Albert Camus and The Outsider

Below are my notes on the HCJ lecture and seminar on Albert Camus' work 'The Outsider' and the philosophical theory of Phenomenolgy..

- Phenomenology – making the familiar, unfamiliar
- Consciousness is intentional, and meaning is fixed subjectively
- Knowing is a structure: some ideas have more priority than others – it depends on intention
- Heidegger – accepts that Husserl’s idea that consciousness is nothing without intention
- CHOOSING: what is the source of decisions?
- There is no individual (against the enlightenment and romanticism)
- Kant asserts that all people are fundamentally the same
- Existence is “Dasein” – a way of being/ a structure of your decision
- Time for Heidegger is ‘the structure of being’
1. The past = guilt
2. The present = dread
3. The future = unknown or fear
- existentialism – don’t care about the past or future – no consequences

In the book:
- Meursault is a 'hero' – non-romantic, racist, murderer, existentialist, refuses to be determined by other people
- has no guilt about his actions
- there are no consequences in his world, despite the views of other people