Meursault: Between Alienation and Freedom.

Is indifference towards the world a form of freedom or a source of alienation?

This is the first time that I engage in some form of literary analysis and probably much of what I have in mind has been described in greater detail elsewhere. Yet, I am currently reading Rahel Jaeggi’s book on Alienation and there is an interesting discussion of the relation between ‘indifference’, ‘freedom’ and ‘alienation’ that has caught my attention. So I would like to rehearse these ideas by analyzing a figure which I think is a paradigmatic case of this puzzle, namely: Meursault, the protagonist of Camus’ novel L'Étranger. 

It’s been many years since I read this book, so I apologize in advance for any mischaracterization of the original story. At best, the overview of the character of Meursault that I will give is a stylized version based on the general impression I have from the book and the illustrative intentions that I have in mind for writing this essay. With those remarks in mind, here is (my) Meursault.

Meursault is an Algerian man who is indifferent to his close ones and completely detached from the world in general. His mother’s passing left him untouched. There is no love that triggers in him the least of excitement or emotion. He lives a life independent from his surroundings. Indifferent to the world and the lives of others, life appears to him as absurd and meaningless. He shoots a man. He kills him. And yet, he keeps shooting. It is not that he kills out of pleasure, but he does it out of pure indifference towards the living.

It is no coincidence that when reading this story during highschool, many of my peers developed an identificatory fascination with this character. After all, Mersault’s indifference towards the world could be read as a form of radical independence and sovereignty over the realm of attachments, passions and desires. A sovereignty that could be further interpreted as a form of stoic freedom, untouched by the world, unperturbed by any worries, regrets or feelings of any kind. In fact, we can find this Meursault-like stoicism in modern forms of masculinity.

The question, then, is: is this indifference a kind of independence that can be called freedom? Or is it a deficient relation towards the world, a form of estrangement or alienation towards others and oneself? Of course, the title of the book already suggests that the answer is closer to the second than the first. But that observation does not resolve the core of what is at stake: why do freedom and alienation seem to coincide in the same phenomenon, say indifference? If alienation (following Jaeggi) is a failure to make the world ‘your own’, how is it that indifference harbors, simultaneously, a form of freedom, of acting in ‘your own’ way without being constrained by the world around you? 

The key premise to solve these questions is that we can only become persons in a meaningful way if we are connected to the world in a substantial manner. This means that we can develop our personality only through the very desires, aspirations and attachments that the world has to offer. In short, only by having a robust relation towards the world can we have a proper relation towards ourselves.

The case of Mersault’s indifference, then, cannot be interpreted as true freedom. The ‘independence’ that he has from his surroundings suggests not that he has a special sovereignty over himself and the world, but that he lacks the very attachments necessary to develop himself as a person. Insofar as he lacks the conditions to be a real agent, he cannot make the world his own and, thereby, be free.

The first-person narrative voice indicates precisely that Mersault’s apparent sovereignty over external affairs occurs only in Mersault’s inner space, such that his ‘freedom’ exists only in the form of his thoughts and not in a real practical sense. At this point, Hegel’s critique of stoic freedom can further articulate the nature of Mersault’s indifference. Following Hegel, the meaningless life in which Mersault is passively carried through could only be interpreted as ‘freedom’ in an excessively abstract way, in a way that lacks any real content and that ‘retreats’ away from the world rather than actively transforming it with one’s own will.

From this point of view, Mersault’s indifference is a form of self-alienation. Yet, the relation of contradiction between alienating indifference and actual freedom is much more productive than it seems. The capacity for finding the world meaningless and absurd as Mersault does is, paradoxically, a necessary step to build a meaningful relation towards the world and oneself. In Jeaggi’s citation of Hegel, once we realize that the meaning of life is not fixed, or that it is absent, the appropriate conclusion should be -rather than to passively fall into an existential abyss- to realize that we ourselves are the makers of the world, the writers of history and the weavers of the meaningful threads that make up our personal story. In that sense, the alienation that comes with indifference is a necessary detour in the greater task of constructing our personality and appropriating the world freely according to our will.

I think it is this productive reconciliation between alienation and freedom -whereby the first is a necessary stage for the latter’s realization- which can be found in Mersault’s fate. In my stylized version of the story, Mersault awaits in prison for his death sentence, contemplating the sky and finding in the brightness of stars a moment of genuine connection with life and the world. Maybe it is at that point, in the advent of his imminent death, that Mersault is born as a real person: where he successfully resonates with the world and makes it its own. Maybe that is the moment where radical alienation resolves itself into freedom. 

Jaeggi, R. (2014). Alienation. New York: Columbia University Press.