In the UK, Camus’s novel L’Étranger is published under the title The Outsider. In the US, it is published as The Stranger. In this article, I first address the pros and cons of each rendering and how the use of each title has influenced the reception of Camus’s text. I then move on to the major translations available in English and discuss the substantial differences among the texts when they are read side-by-side. Finally, I offer my opinion on which translation could be considered the “best.”

How Translations Can Be Different

Consider the difference between Stuart Gilbert’s and Sandra Smith’s translations when Meursault is in prison. He talks to a guard about how difficult it is without access to women. In Gilbert’s translation, we read the following: “The jailer nodded. ‘Yes, you’re different, you can use your brains. The others can’t. Still, those fellows find a way out; they do it by themselves.’ With which remark the jailer left my cell. Next day I did like the others.”

We see what the jailer and Meursault are alluding to and what he ends up doing. However, this is absent in Smith’s version, which translates the scene as follows: “‘That’s right; at least you understand how things are. The others don’t. But they all end up finding ways to relieve their frustrations.’ Then the guard left.”

For commentators looking to see how intelligent and sympathetic to the human condition Meursault is, these different translations of the original text will make a big difference.

Does the Title Matter?

So far, we have only seen a few slight differences among the English translations of Camus’s novel. One might still ask if it really makes a significant difference and how someone could claim one translation is better than another if it is only a matter of a few different words here and there. To answer this question, we could begin with the title of the novel, which in French is L’Étranger.

In the UK, Camus’s novel is published under the title The Outsider, whereas in the US it is published under the title The Stranger. Which is better? It all depends on your understanding of the central character and narrator, Meursault.

The French title L’Étranger can mean: the stranger, the outsider, or the foreigner. It is up to the translator to decide which is the best English rendering of the title. How do they go about doing this? The answer is that they look into Camus’s wider work and into the novel itself and decide for themselves which translation to go with. In other words, the translator will decide which is the most appropriate English word based on their reading of Camus and his philosophy.

Matthew Ward, whose translation is best known to US readers, went with The Stranger, but Stuart Gilbert and Sandra Smith chose The Outsider. Is Meursault best captured by the idea of a stranger or an outsider?

Ultimately, there is no correct answer to this. Meursault is certainly odd. Anyone who reads the novel can see this, but both a stranger and an outsider would be odd. The difficulty in seeing him as an outsider is that he is so well-liked and respected by everyone he meets in the novel. If he were truly an outsider, then why would people seek his advice, consider him a “man of the world,” or offer him a prestigious promotion at work? However, the same question applies to him being, in some way, a stranger. That is, how is Meursault some kind of stranger when he is so well integrated into his society?

It might be tempting to say that Meursault is not an outsider because he is well integrated into his community by the time of the murder, halfway through the novel. However, isn’t it his reaction after the murder that shows Meursault to be an outsider within his community? The very fact that he does not do everything he can to get himself the most lenient sentence (express great remorse and beg forgiveness) shows that his way of thinking is outside the norm.

The Influence of the Translator

For a long while, the only English translation of L’Étranger available was Stuart Gilbert’s. In the UK, this was supplanted by Joseph Laredo’s. Readers owning two copies of The Outsider, one by Gilbert and the other by Laredo, could tell by looking at the spines which was which. Already a short novel, 100 pages or so, Gilbert’s would be around 20 percent thicker than Laredo’s. The latter seems to emulate Camus’s spare style in a different language. The question is whether their different translations affect English readers’ understanding of Camus’s novel.

There are always little differences that can change a close reader’s view and understanding of a character. For example, let us compare Laredo with Smith and other translators. From the first lines of the novel, we read:

Laredo: “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”

Smith: “My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”

Gilbert: “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday: I can’t be sure.”

Ward: “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”

We can see from these slightly different translations a world of different meanings. Laredo’s is the most spare. Here, Meursault seems the least affected by his mother’s death. Smith adds the possessive pronoun “my,” which suggests more feeling between Meursault and his mother. Gilbert, however, diverts focus onto the telegram Meursault has received from the nursing home after his mother’s death. Ward chooses to give Meursault’s mother a more informal, affectionate name. In his translation, “maman” suggests a far closer and more affectionate relationship than “mother” as is used in the other translations. Someone close-reading an English version of Camus’s novel must be affected by these differences that appear slight yet are significantly different in meaning.

Why Do Translators Make Such Different Choices?

But why would one person go with a particular translation over another? The answer is that translators, like the rest of us, use the scholarly literature in order to understand a text. That is, to understand, say, Meursault and translate what he has to say from French into English, translators often read the secondary literature to better understand the character.

For example, Ward tells us in his translator’s preface that he opted for “Maman died today,” for the iconic first lines of Camus’s novel because Sartre goes out of his way, in his explication of The Stranger, to point out Meursault’s “childish” use of the word “maman.” Thinking, then, of a close-reading scholar reading Ward’s translation, we can see that this scholar will be heavily influenced by a Sartrean reading of L’Étranger simply because the translator was heavily influenced by Sartre.

Consider this scene from Gilbert’s translation. Meursault is in prison and observing the other prisoners during visiting time. He sees a young male prisoner visiting with his mother and says: “His eyes, I noticed, were fixed on the little old woman opposite him, and she returned his gaze with a sort of hungry passion.” Ward translates this scene as: “I noticed he was across from the little old lady and that they were staring intently at each other.” Smith also goes with “staring at each other intently.” There is a big difference between a mother and son staring at each other intently and with “a sort of hungry passion.” Where does Gilbert get this from?

In the original French, Camus writes that they both look at each other with intensity (“et que tous les deux se regardaient avec intensité“). This is somewhat charged for a mother and son, but still a way off from staring at each other with “hungry passion” as Gilbert has it. It seems that he has incorporated his reading of Camus’s complex mother/son relationship from elsewhere into his translation of the novel. Gilbert also ramps up the passion when Meursault first meets Marie. Camus, Ward, and Smith all say that Meursault rests his head on Marie’s stomach; Gilbert says it is on her lap.

Obviously, for Gilbert, Meursault is a far more sensuous and worldly-wise character than that depicted by Ward and Smith. But consider this: is Meursault not described by other characters in the novel as a “man of the world,” that is, worldly-wise? Perhaps Gilbert captures the real Meursault better when he puts his head in Marie’s lap rather than on her stomach. Indeed, Ward also suggests something more erotic than Camus when he says that Meursault feels Marie’s heartbeat on the back of his neck.

So, Which Translation Should You Read?

To answer the question of which is the best translation of Camus’s L’Étranger, one must say whose interpretation of the novel is the best. As we have seen, all translators attempt to capture what they believe to be the best interpretation of the novel. This they do by not only reading the actual source material but also Camus’s other works and the scholarly literature. How well a translator does will ultimately depend on your own reading of Camus’s text and your opinion of Meursault and Camus’s overall project. However, this does not mean that no recommendations can be given.

For UK readers, Sandra Smith’s translation is very close to Camus’s original and contains none of Gilbert’s extra flourishes. She also avoids the trap that Laredo perhaps falls into, in that she manages to reproduce Camus’s spare language without having to cut actual sections of the text.

Matthew Ward’s interpretation is older than Smith’s but is, in my opinion, every bit as good as hers. For readers wishing to contribute to Camus Studies in English, Ward’s text remains the international standard.

Of course, Camus’s original French text is the best version of L’Étranger to study; however, for those wishing to read and study his most important novel in English, either Smith’s or Ward’s translations will do fine.

The Misunderstanding is an inverted take on the parable of the prodigal son. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells a parable involving a young man who leaves home rich and is greeted with joy on his return home poor. In The Misunderstanding, Jan returns home rich and is murdered by family members who fail to recognize him. Albert Camus’s play was met with a mixed response when first performed. Many failed to understand the nuances of the story. Luckily for you, we got you this article.

Overview of the Play

The Misunderstanding is a play in three acts with five characters. There is Jan and his wife, Maria, a couple in their thirties. Martha and her mother are both owners of the hotel where Jan and Maria spend the night. Finally, there is the Old Servant, a mysterious and mostly silent man in his seventies.

Jan and his wife, on one side, and Martha and her mother, on the other, are both keeping secrets. Neither Jan nor Maria knows that the two hoteliers have a sideline in murdering guests and stealing their money. What Martha and her mother do not know is that Jan is, in fact, Martha’s long-lost brother. What’s more, he is returning home having made his fortune, which he intends to share with his family.

The driving force behind the murders is Martha. She is desperate to escape the hotel she feels trapped in. It is situated in a dreary, landlocked area of Europe, and she yearns to escape to somewhere warm to relax and enjoy life by the sea.

This is, in fact, what her brother managed to do. Jan is returning with his wife from North Africa, where he moved to after leaving home years previously. Martha certainly has had a deprived life, living alone with her mother, save for the occasional business traveler stopping by to spend the night at the hotel. During the play, she reveals that despite being thirty, she has never even kissed a man.

Her mother is tired of life, getting towards the end of hers. She half-heartedly goes along with Martha’s murderous activities but never really believes they will ever escape the hotel and move southwards to sunnier climes. Her reluctance to help Martha comes not from any moral concerns, she is too apathetic to care about morality, but from the strain on her back caused by helping to carry the bodies.

On the face of it, everything seems to have turned out nicely, so where do things go wrong?

Jan’s Plan

Jan has been away from home for twenty years. When he left, Martha was only eight years old. It would be unrealistic to expect her to recognize him. But Jan thinks his mother might. They were both adults when he left home, and (he hopes) a mother should recognize her son. When he checks into the hotel, he does so under a false name in order to test his mother. Jan needs to know she recognizes him.

Maria understands why her husband would want to reconnect with his family. But she cannot understand why he did not simply write to them and say he was coming. He says that if he treats them as strangers, he will discover the real them and what they need to be happy. Once he has discovered this, the mask will come off, and the family will be reunited properly. From there, he can use his money to genuinely help them.

Jan pretends he is motivated by a sense of duty towards his mother and sister, but his real intentions are clear. We discover, however, that Jan’s mother never recognizes him. In addition, her apathy and fatigue have left her unable to love anyone. This includes her own daughter, Martha.

In the first act, Jan unwittingly does almost everything he can to make it easier for the murderous hoteliers to dispose of him. As well as not revealing his true identity, he checks in alone, telling his wife that he is scared she will give the game away.

Martha now believes her guest is traveling alone. He also tells her that he has no family, which makes Martha think he will not be missed. Jan reveals that he is independently wealthy, and money is no problem for him. Martha now knows that he has lots of money. In the second act, he fills Martha’s head with talk about his life in sunny North Africa, inadvertently reminding her of her plan and why she commits murder.

Without realizing it, Jan sets himself up as the perfect victim for Martha’s particular modus operandi.

Let us now take a closer look at the crime itself.

Murderous Martha

As murderers, Martha and her mother are ruthlessly efficient. They first select the right kind of victim. The victims usually have no friends and family who will miss them when they disappear. Such an existence might seem poor, a lonely life perhaps. They attempt to justify their actions by claiming they are doing these men a kindness by painlessly removing them from life. As well as this justification being pretty feeble, it seems unlikely that Martha or her mother really needs a moral justification for murder.

For practical reasons, the guests doomed to be murdered are put in rooms closest to the front door. This is simply to avoid having to carry their bodies down the stairs. In a chilling bit of foreshadowing, when Jan offers to help his mother out of her chair, she waves him off, saying she’s not an invalid, and her hands tell him, “They could lift a man up by the legs.”

There are two stages to the actual murders. First, the victims are given a drink laced with sedatives. Once they are in a deep sleep, Martha and her mother carry them down to the dam and throw them, still asleep, into the water to drown. In another piece of twisted logic, Martha claims that it is not they who murder their guests because the guests are still very much alive when they leave their hands.

One final practical point is that Martha and her mother usually murder their guests on their first night at the hotel. They do not want to give their victims a chance to meet people in the village and tell them where they are staying. The first act of the play ends with Martha reluctantly agreeing to delay Jan’s murder for one night because her mother is too tired.

Jan’s Murder

Martha comes to Jan’s room with fresh towels. The two engage in conversation in which Jan waxes lyrical about his new home in North Africa. Jan is, of course, oblivious that he is helping Martha make up her mind to kill him. After she leaves, he realizes that he will never get through to her or his mother, and the recognition he was hoping for will never happen.

Alone in his room, all he can think about is his wife and how this hotel, despite being where he grew up, will never be a home to him. Feeling anxious and sensing he is calling out for something or someone who will never answer his call, Jan impulsively rings the bell in his room. Moments later, the Old Servant knocks on his door, and Jan says he rang the bell just to see if it worked. The old man leaves in silence.

Shortly afterward, Martha arrives with a cup of tea. It contains the sedative. She has decided to go ahead with murder after all. To explain why she is bringing a drink Jan did not order, Martha says that the servant is old and often gets confused. Jan accepts the tea and drinks it when he is alone.

His mother then comes to the room to see if he has drunk the tea. She has discovered that Martha has broken her word and administered the drug despite agreeing to give their guest one night’s reprieve. When she finds out the tea has already been drunk, she says nothing. Jan regretfully informs her that he made a mistake coming to the hotel and will be leaving after dinner. Before he falls unconscious, he tells himself that he will return tomorrow with Maria and reveal his true identity.

Martha, her mother, and the Old Servant come into the room and prepare to take Jan to his watery grave. The mother tells her daughter that their guest was planning to leave. Martha replies that this changes nothing because she has already made up her mind to kill him. They reflect once again on how their victims are better off because they die peaceful deaths and how the present victim is, in a way, lucky. Martha does not seem to notice when her mother says she envies Jan’s eternal sleep.

The Truth Comes Out

The final act opens the morning after the murder. The mother is exhausted from the effort of disposing of the body, but Martha’s mood is upbeat. She feels reborn and ready to live a new life in a faraway land. At this point, the Old Servant arrives and hands Martha a passport, which she reads impassively. It belonged to Jan and had fallen out of his pocket.

Martha, who has recognized the name inside, tells her mother who they have murdered. The mother merely sighs with resignation and tells her daughter she knew that one day something like this would happen. With indifference, she tells Martha that she has reached the end of her life and will now commit suicide. Martha is distraught at the revelation.

The mother explains that knowing she failed to recognize her own son and then murdered him has ignited some spark of feeling within her. Over time, after years of habitual apathy and indifference, she became completely dead inside. But now how can she carry on living knowing she killed her son? She is determined to join him in his grave.

Martha feels no remorse for killing her brother, albeit without knowing who he was. She has no feelings for him whatsoever because he abandoned the family years ago. Jan lived his life and experienced all the world had to offer, whereas she was trapped in the hotel.

Without deliberate cruelty, but nevertheless torturous for Martha to hear, the mother explains that her daughter’s love is not enough to keep on living. That even though Jan left them and never made contact until now, a mother’s love for her son is much stronger than that for her daughter.

Devastated, Martha does not resist as her mother pushes past her to go off and take her own life.

Maria Comes Looking for Her Husband

Martha, alone after her mother’s final departure, has her own realization. She knows now that her mother does not love her. She hates Jan, but more than this, she hates the world and the life she was condemned to. Despite now having the money to move abroad, there is nowhere on earth she wants to live. Martha resolves to commit suicide.

At this point, Maria enters the hotel looking for Jan. She is anxious and worried. Martha, who at first takes her for a guest seeking a room, coldly turns her away. When Maria says she is looking for Jan, Martha tells her he is not at the hotel. Maria persists, saying he must be, and Martha continues to deny it, telling Maria he left in the night. Finally, Martha tries to get rid of Maria by telling her that her husband’s whereabouts have nothing to do with her. At this, Maria reveals Jan’s secret and tells Martha the man she is talking about is actually her long-lost brother. To Maria’s shock, Martha not only says she already knows but also that Jan is dead.

Maria cannot believe what she is hearing and thinks Martha is joking. But Martha proceeds to calmly and coldly explain how she and her mother murdered Jan. She also tells Maria about how they have been committing similar crimes for years. When Maria tries in horror to get Martha to see what she has done, she only succeeds in making her angry, not repentant.

Before she leaves to commit suicide, Martha has one last thing that she wants to do: make Maria realize that the world is a cruel, indifferent place in which nobody really has a home.

Maria is left broken and bewildered, distraught in her loss and grief. After Martha goes, Maria calls out in despair for someone to reassure her that Martha’s words are not true. Crying out to God to have mercy on her, she is interrupted by the Old Servant. She begs him to help her and, in the final line of the play, he says, “No!”

Remorselessly Bleak or a Message of Hope?

The Misunderstanding received mixed reviews when first performed in 1944. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, Camus wanted the play to be in the style of an ancient Greek tragedy. As with other plays, he chose to have his characters speak in a highly stylized literary manner.

He also uses specific phrasing in the actors’ speech to draw out the dramatic irony and themes of misunderstanding and talking at cross-purposes. This technique was lost on many theater-goers, however, who found it hard to accept characters who were supposed to be sheltered, country folk, but who spoke highly formal French rarely encountered outside classical literature.

People were also unprepared for the existential and absurdist themes within Camus’s play. Several decades later, audiences are more familiar with these ideas and prepared to encounter them on stage. However, Camus believed it contained a message of hope. To understand what this could be, we need to consider Camus’s broader project.

The play is part of a cycle of works devoted to Camus’s exploration of the absurd and the search for meaning in a meaningless universe. Its companion pieces are the novel The Stranger, the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, and another play, Caligula.

In all these works, Camus is attempting to understand how we know, for sure, that some things in life are meaningful. After all, if we live in a meaningless universe, then the only things that can be meaningful are those we give meaning to. But there is a problem. If we simply choose to say something is meaningful, how can we truly believe it to be so? In his absurd works, Camus is interested in awareness gained from revelatory experiences.

In the play, Martha’s mother is apathetic and completely indifferent to life. After realizing she has killed her son, she suddenly realizes there is something meaningful and valuable in life: a mother’s love. This is not something she chooses to believe. Far from it. The realization is devastating, and she ends up taking her own life as a result. Not because she would rather live in a world without love, but because she has discovered there is love in the world and cannot live with the knowledge she desecrated it.

During a trip to Tuscany, Camus saw a fresco of the Resurrection of Christ painted by the Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. This piece is considered one of the most important artworks surviving today. While Camus is not a Christian, he saw in this fresco a truth about humanity that he could build a philosophy on. When we look at della Francesca’s The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we too can look upon the face that Camus took to be the fierce grandeur that underlies the human resolve to live.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fresco painted by Piero della Francesca. In the 1460s, he was commissioned by the local authorities of his hometown of Borgo Santo Sepolcro, in Tuscany, to produce an artwork for the town hall. The fresco survives, although it was nearly destroyed during the Second World War. Albert Camus saw it during a visit to Italy and was greatly taken by the work. Towards the end of his essay ‘The Desert,’ he writes:

As he emerges from the tomb, the risen Christ of Piero della Francesca has no human expression on his face – only a fierce and soulless grandeur that I cannot help taking for a resolve to live. For the wise man, like the idiot, expresses little. The reversion delights me.

Camus is certainly not alone in his admiration for the fresco. Della Francesca’s Resurrection is often included near the top of lists of the greatest artworks in the world. Indeed, when the work was saved from destruction during the war, it was due to the refusal of British artillery officer, Anthony Clarke, to shell the town. Clarke had read an influential essay on the fresco and was moved to defy orders to preserve the work.

It was the face of Christ that particularly moved Camus. But it is worth mentioning in passing an unusual feature of the fresco: it has two vanishing points. One is Jesus’s face, but the other is the center of the sarcophagus. It means that when viewing the artwork, the eye is drawn up and down without a fixed point of focus. This would have particularly appealed to Camus, who was fascinated by doubleness and opposing viewpoints.

We have mentioned Camus’s essay ‘The Desert,’ in which he writes about della Francesca’s Resurrection. Let us now take a brief overview of these essays.

Camus’s Early Essays

Camus published two collections of essays while still living and working in Algeria. The first, published in 1937 as L’Envers et l’endroit, is known in English as The Wrong Side and the Right Side (note the doubleness, mentioned above). Camus scholars cherish these essays not only for their primitive and youthful freshness but because so much of Camus’ early influences are laid bare in these texts. He too cherished these works, commenting toward the end of his career that these essays contain the source of his entire philosophy.

Worthy as these essays are, his second collection, published in 1938 under the title Noces (Nuptials in English), is generally seen by Camus scholars as superior. Each of the four essays sheds light on important themes widely considered central to Camus’ philosophy.

Indeed, the title alone, Nuptials, captures an idea deeply imbued with meaning. Camus is interested in the mythopoeic idea of a ‘wedding’ between God and humankind that is central to both Christianity and Judaism. Although not widely recognized, these early essays by Camus can be read as theological works.

Camus was an atheist, or more accurately an agnostic, but he was very familiar with, and even fascinated by, Christian theology. One only needs to see the titles of his works to see the Biblical connection: The First Man, The Rebel, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, The Plague. A great deal of his work overlaps with that of Christian thinkers, but from a non-Christian perspective.

Religions at their core attempt to answer two closely related questions. The first concerns why we exist, and the second why our existence is important. In short, religions seek the meaning of life.

Indifference

A major recurring theme in Camus’s philosophy concerns the idea of indifference. It is therefore interesting that he chose to greet the readers of Nuptials with a quotation from the French author Stendhal. Taken from his 1838 novella, The Duchess of Paliano, the quote reads as follows:

The hangman strangled Cardinal Carrafa (sic) with a silken rope that broke: two further attempts were necessary. The Cardinal looked at the hangman without deigning to utter a word.

Stendhal’s work concerns real people from 16th-century Europe. Camus is interested in one in particular, Carlo Carafa, and especially his death. The real-life Carafa had an interesting life and career. Born in 1517, he began as a mercenary, then joined a Catholic military order and was elevated to cardinal by his uncle Pope Paul IV in 1555. Charged with multiple crimes, he was executed by strangulation in 1561.

But we need not know anything about the actual Carafa or indeed much at all about Stendhal’s depiction of the man. All we need to trouble ourselves with is the quotation Camus takes from the novella. What is of interest is the manner in which Carafa faces death: with indifference.

We can see from the quote that Carrafa is sentenced to death by strangulation via a silken rope. Historians tell us that the real-life cardinal was indeed executed by strangulation in March 1561. The detail given in the quote is that it took three attempts to strangle the man. Horrific as this experience must have been, the detail that captured Camus’ imagination was Carrafa’s attitude and demeanor: he says nothing.

There is pride in Carrafa’s indifference.

The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus makes several references to indifference in his 1942 essay on the absurd, The Myth of Sisyphus. This essay is one of the most important philosophical texts on absurdity and the meaning of life. Before tackling indifference, let us take a brief look at absurdity.

The concept of the absurd is complicated, but it can be understood in simple terms as the unpleasant experience of finding oneself bereft of meaning while at the same time feeling strongly that one’s actions and beliefs are meaningful.

Consider the closely related religious questions mentioned above concerning why we exist and why our existence is important. We stated that these two questions concern the meaning of life (or its absence). The absurd is experienced when someone finds themselves at a loss to explain why human beings exist and why it is important that we do, while at the same time feeling utterly convinced that human life is meaningful.

Note that the absurd is not a problem for religious people or nihilists. Those with faith in God believe we exist because it is God’s will that we do. They also believe our existence is important because it is important to God. The absurd does not arise because there is no contradiction between these views and the belief that life is meaningful. Nihilists who believe we exist by chance and that our existence is unimportant do not also hold the contradictory belief that life is meaningful. Therefore, they too have no problem with absurdity.

We might think that if Camus praises indifference, he must be advocating for some kind of nihilism. After all, nihilists appear to be indifferent to life. But he is not. It is important to note that Camus holds that life is meaningful. There can be no absurd if it is not.

Is a Life Without Meaning Preferable?

There is an infamous passage in The Myth of Sisyphus that causes confusion among scholars. At one point, Camus seems to suggest that a meaningless existence is better than one with meaning. In other words, we are better off if our lives are meaningless. Let us look at the passage.

It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.

On the face of it, it does seem like Camus is suggesting that lives lived without meaning are preferable. However, this interpretation does not fit with the conclusion of the essay. Famously, Camus uses the myth of Sisyphus, a man condemned by the gods to endlessly roll a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back down again just before reaching the summit, to argue that we must ‘imagine Sisyphus happy.’

Sisyphus is happy, according to Camus, not because his life is meaningless but rather the opposite. Yes, he is condemned to perform a pointless task that will be eternally frustrated, but that is not Camus’ focus. He is interested in Sisyphus’ descent down the mountain to retrieve his rock. This time is Sisyphus’ own, and he is free to find meaning for himself. The point is that Sisyphus is happy because he can find meaning in an otherwise pointless existence.

When Camus says that life will be lived better if it has no meaning, he means that life is better if it comes with no pre-existing meaning. This is because if life does not come with a built-in meaning or purpose, we have the opportunity to find our own.

So where does indifference fit in?

The Wine of the Absurd and the Bread of Indifference

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus talks about a state of mind in which a person becomes fully aware of the absurd. He says: “At last man will again find there the wine of the absurd and the bread of indifference on which he feeds his greatness.” In the same essay, he also talks about “the profound nobility that is found in indifference.” “Everything,” he says, “begins with a lucid indifference.”

We can note the obvious religious overtones. When Camus speaks of bread and wine, he is clearly referring to the Christian Eucharist. Jesus told his disciples that every time they broke bread and drank wine they should think of him [Luke 22: 19-21].

Breaking bread is a daily practice; if future disciples of Christ take his message seriously, they will keep him and his teachings in mind daily. For Camus, it is imperative that we keep the absurd in mind. For Christians, Jesus is the way and the truth and the life [John 14:6]. Camus, who was not a Christian, believed that the absurd was the truth. For him, it was imperative that we keep the truth of the absurd in mind every day.

In fact, for Camus, the absurd, the idea that we cannot help believing that life is meaningful, put against the inability to explain why this is the case, is the only solid, concrete truth we human beings have. He believed that our awareness of this, coupled with our determination to live and thrive, made us, as a species, great.

The visual expression of this human greatness, for Camus, is expressed in Piero della Francesca’s The Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the painting, he sees in Jesus’s face a steely resolve to live. We can see, quite clearly, that Christ’s face in the artwork is almost emotionless. There is a kind of magnificent indifference to his resurrection.

Camus was inspired by this fresco before fully articulating his philosophy of the absurd. It is not his philosophy in pictorial form, but we can perhaps get closer to Camus’s understanding of the world through appreciation of this artwork.

Search online for Albert Camus, and you will inevitably find numerous memes in which the idea is expressed that Camus believed life to be meaningless. Indeed, Camus did not believe life comes with a purpose, but he also believed it is impossible to live a meaningless existence. In his philosophy, we must find meaning in our lives for life to be possible. To better understand Camus on this topic, we must make a distinction between “meaning” as in comprehension and “meaning” as in significance or meaningfulness.

A Life Lived Without Meaning?

There is a key passage in The Myth of Sisyphus that has led to much unnecessary confusion amongst scholars in the secondary literature. Not reading carefully, and possibly too heavily under the sway of a few very influential commentators, they have misread this passage as Camus suggesting that a meaningless life is better than a meaningful life. Before discussing why this interpretation simply cannot be accurate, let us look at the passage in question.

Found within the “Absurd Freedom” section of the essay, Camus writes that the idea of life comes with a meaning already built into it, so to speak. According to many of the world’s religions, the world is not devoid of meaning but only appears so. Let us look briefly at this idea.

For Christians, life also comes with meaning. God created the universe and everything within it for a purpose. His purpose may be a mystery, and many Christians consider it their duty to discover and fulfill God’s purpose. Nevertheless, whether we know what the meaning of life is or not, there is still a meaning to be found according to this religious belief. In other words, life comes with a meaning (and you have to find it).

Camus is not a Christian, and therefore, he does not believe that life has meaning. How, then, does he believe this allows life to be lived all the better? The answer is that because life does not come with a meaning, we are free to create and discover meaning for ourselves. And this, for Camus, is what makes life valuable. Note that by talking about value, we are now thinking of life as important, significant, or meaningful. Before we move on to this idea, let us first take a quick look at Camus’s influences.

Inspired by Nietzsche, Camus on Living a Meaningful Life

Friedrich Nietzsche greatly inspired Albert Camus. Indeed, we would not be going very far wrong at all if we were to read The Myth of Sisyphus as a response to a challenge set by Nietzsche in his writings. At the end of the first, longest, and most philosophical section of his essay, Camus states directly that Nietzsche shows us the way. While his relationship with Nietzsche is too complex to explore here, two texts by Camus’s mentor and spiritual interlocutor provide useful context for the present discussion.

Nietzsche wrote mainly in aphorisms, short observations not usually more than a few paragraphs, intended to draw out a particular idea for further reflection. We are interested in two of his aphorisms here. The first comes from his 1882 book, The Gay Science, and the second from Beyond Good and Evil, published in 1886. In both, Nietzsche expresses a peculiar view about Christianity.

Nietzsche’s aphorisms are numbered and often given titles as well. In Nietzsche scholarship, we typically refer to them with the initials of the book from which they are taken and their number. Some very famous aphorisms are also known by their title or even their main subject.

The first one we will be looking at is GS 125, also known as “The Madman” and Nietzsche’s “God is dead” aphorism. Here we will see an idea that is also central to Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus.

Nietzsche contends that while many people consider themselves atheists, very few understand the consequences of atheism. In brief, if God does not exist, then every value and belief that has been previously justified needs to be re-examined and new justifications found if these beliefs and values are to remain meaningful.

We have seen that Camus does not believe in God and that life has no meaning. Consequently, since he knows that we cannot live without meaning, once meaning has been lost we must replace it with a new belief. As we shall see dramatically played out by Nietzsche in GS 125, this is no light undertaking.

God Is Dead, and We Have Killed Him

GS 125 opens with a madman running around the marketplace with a lantern, claiming to be looking for God. The atheists observing him mock the man and jokingly shout out suggestions as to where God might have gone. Finally, the madman cries out that God is dead and that “we have killed him.” What Nietzsche means by this is not that God has literally been killed but that people have ceased to believe God exists. This is why he makes a point of saying that the people in the marketplace are atheists. What the madman says next holds the most interest for us in this present discussion.

In the aphorism, Nietzsche contrasts the reaction of the “madman” to the death of God with that of the marketplace atheists. While he is distraught, lost, and entirely disoriented, the atheists are at ease and even joking around. At first, the “madman” is shocked by their reaction, but soon the penny drops: they do not believe in God, but they do not yet know what this means.

What they fail to realize is that without God, all beliefs and values that were previously justified by appeals to the existence of God are no longer justified.

In GS 125, Nietzsche is making the point that life does not come with a meaning already built into it and, therefore, the necessity of creating meaning for ourselves. The “madman” acknowledges this when he asks the crowd: “What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves?” Here he is talking about the creation of a new set of myths to replace the ones lost when we “killed God.” For Camus, this requirement to create meaning for ourselves is part of what makes life worth living.

New Horizons

The horizon is often used as a metaphor for the limits of a person’s experience and understanding; we often advise people with sheltered or too restrictive outlooks that they ought to “widen their horizons.” The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, in his magnum opus Truth and Method, has this to say about the horizon, which expresses neatly what we are discussing here:

“The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. Applying this to the thinking mind, we can speak of narrowness of vision, of the possible expansion of the horizon, of the opening up of new horizons, and so forth […] A person who has a horizon knows the significance of everything within this horizon, whether it is near, far, great or small.” (Gadamer, 313)

The significance of something relates to its importance. When considering whether a thing is significant or not, we ask ourselves what it signifies or, in other words, means. But how do we know if something is important, significant, or meaningful? We can determine that something is a useful means to an end, but this only puts off the question. Now we have to ask ourselves why this end, to which this thing is a means, is itself important and so on. In asking these questions, we can notice a difference between meaning and significance.

Simply comprehending the meaning of something does not make it meaningful. Imagine seeing a photograph of a poster written in a strange language and having it translated for you, only to discover it says something like “no parking between 8 am and 5pm.” You now know the meaning, but it is not something that you would ordinarily refer to as meaningful.

A key problem that Camus addresses in The Myth of Sisyphus is how to make something significant or meaningful. But how can we invent a meaning for life and really believe that what we have invented is important and significant? Here is where Nietzsche’s second aphorism comes into the story.

Nietzsche Shows the Way

I said previously that in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus credits Nietzsche with showing him the way. What he says in full is:

“Nietzsche writes: ‘It clearly seems that the chief thing in heaven and on earth is to obey at length and in a single direction: in the long run there results something for which it is worth the trouble of living on this earth as, for example, virtue, art, music, the dance, reason, the mind – something that transfigures, something delicate, mad or divine,’ he elucidates the rule of a really distinguished code of ethics. But he also points the way of the absurd man.”

Camus is quoting from aphorism 188 of Beyond Good and Evil. “The absurd,” for him, is the unpleasant experience of finding yourself bereft of meaning in a given situation. However, it is not simply that you cannot comprehend what you are experiencing, but that the old meanings have somehow fallen away, leaving you painfully aware of their absence. The experience of the “death of God” is the absurd writ large.

When Camus talks about Nietzsche pointing the way of the absurd man, he means what someone who takes the idea of the absurd seriously should do next. And we can clearly see from BGE 188 that, for Nietzsche, the next step is to find something that makes life worth living; in other words, something that makes life meaningful.

The rest of The Myth of Sisyphus is Camus’s exploration of whether this can actually be achieved. He concludes with his version of the Sisyphus myth and tells us in the very last sentence that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” If we imagine Sisyphus happy, we must surely imagine his life as meaningful.

One of the most important questions Camus asks in his essay is whether it is possible to create myths that make us feel that things in life and the world are significant, valuable, and meaningful. Often, we simply feel like we know (perhaps without knowing why or how we know) that certain things are meaningful, but how can we be sure we are not kidding ourselves? The atheists in Nietzsche’s GS 125 thought they knew, but they were simply relying on Christian justifications without realizing it. The problem is this: if we make up stories intended to show how life is meaningful, how can we trust them, given that we just made them up?

Camus on Meaning and Meaningfulness in Life and the World

We have seen that in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus is interested in two kinds of meaning: meaning as comprehension and meaning as significance. Since he does not believe in God, he does not believe that life comes with a built-in meaning. For Camus, however, this is a good thing, and life will be lived all the better because of the opportunity to create our own meaning and make our lives meaningful.

Taking his lead from Nietzsche, Camus sets himself the goal of finding something to live for that makes life worth living. For life to be worth living, it must be meaningful. However, a problem he encounters is how one can invent a reason why something is valuable and really believe it is true, knowing it is an invention.

Camus believed he solved the problem. It is beyond the scope of this article to explore Camus’s solution here; however, one thing should now be clear: Camus believed that life is meaningful and The Myth of Sisyphus is his case for the value of life. For a greater understanding of Camus’s solution, his companion pieces to the essay are a great place to start. These are the novel The Stranger and the plays Caligula and The Misunderstanding.

A popular view of Meursault is that he is cold, indifferent, and incapable of reflection and emotion. The problem with this view is that the actual text of Camus’ novel The Stranger provides very little support for it. Indeed, there is much to suggest that this view is wildly inaccurate. Here, we test the most extreme characterizations of Meursault from the scholarly literature against the source material.

Getting Acquainted With The Stranger

Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942) is written in two parts. In part one, the hero, Meursault, goes to his mother’s funeral and, after returning home, has dinner with a neighbor, Raymond. Raymond is aggrieved over the actions of his mistress, an Arab woman, and is seeking revenge. Meursault agrees to help by writing a deceitful letter on Raymond’s behalf.

Days later, Meursault and his new girlfriend, Marie, accompany Raymond on a day out at the beach. Two Arabs, one of whom is the brother of Raymond’s now former mistress, follow them. There are several altercations, including one in which Raymond is slashed in the face. Meursault later encounters the Arab knifeman and ends up shooting him dead.

The second half of the novel concerns Meursault’s arrest and trial. The prosecutor argues that Raymond was a pimp and his ‘mistress’ was one of his prostitutes. He also claims that Meursault is an underworld enforcer who killed the Arab to send the message that Raymond is not a man to be trifled with. None of this is true.

We will focus solely on the first half of The Stranger. Here, Meursault is shown living his day-to-day life among friends, colleagues, and strangers. We want to know how he sees himself and, in terms of this investigation, how he is seen by others.

In much of the scholarly literature on The Stranger, Meursault is characterized as intellectually and emotionally stunted. At the extreme end of this view, we see the idea that he is incapable of thought and reflection, leaving him socially inept. This is the view we will be challenging.

It is important to note that we are not interested here in passing judgments on Meursault’s actions or moral character. We are concerned solely with assessing his intellectual and emotional capabilities.

Does Meursault Lack Intellectual and Emotional Understanding?

Philosopher Robert Solomon, in his text Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre (2006), argues that Meursault is barely capable of thought or feeling.

Solomon’s account, however, is not without its problems. The biggest problem for Solomon is that The Stranger is written in the first person. That is, the text is Meursault’s own account of events. There is no way a person incapable of thought or social understanding could be narrating this text.

A second problem is that everyone who knows him takes Meursault to be an educated ‘man of the world’. Furthermore, he comes across as immensely likable. How can a man with no social understanding or emotional intelligence be viewed so favorably by his peers?

In fact, a great deal of the text must be ignored if we are to get anywhere close to accepting Solomon’s account of Meursault. Let us first look at how Meursault is received by the other characters in the text, and then at the complication (for Solomon) of his serving as the narrator of the story.

Meursault: Barely Capable of Thought or an Educated “Man of the World”?

In the first half of the novel, we see that Meursault is not only well-liked by those around him but also well respected and considered intelligent. People come to Meursault when they need advice. At work, his boss singles him out for a promotion and a coveted position in Paris. Even if we ignore the fact that Meursault is seen as a suitable candidate for promotion, the fact that he manages to hold down a white-collar clerical job is something those like Solomon, who want to say he is incapable of thought, cannot satisfactorily explain.

Let us now look at the incident that sets everything in motion: Meursault’s decision to write a letter on behalf of Raymond. If Meursault is incapable of thought and socially and emotionally inept, why would Raymond ask him to write a letter on his behalf? Raymond explicitly says he wants Meursault to help him because he knows Meursault is capable of doing a good job. Everyone seems to know that Meursault is an educated man.

Just how educated is Meursault? We know he went to university and did some undergraduate studies. He says that he had to give up his studies to look after his mother. “When I was a student, I was very ambitious about having a career. But when I had to give up my studies, I realized quite soon that none of that kind of thing mattered very much.” This passage presents major problems for those like Solomon who want to claim that (a) Meursault is incapable of ambition and (b) that he is incapable of reflection.

Meursault as Narrator

The Stranger is narrated by Meursault, which is a major problem for those who claim he is incapable of thought and reflection. His account of events is too well expressed to have been written by the kind of intellectually and emotionally limited human being commentators like Solomon take him to be.

Solomon’s rather desperate solution is to suggest there are two Meursaults: Meursault the narrator and Meursault the narrated. That is, there is an intellectual Meursault telling the story of another Meursault that does not think, never reflects, and “rarely even speaks.” But where is this second Meursault? Not in the text, that is for sure. As we shall see, Meursault thinks, talks, and reflects a great deal.

It is true that Meursault undergoes a profound change in his worldview at the end of the novel. But his intellectual powers and emotional understanding are unaffected. He has the same level of cognitive ability from the first page of the novel to the last. Solomon, who wants to make a philosophical point using Meursault as an example, simply ignores the character found in the text.

Solomon is far from alone in talking about a Meursault not found in the novel. For example, in his On Camus (2002), Richard Kamber, to make a point about existential indifference, claims that Meursault put his mother in a home and immediately forgot about her. However, the text states that Meursault traveled for hours to visit her every Sunday for two years. However, we will pay more attention to David Sherman’s view.

Meursault and Reflection in The Stranger

David Sherman, in Camus (2008), ignores every explanation Meursault offers for his actions to fit his Sartrean interpretation of the novel. Sartrean bad faith involves self-deception regarding our freedom to choose. Sherman argues that Meursault deliberately refuses to reflect upon his actions and choices to such an extent that he is a profound example of bad faith.

In fact, Meursault often engages in reflection; indeed, probably more so than the average person. For example, when Meursault agrees to write Raymond’s letter, he reflects on his free choice to do so. He does not try to convince himself that he must do so because Raymond is a friend.

The problem here is that Sherman ignores anything in the text that shows Meursault engaging in reflection. As we shall see, in order to make his claims of Meursault living in Sartrean bad faith, Sherman must rewrite the story of The Stranger to fit his own narrative. Consider the following chapter by the end of the first book.

Three Altercations on the Beach Resulting in Murder

By the end of the first part of the book, Raymond invites Meursault and Marie to join him one Sunday at a beach chalet owned by his friend Masson and his wife. Meursault is warned that the brother of Raymond’s mistress has been stalking him and is out for revenge.

Meursault, Raymond, and his friend Masson go for a walk on the beach and encounter two Arabs. One of whom is the man stalking Raymond. There is a fight. The Arabs lose, and Raymond starts showing off to Meursault. At this point, the brother of his mistress draws a knife and slashes Raymond’s face. Masson and Raymond go off to find a doctor, leaving Meursault to explain everything to Masson’s wife and Marie, who are both distraught. We can call this “altercation one.”

When Raymond returns, he is seething with rage and storms out onto the beach. Meursault correctly guesses that his friend is looking for the Arab and is planning something stupid. He follows Raymond, and when they come across the Arab, Raymond produces a gun.

Meursault, knowing that telling Raymond not to shoot will only provoke him into shooting, cleverly persuades him to hand over the gun. He says that he will fire if the Arab tries anything dirty. Raymond insults the man who, wisely (considering Meursault has a gun trained upon him), says nothing. This is “altercation two.”

Raymond, now appeased, is in good spirits. He and Meursault go back to the chalet, but at the steps to the entrance, Meursault hesitates. He does not want to deal with the distraught women again. So he heads back out onto the beach. Here, he bumps into the Arab, who draws his knife. Meursault fires the gun and kills him. This is “altercation three.”

Where Sherman’s Account Goes Wrong

For a man supposedly bereft of intellectual and emotional intelligence, Meursault’s handling of Raymond is remarkable. He knows that any attempt to tell Raymond not to shoot will only make him more determined. So Meursault asks for the gun and tells him he will shoot. On the spot, he devises a face-saving scheme in which Raymond can hand over the gun and still get revenge.

Although Raymond is now happy, Meursault is not. He does not want to go back to the chalet and “deal with the women again.” There is no point just standing on the steps of the chalet, so Meursault walks back out on the beach where he will have altercation three. So far, his behavior seems perfectly reasonable. However, Sherman sees things differently.

In Camus (2008), Sherman omits altercation two from his account of The Stranger. The way he tells it, Meursault goes back to the chalet after the altercation one, stops, and heads back out alone. If we ignore altercation two, then there are no distraught women, and Meursault does not disarm Raymond. Instead, Meursault, who in this version of events must be carrying his own gun, heads back out onto the beach rather than going into the chalet.

Sherman’s claim is that Meursault secretly wants to kill the Arab but will not admit this even to himself. Sherman says that Meursault walks off with apparently no specific destination in mind, with the feeble excuse that it is just as hot standing outside the chalet as it would be to walk down the beach.

For Sherman, Meursault is in bad faith when he says that he met the Arab and shot him by chance. That is, Meursault denies responsibility for his choices and blames everything on bad luck.

Two Meursaults: One in the Text, Another in the Commentaries

We saw earlier Solomon’s strange idea that there are two “Meursaults,” one the narrator and the other the narrated. This idea simply does not work.

However, while he may misremember, exaggerate, or downright lie, Meursault cannot be both an intelligent and effective storyteller, recounting a story of an educated and well-liked man, and also be a man barely capable of thought and understanding of the world around him, unable to reflect on their actions.

This “second Meursault,” who is blank, unimaginable, and not found anywhere in the novel, is located only in certain texts found in the scholarly literature on The Stranger. And here his “nothingness” serves a useful purpose. The character of Meursault is wiped clean and then re-imagined according to whatever story the commentator wants to tell. Accordingly, Meursault becomes the exemplar of the unexamined life for Solomon and a paradigm of bad faith for Sherman.

The irony is that in the text, this is exactly the approach taken by the prosecutor. Solomon, Sherman, and the prosecutor paint a picture of Meursault that is not supported by anything found in the text. If we are interested in Camus’ philosophy, it is the text itself that merits our close attention.

Thomism (the philosophical system founded by Thomas Aquinas) is intended to be an interrelated web of complementary concepts and arguments, akin to overlapping layers of a flower’s petals, which can only be appreciated by contemplating all its imbricated structures. Asking the question “Does God know evil?” occasions asking what evil is, what its cause is, what reasons God has for permitting it, what role it plays in providence, and what its consequences are.

Here, the first question is addressed.

Evil as Privation

How does Thomas Aquinas conceive of evil? He holds that evil is not a “thing”— a doctrine known as privatio boni (Latin for “privation of the good”), which dates back at least to Augustine of Hippo. All created essences possess being and contain, qua essences, no defect, and are good in that they bear a likeness to the being of God. In this way, the order of beings excludes evil from its essential nature. Put differently, God doesn’t directly create any evil thing. 

However, God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting corruption and privation in that created order (reasons we cannot detail here) through the agency of secondary causes—those creatures endowed by the Creator with the capacity to be their own causes, whether through natural laws or through the powers of voluntary action. The first grouping corresponds to the world of the physical sciences; the second refers to the spheres of moral interaction that we will into existence. 

Thomas Aquinas generally defines evil as “the privation of that which is connatural and due to a thing” (Book III, Ch. 7, Summa contra Gentiles). It consists either in a defect in the apprehension of good, in the case of moral evil, or in a deficient cause within the physical order of things, pertaining to one or more of the four Aristotelian causes. For example, a person limps, Aquinas says, only on account of some defect or “crookedness in the tibia” that hinders their power to walk (Book III, Ch. 10, Summa contra Gentiles). Moral evil, having to do with a failing in our powers to act, arises due to a misperception of the ends towards which we ought to be directed, whether misguided by our will or reason. 

In this way, evil always parasitizes what is good—it lives by living on what is good. It exists exploitatively, through some mal-achievement or some misconception. 

How God Knows Evil Exists Without Creating It

Some might think that God cannot know evil, since He knows only Himself, who is the sovereign good; and further, can neither tolerate the company of evil nor turn away from His own essence. Similarly, one might think that it would be beneath Him to contemplate ignoble things, such as the forms of mud, filth, or hair, let alone think eternally about every seemingly trivial detail or fact, such as an infinite number of tautologies or logical equivalences, or sets of endless and meaningless combinations of letters or words. 

One rebuttal Aquinas issues in response is that God must know even those things we might consider lowly since the order of the universe is nobler than any of its parts, which follows if the parts are directed toward the good of the whole. Thus, if God knew only the parts we consider dignified to the exclusion of the rest, it would render His knowledge less noble, not more so. Further, God knows all these things because he pours Himself out into all things as their Creator and First Cause.

Thomas Aquinas maintains that God knows evil things by virtue of His omniscience. He also knows particular evils in the world, and how they work to providentially fulfill His plan. However, only the first aspect will be discussed below. 

• That evil is evil and opposed to good is true, which an omniscient God would know to be true, implying that God knows evil. 
• God perfectly knows the form, that is, the perfection due to every created thing. Evil is the lack or absence of perfection due to a thing. To know the form of a thing perfectly is to know what it would look like if that form were somehow lacking in it. Thus, by knowing the form of things, or by knowing the complete reality of the good in things, he knows evil; 
• God creates both form and matter. Matter can actualize either toward what is not (privation) or toward what is (form), and God perfectly knows every possible state in the universe pertaining to material potentiality, being its Creator. As already said, Aquinas understands natural evil to arise when privation occurs within material potentiality. So, God would know evil;   
• In fashioning the universe, God arranged every part to work together for the perfection of the whole. This would require knowing how the parts would ward off specific types of harm. God thus possessed knowledge of evils in the context of how certain things were designed to remove them. 

These arguments are only part of the larger story of Thomism, and here we have barely begun to investigate a single petal of the flower mentioned earlier. Many questions remain unresolved, but perhaps that is not why they are important. His arguments unceasingly prompt further reflection on the divine nature, and his works are in that regard nearly unparalleled.

Many think of pleasure as inherently bad: something that leads individuals to behave selfishly or stupidly, or else denotes a life spent chasing short-term thrills through overindulgence or material consumption. But does it have to be this way? Indeed, two competing schools of thought from antiquity take quite different stances on the issue. Both agree that pleasant experiences are good in and of themselves. But when it comes to recommending a lifestyle designed around maximizing those experiences (or a certain kind of them), they diverge sharply in their advice.

What Is Hedonism?

The notion that pleasure is the greatest good is known as hedonism. If an action produces pleasure, it should be done. If it results in pain, it should not. This was the belief of Aristippus of Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates, who thought individuals should try to maximize their total lifetime happiness: moments of sensory joy from things like beautiful music or a lovely meal, as well as physical comforts such as the warmth of a soft bed. Pleasure did not just make life more enjoyable for Aristippus. It was the only thing that had value.

However, there were philosophers who disagreed with him. Plato felt strongly that seeking immediate pleasures might enslave you to your desires, which were not always sensible. He believed his own theory of Forms offered plenty of alternative sources for a worthwhile existence, ones not dependent on constantly feeling pleased.

Nowadays, hedonism is frequently mistaken for living carelessly. Think of the YOLO mentality: splurging on shoes, gorging on cake, and clubbing till dawn. Yet classic hedonism doesn’t have to be like this. It is more a matter of working out which pleasures are really worth having and which pains are really worth avoiding. All the same, critics argue that the philosophy is in danger of appearing selfish or superficial if one lacks a deeper reason for living this way.

In essence, hedonism is about feeling good. But it can sometimes be difficult to decide what will bring the most satisfaction. Also, not every enjoyable experience is wise. The crucial question is: Is pleasure all there is?

What Is Epicureanism?

Epicurus founded Epicureanism to champion tranquility over all else: the greatest pleasure isn’t the joy of hosting wild parties or eating gourmet meals, it is the state of being contented day in, day out. Epicurus distinguished neatly between two types of indulgence. There is kinetic pleasure, which we feel when a desire is met (like drinking cold water when thirsty). And then there is katastematic pleasure: the feeling of well–being that persists once no particular desire has been fulfilled. It was this second kind of satisfaction that he rated most highly.

Instead of urging people to seek each and every pleasurable experience, Epicurus believed they should aim for a life free from physical pain as well as mental anguish. He called this condition aponia (absence of distress) and coined the term ataraxia to describe serenity undisturbed by worry.

Epicurus also believed that friendship, simple living, and contemplation were key to a good life. He advised his followers to control their cravings by questioning what they really needed; a practical emphasis on temperance that was also mirrored by thinkers of the rival Stoic school, such as Seneca, who warned against being ruled by runaway desires.

Far from promoting self-indulgence, Epicureanism teaches balance for a happy life. In modern terms, it doesn’t say “live it up.” More like: enjoy yourself if it won’t make you miserable later. True happiness, Epicurus believed, comes from inner peace and quiet joy, not constant excitement.

Pleasure vs. Happiness: Short-Term Thrill or Lasting Peace?

Although pleasure and happiness may be thought of as synonymous, they are different. For example, pleasure, like enjoying a delicious meal or buying an iPad, can feel great at the time. But the feeling may not stick around. Happiness, on the other hand, is more about feeling good for a longer period of time.

A way to understand this distinction is via ideas linked to hedonism. The Greek philosopher Aristippus used to say that if something makes you feel good, then it is good. However, it’s hard to keep up such pleasures for any length of time: they can soon fade away or just become routine (think of eating chocolate every day). His teacher, Socrates, had a different view. He believed that what people really wanted, above all else, was eudaimonia (often translated as happiness). This wasn’t the same as having one enjoyable experience after another, though. For him, true well-being came from leading a life filled with meaning and doing things because they’re important rather than simply fun.

Epicureanism offers a different type of pleasure, one that comes from being at peace. If we can avoid feeling anxious or dissatisfied, we’ll be happier overall: more likely to be contented than thrilled.

To use today’s language: do you want to feel good (because strangers on Instagram “like” your photos), or to worry less? There’s a distinction between dopamine hits and feeling secure in yourself.

Of course, both things are nice, and of course, they don’t feel the same. Sure, having fun puts a grin on your face… but does it give you a deep sense of contentment as well? It’s worth asking whether solid happiness appeals more than feeling good for just an hour, then terrible for the next two hours.

Ethics and Consequences: Are All Pleasures Equal?

Indeed, different kinds of pleasure do not all have the same value. We might enjoy some things to begin with, but later regret them. For instance, if we lie to someone in order to get something that we want, or eat enough candy to make ourselves ill. This is where ethics come into the picture. Hedonism is a philosophy often criticized for being selfish because it places so much importance on one person’s happiness over everyone else’s.

Minds like Immanuel Kant argue that using feeling good as a guide to making moral decisions cannot be right. Instead, they believe individuals should act out of duty alone, without thought for personal gain or whether what they do will be enjoyable.

Epicurus offers an alternative perspective. If you behave honorably, he says, you’ll be able to enjoy peace of mind. Hurting your friends’ feelings, or lying to your parents (which would also hurt them), can cause inner turmoil as well as social tension. There’s nothing that will stop you from having a good time more reliably than feeling anxious and worrying about whether what you’re doing is wrong.

According to Epicurus, sensible people spend their lives working out how to make good choices and have a “prudent” existence, one that doesn’t simply involve going after whatever things you fancy at any particular moment because some of them might lead to trouble later on. Even more intriguingly, Epicurus thought that pursuing pleasure might not just be good for you (and lead to a tranquil life full of friends, free of distress). It could have a positive effect on society as a whole. In other words, doing good things feels good.

This idea was later taken up by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, but he added that some kinds of pleasure are worth more than others: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Mill asks us to consider not only whether an action will bring happiness (or pleasure) but also whether it has value in other ways.

The Modern World Through a Hedonic and Epicurean Lens

Everywhere you look nowadays, you can spot hedonism and Epicureanism, even though these terms may not be part of your everyday vocabulary. Scroll through social media, tap for likes, go on an online shopping spree: such activities are typical of modern-day hedonists. They seek a brief rush of pleasure (from a new item of clothing, say, a post that goes viral, or a slice of cake after a tough day), and these fleeting kicks make them feel good, although not for long. Philosophers such as Nietzsche have warned that if we constantly chase such thrills, we will become deadened to their deeper meaning.

On the flip side, the fact that concepts such as mindfulness, minimalism, and wellness have become so popular suggests there is a growing desire for stability, calmness, and non-materialistic pleasures.

The trends show Epicurean beliefs, too: choosing peace over a racket, simplicity over extravagance. People who write journals, do yoga, or go offline are after calm and freedom as well as, not instead of, thrills. Most of us don’t think about it in philosophical terms, but actually, we make decisions based on these two ideas all the time. Do you want an evening of undisturbed reading or would you prefer to go to a big party? Spend money on something that excites you or save up because it gives peace of mind? Whether we realize it or not, we’re weighing up short-term enjoyment against long-lasting contentment, just as those ancient thinkers were doing!

Hedonism or Epicureanism: Which Philosophy Offers a Better Life?

So, when it comes to deciding whether hedonism or Epicureanism offers the best life, which way of seeking pleasure should you go for? Well, it depends on what you’re after. Hedonism tells us to maximize our pleasure and avoid discomfort: its advocates say we should just go for it. This approach is bold and can appeal to people who want excitement in their lives, those who live for the moment. But there’s a risk that taking things too far will leave you feeling burned out (worn out by excess), empty, or full of regrets.

As Plato’s teacher Socrates suggested, someone who never stops to reflect on their existence might find there’s little to it beneath all the superficial fun, a point worth bearing in mind if you’re tempted by team H’s party lifestyle.

Nevertheless, hedonism has its positives. Watching a sunset, hearing an amazing song, dancing spontaneously, these things all count for something. And life isn’t only about quietude. There are times when joy lies in movement. Even Aristotle agreed that feeling good has its place alongside behaving well. Perhaps, then, the most satisfactory existence blends a little low-level fun (as the Epicureans might have said) with deeper pleasures whose intensity we don’t so much heighten as learn to control.

Of the one hundred essays Mondrian dedicated to the meaning behind his work, forty essays were dedicated to rhythm alone. As a philosopher and a painter, Mondrian had his own theories of art, painting, and rhythm, especially in its atemporal, visual dimensions. Without significant theoretical preparation, Mondrian’s paintings are nearly impossible to appreciate. The style offered by Mondrian is often called Neo-Plasticism. This particular form of visual representation employs fixed geometric forms and rigid visual minimalism to illustrate relations of equality between simple elements.

The Modernist Style of Mondrian

Following certain strict rules of composition, the style limits itself to the absolute fundamentals of visual representation in painting. The painter must, under all circumstances, use nothing but simple shapes—rectangles for the most part—while completely avoiding the use of complex and derived colors—primary colors only. Large segments of pure nothingness characterize Piet Mondrian’s canvases. These blank representations of absence play a crucial role in Mondrian’s attempts to capture the pure abstract component of nature.

Mondrian’s theory of representation holds that human perception and experience contain certain irreducible universal properties and characteristics that remain more or less the same across different cultures and historical epochs. Mondrian has a peculiar understanding of rhythm as it is represented visually as a series of patterns. Later in his career, he develops the concept of dynamic equilibrium to account for different elusive features of his work. Rhythm, in many ways, seems to be a hidden, implicit element in Mondrian’s art and aesthetic sensibility. This hidden element becomes braver, more apparent, and visible in his later compositions. The phenomenology of Mondrian’s art reflects the affective moment of human perception that goes far beyond mere realism and empirical representation. It refers to a kind of transcendental condition for perception as such.

Piet Mondrian was very popular within his milieu and an active participant in the underground art scene of his time. Unfortunately, his popularity and success reached their peak only after his death. He left behind him a vast and rich, complex philosophy of art and aesthetics with a meticulous collection of detailed, elaborate instructions, an entire oeuvre explaining how one is to interpret, observe, and evaluate his paintings.

The Writings and the Philosophy

But the philosophy of Piet Mondrian has quite unfortunately, for the most part, been completely forgotten. One reason for this seems to be the esotericism that characterized his written texts, especially the highly idiosyncratic interpretation and description of rhythm or rhythmicity in general. Mondrian borrowed a significant part of his conceptual and philosophical weaponry from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to defend his own highly specific and original understanding of rhythmic representations. Numerous scholars, art historians, and researchers specializing in Piet Mondrian’s work offer diverse, often conflicting yet eye-opening readings of Mondrian’s ideas as they pertain to artistic expression, color, pattern, shape, and painterly rhythm.

Mondrian always painted before he wrote. When he wrote, he reflected on what he was painting. Intuition, the initial spark of inspiration, always took precedence and first importance over the discursive part of his creative process. Because of this, his writings do not run exactly chronologically parallel to his art, but a certain continuity is noticeable. Scholars tend to divide Mondrian’s work into three distinct periods. The De Stijl period lasted from 1917 to 1924, the period right afterward from 1924 to 1938, and the final “New York” phase from 1938 to 1944.

Mondrian had a fascinating idea that he referred to as the cosmic rhythm. According to him, the cosmic rhythm signified a variety of vibrational frequencies that would be contained in everything from inorganic matter to living creatures, including human artifacts and technology—everything in the universe would exhibit some aspect or moment of the cosmic rhythm. There are numerous parallels between Mondrian’s notion of cosmic rhythm and Daoist philosophy. It is well documented that Chinese and Hindu philosophies heavily influenced Mondrian throughout his entire lifespan.

Other Influences and Strange Rhythm

Mondrian’s definition of visual rhythm in painting is quite original, if not strange. Some philosophers of music define rhythm as an interval between absolute homogeneity and absolute heterogeneity of repetitive acoustic or visual elements. For example, the sound of a metronome, a drop of water falling at regular intervals, the ticking away of a mechanical clock, etc. These series of sounds are too plain and monotonous to be considered as rhythms. On the other hand, there are processes in the universe that are too diverse. They lack repetition and consistency. Therefore, rhythms cannot be considered either. Some examples of these are biological processes, irregular patterns of walking, or any activities that are simply too chaotic to be heard (or seen) as rhythmical.

Mondrian saw rhythm as something very similar to the Tao (or Dao) of the Tao Te Ching. A fundamental yet ethereal energy that flows through every single thing in the cosmos. As an elusive power that cannot be seen, heard, named, or otherwise identified in a simple, rational manner. Mondrian’s rhythm philosophy is unique in that it is not limited to particular regions of the world, and it requires neither repetition nor some specific level of difference to be appreciated.

For Mondrian, art is a field of forces. It is a paradoxical tension between chaos and order. It is fundamentally a clash of powers. Mondrian wanted to show life. He wanted to exhibit a painting (something that is fundamentally fixed or frozen) that depicts a process, almost like a living organism. The opposition of contrasting elements is one of the defining features in Mondrian’s paintings; it is a kind of visual conflict that seeks resolution through the detailed balancing out of elements through compensation.

Dynamic Equilibrium

Mondrian’s earlier work and methodology are much more minimalist. The rhythmic chaos and fluctuations in color and shape are much more domesticated and compartmentalized behind simpler forms, elementary color schemes, and the overall stasis of the visual. Later on, they become much more lively and even intense, almost bulging outward from the canvas in some strange, unexplainable way. It is no easy task to understand the intentions behind the paintings.

However, teaching oneself how to look is much more difficult. Mondrian wants to activate a new variety of aesthetic sensibilities in the viewer as there are so many hidden potentialities of perception. In a dazzling dance, numerous static and dynamic contraries play out on the canvas in unseen ways. Mondrian’s philosophy, as exemplified in his work, challenges the viewer to re-calibrate their eyes, so to speak. Through Mondrian’s otherwise complex and confusing writing, we could perhaps observe some of the paintings being brought to life through the conflicting affectations of tension and balance.

Aesthetic theory is complicated, but Mondrian, as a philosopher-painter, introduces completely novel challenges that can catch one off-guard. Mondrian’s paintings are not to be seen as only a collection of things. They are not just colorful shapes on a canvas, even though it may seem like it at first glance. Neither are they realistic depictions of things either in the empirical world or the world of imagination. Rather, the Neo-Plastic works of Piet Mondrian should be interpreted as a series of relations. A colorful and diverse bundle of connections or a cluster of interrelated elements. The paintings operate as a field of functions.

Painting as a Field of Relations

Mondrian’s work can be seen as involving many different moves or maneuvers in a highly dynamic game. The game of painting. Mondrian’s art cannot be readily defined since no single individual is meaning one could point to either in language or on the canvas. What defines the painter’s art is the specific way in which the object(s) (or lack thereof) is/are articulated. The thing depicted gives way to the style of depiction and the materials used.

Mondrian makes fools of us all, but he especially turns perception as such into a folly. We think we are looking at something fixed or static. But the moment the mind attempts to fix itself upon the objects of the painting, even when the subject matter is specific, it is immediately alienated from the canvas. Mondrian’s paintings are incredibly contextualized. Observation, exposing the implicit bias of the gaze, becomes an altogether political act. No more is there a clear line separating the medium from the subject matter of the painting. Things, language, and the world become intertwined in a way that is impossible to untangle. Form becomes content. Observation is thereby seen as a highly subjective, culturally mediated, and totally value-laden activity. What does this reveal about science? Something along the lines that is seeing always implies (however hidden) a method or a set of tacit agreements. Similar to any observable material surface, the surface of the canvas presents its own complex intertwinement between matter and concept. Perception is a spectrum. The materiality of the phenomenon predominates on the one end, while the conceptual-linguistic web predominates on the other. The observation-phenomenon, thereby, is becoming neither purely sensual nor purely discursive.

Yorùbá philosophy is a record of traditional beliefs and, as such, serves as an intellectual prism for interpreting various social and political issues. It is grounded in the historical and cultural experience of the Yorùbá people, a major West African ethnic group. Yorùbá philosophy illuminated questions about justice and shared responsibility. Scholars increasingly draw on these philosophical insights to make sense of the challenges facing postcolonial Nigeria. Political instability, civil war trauma, moral crisis, and social fragmentation are among them.

Situating Yorùbá Philosophy

Every philosophy has an origin, a milieu, and a genealogy of its own creation. Those refer to the concrete conditions that allowed for its emergence. Philosophy is thereby to a certain extent determined through particular cultural and historical forces. These forces shape the questions posed, the concepts invented, and the methods applied within a given intellectual tradition.

Understanding African philosophy from such a situated perspective is crucial. Since the twentieth century, one of the field’s central disputes has concerned whether ideas preserved in oral traditions, religious practices, proverbs, and folklore can count as philosophy in the strict sense. Critics of ethnophilosophy argued that such materials were too collective, uncritical, or tradition-bound to qualify as philosophy proper, insisting instead on explicit argumentation and individual critical reflection.

Yorùbá philosophy is especially important within this debate because it shows how inherited conceptual resources can be reconstructed rather than merely repeated. Modern scholars of Yorùbá thought have drawn on Ifá literature, moral concepts, and ordinary language to develop arguments about knowledge, personhood, destiny, and ethical character. These reflections grew out of the long history of Yorùbá-speaking societies in what is now southwestern Nigeria and nearby regions, where urban centers such as Ilé-Ifẹ̀ acquired deep religious significance, and Oyo became, by the seventeenth century, the largest of the Yorùbá kingdoms.

The Formation of Character

Seen from this perspective, Yorùbá philosophy is articulated not only in formal argument but also in condensed forms of moral and social reflection such as proverbs. Proverbs occupy an important place in Yorùbá thought because they preserve practical judgment in memorable linguistic form. One widely cited expression is ‘ọmọ tí a kò kọ́ ni yóò gbé ilé tí a kọ́ tà’: “the child that is not taught will sell the house that is built.” Modern interpreters have read this proverb as expressing a philosophy of upbringing, social responsibility, and cultural continuity rather than as a merely didactic maxim. The survival of the community depends on the younger generation’s ability to inherit and sustain the work done by previous generations.

In this context, scholars such as Michael Afolayan note the layered semantic field associated with kọ́, linking teaching, learning, training, and building in ways that make education appear as a constructive process of self-formation. Yorùbá philosophy, thus, goes well beyond schooling; it encompasses a wide spectrum of activities that shape the individual. Education is then understood within this broader view of knowledge as a life form.

On this view, education involves both the transmission of values and the acquisition of practical capacities. Social participation begins early, and responsibility for a child’s formation is distributed across family and community networks rather than confined to parents alone. It is not relegated to the kind of nuclear family structure that is predominant in the West. The proverb’s warning is therefore not only personal but collective. If the young are not properly formed, the material and moral inheritance of one generation may be dissipated by the next.

Rapid modernization has weakened traditional systems of mentorship and cultural education in contemporary Nigeria. Yorùbá philosophy recalls a longstanding conviction that durable social development depends not only on material infrastructure but also on the cultivation of character.

The Wisdom of Ifá

One of the central pillars of Yorùbá thought is Ifá divination or literary corpus. Ifá is part of religious practice, but it is not reducible to ritual alone. It is also a highly developed system for preserving and transmitting knowledge, ethical reflection, and practical wisdom. The Ifá corpus is organized around 256 odù (signs or chapters), each associated with a body of verses (ẹ̀sẹ̀ Ifá) through which narratives, proverbs, and reflections on human conduct are interpreted in particular situations.

Babaláwo are the custodians and interpreters of this tradition. The title is commonly glossed as ‘father of secrets’ or ‘father of esoteric knowledge,’ though in practice it refers to a diviner trained in the interpretation of the Ifá corpus. Their formation is rigorous and depends on long apprenticeship, memorization, and interpretive judgment. For that reason, the babaláwo is not simply a ritual specialist, but also a mediator of inherited knowledge who applies the resources of the corpus to concrete questions of conduct, conflict, and decision-making.

In Yorùbá intellectual and religious history, Òrúnmìlà stands at the center of this tradition as the figure associated with wisdom and the transmission of Ifá. It is more precise to say that Òrúnmìlà is regarded within the tradition as the source or revealer of Ifá, rather than to say straightforwardly that he ‘shaped’ its structure in a historical sense. The corpus was transmitted orally for centuries, yet it is far from unsystematic: its verses preserve recurring arguments, analogies, classifications, and forms of moral reasoning about destiny, character, obligation, and the uncertainty of human life.

Ifá, therefore, complicates the assumption that philosophy requires writing to become reflective or systematic. Like the Socratic tradition, which survived through transmission and interpretation rather than through texts written by Socrates himself, Ifá shows how sustained reflection can be preserved in oral form. The comparison should not be pressed too far, but it is useful insofar as it highlights a simple point: the absence of writing does not imply the absence of philosophical structure.

The Teacher Orunmila

Orunmila is the founding teacher associated with the development of the Ifá system. He occupies a central place in Yorùbá tradition. Oral traditions describe Orunmila in several ways. Yorùbá historical memory is quite layered and complex. In some accounts, he appears as a primordial sage sent by the supreme deity Olódùmarè. His purpose is to guide human society through wisdom. In others, he is remembered as a teacher whose intellectual authority shaped the development of Ifá as a system of knowledge.

A second interpretation treats Orunmila less as an exceptional individual and more as a symbolic vessel for the Yorùbá intellectual worldview. Orunmila’s name represents a philosophical principle: absolute knowledge belongs only to the heavens, and human wisdom must remain humble when interpreting the world. Ifá is thereby the institutional form through which the Yorùbá worldview is preserved, allowing successive generations of practitioners to interpret ethical insights embedded in its vast corpus of verses.

Other traditions portray Orunmila as a prominent figure who established a school of learning in Ile-Ife, the spiritual center of Yorùbá civilization. According to these accounts, Orunmila chose sixteen disciples whose names correspond to the sixteen major Odu Ifá, the foundational divisions of the Ifá corpus. The disciples preserved and transmitted the teachings of Orunmila, and later generations expanded the body of knowledge through commentary and interpretation.

Non-European Conceptual Frameworks

The question of interpretation occurs when one confronts the differences between any non-Western philosophy and its Western counterpart. According to some scholars, the difficulty the Western mind encounters in comprehending African philosophy stems from the conflation of conceptual categories. It is precisely the conflation and not the absence of philosophical concepts that needs to be emphasized. The categories of Yorùbá thought do not follow the familiar intellectual paths traced by European thinkers. It would be a gross error to assume that all thinking everywhere should follow the same universal patterns.

According to the French missionary, philosopher, and theologian Henri Maurier, philosophical systems cannot be understood in terms of singular ideas or isolated clusters of propositions. There is a deeper framework that organizes thought, hidden behind its apparent form. The hidden architecture and the basic intuition often remain implicit, requiring different methods of analysis and interpretation. What Maurier referred to as a “conceptual framework” is a structure of unconscious cultural assumptions that give rise to a particular philosophy. This allows for a situated, local method for analyzing philosophy that can prove much more useful than classical philosophy for understanding African philosophy.

From this perspective, Yorùbá philosophy in fact demonstrates a coherent intellectual legacy grounded in unique and very real conceptual categories. Yorùbá reflections on education and communal life are founded on a worldview that calls for the cultivation of practical wisdom through engaged practice and social responsibility. The traditions of Ifá and the teachings of Orunmila, their common emphasis on ethical formation, demonstrate how Yorùbá thought constitutes a systematic philosophical framework rather than a collection of folk wisdom fit only for “ethnophilosophy.”

Living in a society where consumerism is king, minimalism offers a breath of fresh air. It draws on ancient wisdom as well as its modern interpretations, encouraging us to strip away the excess layers and focus only on things that truly matter. Its roots can be traced back to Stoicism and Buddhism. Today, there are people who call themselves digital minimalists because they are addicted to social media. But all minimalists, regardless of their stripe, wonder whether our unceasing quest for more might be misguided. Let’s explore this further.

Stoic Minimalism: The Ancient Roots

In ancient times, Greek and Roman thinkers loved Stoicism. They believed that to be happy, people should live simply and calmly—focusing only on what they can control, not on what they want but might not get. For example, both Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius said true happiness comes solely from one’s character or way of thinking.

Take Epictetus. Born a slave, he became a famous teacher (though he used to say it was nothing special). He argued that things outside us, such as social status, do not affect how happy we can be.

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius agrees with this view in his famous book Meditations. He wrote that people need to control themselves if they want to lead good lives. There’s no point craving luxury or other things over which you have little power. As Marcus saw it, most of what happens isn’t up to us anyway. So why let these externals rule our roost?

In this busy world where consumers reign, Stoic minimalism offers a way to clear our minds and lives by focusing only on what’s truly important. Instead of buying the newest electronics or fashion trends, followers of Stoicism would concentrate on things like personal growth, relationships, and virtues such as wisdom and courage.

One way to practice Stoic minimalism is through mindful consumption—asking yourself whether you really need something or if it’s simply a passing want.

By embracing this philosophy, we can strip away mental and emotional clutter to leave room for a more peaceful existence with greater meaning. In short, it teaches us that not only is the saying “less is more” true, but also that less is everything.

Thoreau’s Walden: Transcendentalist Minimalism

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is still relevant today as an instruction manual for minimalist living. Written during a two-year break from society spent in a cabin near Walden Pond, the book argues powerfully for simplicity, self-sufficiency, and getting back to nature.

“Simplify, simplify,” urges Thoreau. He wants his readers to strip back anything needless in order to concentrate on what is truly important in life. Minimalism shouldn’t just be about having fewer possessions; it should mean living intentionally and appreciating the world around oneself.

Thoreau illustrates this last point well. He writes about how he grew his own food, constructed his own shelter, and took time each day to observe—and revel in—the beauty all around him.

His transcendentalist ideas are surprisingly relevant in today’s world, which is full of information and consumerism. He tells us we should simplify our lives – something that can be seen in the modern-day minimalism movement as people try to be happy with fewer material things around them and focus instead on only what brings true joy.

For instance, someone living this way now might embrace a tiny house lifestyle (where people downsize to live in small homes of about 400 sq ft), take digital detoxes regularly, or follow sustainable living practices such as composting everything or growing their own food.

When we return to Walden, we find it saying something timeless. We often forget the beauty and calmness that come from nature if we’re always striving for more things to put in our house or driveway.

Buddhist Minimalism: The Middle Path

One can find a strong basis for minimalism within Buddhist teachings through the principles of detachment, non-attachment, and the Middle Path. Buddhism suggests that we aim for balance and steer clear of both too much and too little in life.

Within this Middle Way is a life where we are not controlled by our desires or belongings. Instead, we focus on spiritual growth and inner peace. One aspect of this philosophy is detachment—letting go of both cravings and clinging to material objects because they cause us suffering.

For example, just because Buddhists practice “non-attachment,” it does not mean giving up everything. It also means not relying on them emotionally for happiness.

In an era dominated by consumerism, Buddhism offers a fascinating counterculture: minimalism. Its present-day adherents might practice mindfulness while decluttering their homes, live in the moment by carefully considering purchases, or find joy not in material objects but in helping others selflessly.

Rather than coveting new gadgets or fashion trends, for example, they seek happiness through activities such as meditation (or walking outdoors with full attention).

By embracing “the Middle Path” and cultivating non-attachment to stuff, Buddhist minimalists argue that people will become happier, more focused, and more content—as well as have richer experiences.

Existential Minimalism: Simone de Beauvoir and Authentic Living

Simone de Beauvoir, a well-known existentialist philosopher, provides a unique perspective on minimalism rooted in authenticity and freedom. According to de Beauvoir, living authentically means breaking free from societal norms and expectations and the endless cycle of consumerism.

De Beauvoir argued that true freedom comes from self-awareness and self-expression rather than having lots of things. In an existentialist context, minimalism can be seen as a route to being true to yourself –– stripping away what’s unnecessary and revealing who we are beneath it all, along with what we truly care about.

In a culture so focused on material gain, de Beauvoir’s philosophy prompts us to ask ourselves: “What do I actually need in order to live a fulfilling life?” An existential minimalist might decide that instead of collecting stuff or trying to keep up with every single trend, they’ll concentrate on personal growth—or building strong relationships—because these are things that reflect who they really are.

Examples of this can be seen in many aspects of contemporary life. People may choose a job they are passionate about rather than one that pays well or decorate their home to create a certain ambiance rather than simply trying to impress visitors.

By rejecting consumerism and embracing simplicity, we can more thoughtfully consider our true desires and structure our lives accordingly. De Beauvoir’s philosophy also reminds us that minimalism is not solely about having fewer possessions. It is about feeling liberated to express oneself fully.

Digital Minimalism: Cal Newport’s Modern Take

Cal Newport’s concept of digital minimalism offers a fresh outlook on how we should engage with tech. It advocates deliberately using digital tools to improve our lives.

In Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, Newport suggests that by constantly seeking connection through our devices and distracting ourselves with social media, notifications, or aimless scrolling, we prevent ourselves from being able to do profound work, form sincere relationships, or experience true contentment.

Newport doesn’t think we should quit technology altogether. Instead, he wants us to be more mindful about only using it when it actually helps us live according to our values and aspirations.

One of Newport’s suggestions is to do a “digital declutter.” It means getting rid of apps and platforms that don’t serve us well and focusing on ones that do—then enjoying the activities we actually value, like reading or being with family.

For instance, someone who’s embraced digital minimalism might decide to use social media for just half an hour each day. When they’re bored, or it’s natural to check Instagram, they’ll go for a walk in nature instead.

In an era where we’re always online and immersed in information, Newport’s ideas offer a way to regain both your time and attention.

By adopting digital minimalism practices, individuals can clear out the mental clutter created by personal technology and rediscover the pleasures and satisfactions of offline life in leading richer, fuller lives with regained autonomy and mental composure.

The Ethical Minimalism of Peter Singer

Peter Singer, a well-known philosopher, presents an interesting take on minimalism based on ethics and caring for others. His philosophy is all about effective altruism – using what we have to do the most good.

According to Singer, if millions of people live in poverty—and there are—then we have a moral obligation not to have heaps of stuff when it doesn’t do us any good. Instead, we should use our resources (whether that’s money or time) to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

Ethical minimalists can make a tangible impact by consuming fewer resources and redirecting their wealth and energy toward things that matter. They can literally change the world for the better.

The Singer method urges us to reconsider how we spend our money. Rather than buying fancy things for ourselves or getting the latest iPhone upgrade, he suggests giving some of it away to effective charities or nonprofits that work to save lives or improve society.

This is ethical minimalism because it says that sometimes having less stuff can mean doing more good overall. For example, someone who follows ethical minimalism might live in a small house on purpose, try not to make lots of garbage, and only buy things they really need.

By living this way, you can have the biggest positive impact on others. It captures the idea expressed by Peter Singer that we have a moral obligation to live simply if, by doing so, we enable others—both now alive and who come after us—also to live at all.

So, What Is the Philosophy of Minimalism?

The philosophy of minimalism is a deep reaction to the disorder caused by consumer culture. It advises us to jettison everything unnecessary and concentrate on what’s truly important.

Minimalism isn’t just about clearing out our homes. It’s an approach to life that involves simplifying our thoughts, actions, and possessions so we have space for meaning and purpose.

Ideas behind minimalism can be found in ancient teachings from Buddhism and Stoicism as well as in more recent writings by thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau and Cal Newport. They all question the idea that having more will make us happier.

Instead, they suggest living thoughtfully, being aware of how we spend our time (even online), and considering the impact of our choices on ourselves and others.