIC Number: EJ1021300
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1857
EISSN: N/A
The Stranger: Adventures at Zero Point
Heraud, Richard
Educational Philosophy and Theory, v45 n11 spec iss p1116-1132 2013
In one of his notebooks, Albert Camus describes, "The stranger," "The myth of Sisyphus," "Caligula" and "The misunderstanding" as pertaining to a series; a schema that suggests that if one were to write about one of these literary works, one would be writing about parts of a whole unless one also engaged with the others. Whether one does this or not, may or may not reflect the nature of the relationship one sees these texts as sharing. "The stranger" and "The myth of Sisyphus" share something unique: they are both as Camus describes them, zero points; a zero point here being understood as the zero point "at which" one thinks about one's existence. This article begins with a reflection upon the relative philosophical value of understanding "The myth of Sisyphus" as a work of art and then occupies itself with how this understanding might provide an opportunity for self-reflection when reading "The stranger." The reading of "The myth of Sisyphus" is not used so much to better understand Meursault (the protagonist of "The stranger") and his story but to invert our interpretative methodology such that it is possible to speak to the reader as a significant actor. "The novel is thought of in terms of the gifting of a philosophical problem," a problem which the author of this article attempts to understand from the point of view of how one might see oneself as paradoxically implicated in the drama of its articulation. It is this paradox that will lead us to speak of the narrative of "The stranger" as referring to a problem in how philosophy speaks to our experience of education.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A