Kierkegaard on Camus Albert Camus's Essay

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The implications of this concept are enormous and profound. Just as Kierkegaard reverses the Hegelian construct of the universal being over the individual, the inner is placed by Kierkegaard in a position of supremacy over the outer. It has already been shown that faith can make acts moral to the individual performing them even when universal ethics would condemn the same act. Universal ethics are an element of the outer, or that which can be expressed and communicated publicly, whereas faith is inherently incommunicable and therefore individual and inner. Because inner faith can reject outer ethics, the inner gains a place of supremacy over the outer, and the particular experience must be seen as the main constituent of reality. An individual determines their own relationship to the universal based on their relationship to the inward looking absolute.

In the Stranger, Mersault at first find only the rejection of the universal, without the accompanying acceptance of the religious. He as no relationship with the absolute, and hence has no relationship with the universal. The inverse of this could also be true; Mersault, perhaps, has o relationship with the absolute because he has no relationship with the universal, though this would be a reversal of Kierkegaard's levels of influence and responsibility. There are two other characters in the Stranger that are very useful in identifying Mersault's particular relationship with both the universal and the religious.

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In the chapter concerning Mersault's trial, the magistrate who is prosecuting Mersault focuses on his lack of tears at his mother's funeral. The universal ethical imperative to grieve at the death of a parent -- particularly of a mother -- is rejected by Mersault without any explanation, as is his murder of the little-known Arab man. This, for the magistrate, is not only evidence of his guilt but a danger to society, as it amount to a rejection of society's reality itself, and its faith in the universal.

In the next chapter, a priest attempts to convince Mersault to put his faith in God, whom Mersault maintains he does not believe in, insisting that there is no reason for the priest to be so certain in his beliefs. The priest responds that Mersault's heart is blind; faith is not something that comes from outwardly expressible logic, but through individual connection with the absolute. Mersault's rejection of the religious is also his rejection of salvation, revealing his own lack of faith. Ultimately, Mersault achieves inner peace through his acceptance of the world's indifference. Even as he rejects the notion of God, he accepts an absolute that he is a part of, and which frees him from the vagaries of the universal......

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