Existentialism According to Two Philosophers - Essay Example

To Choose is the Same as Not to Choose: Existentialism According to Two Philosophers The Guest is an interesting short story by Albert Camus which on the surface simply narrates an incident in an unusual setting. It is, however, an observation on choices, responsibility, and life itself. Here, an attempt will be made to link the events in The Guest with the comments of the same author in The Myth of Sisyphus, and also those of Jean-Paul Sartre in Freedom and Responsibility, a chapter in Being and Nothingness. Throughout the short story The Guest, which takes place in the middle of the desolate Algerian desert, the protagonist Daru is seen immediately as a contemplative man, who studies his surroundings, the vagaries of the climate, his predicament, and that of his students and their families. The reader realizes immediately that what is important about this character is not his actions, so much as his thoughts. Actions - if any - are the result of a decision, a choice. Even when he hands ‘the prisoner’ a glass of tea, or takes a pot of ink from a drawer, Daru does so not as a reflexive action, or one taken automatically or without consideration, but as a deliberately thought-out deed over which he seems to have some control. This is a kind of irony that comes from the pen of Albert Camus, an existentialist (although he denied it) writer whose philosophy was one born of the belief that life offers no clarity or meaning (Camus 1991). He places Daru in a spot, literally and metaphorically. From this place, this man cannot emerge unless it is through a deliberate deed. True, he did not ask Balducci to arrive with the prisoner, yet even in the introduction during the blizzard, Camus injects an atmosphere of anticipation and expectation. He seems to tell the reader that life - even if it does take place in a desert; emotional, philosophical, or otherwise - has a habit of presenting one with predicaments and obligations that require accountability (Camus 1991). Daru, in his dead-end job, had to dole out grain to the families of his students, something over which he seemed to have doubts. He is suddenly given the responsibility of taking an Arab prisoner to the prison at Tinguit: a dilemma which is at once personal, official and philosophical. Camus does this to illustrate his concept of inescapability: if you are alive, you will encounter this kind of problem that requires some sort of choice. Not making a choice is not an option that life offers. Even doing nothing is a default choice. In his Myth of Sisyphus, he shows this through the absurdity of life’s meaningless tasks, that are repetitive and devoid of meaning, and gives them to Daru to show there is no escaping life’s quandaries. ‘It is senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.’ (Sartre 2003). Sartre writes this in what seems to be complete agreement with the sentiments of Camus. Both existentialists, they however had distinct ways of looking at life and freedom, choices and accountability. Sartre holds that everything we are is our own decision, and Camus seems to posit that ‘stuff happens’ and we are powerless to escape it. Both deny the possibility there is any external power that causes things to happen, or that obliges us to conform. In The Guest, Camus seems to place these concepts in front of the reader. Daru cannot escape life, so what decisions does he make to be able to live with himself? The responsibility placed upon him without choice places him in a position where choice cannot be escaped. He must make some sort of decision about what to do with the prisoner. He is obliged to sign the paper. He hopes in vain that the Arab will take off and rid him of the problem. It is the whole essence of the philosophy of Camus that hope is not an option: there is no such thing (Camus 1991). To inject hope into a story is to rid it of its truthfulness and importance. That is why Daru takes the question and deals with it in a brilliant way. His choice is to pass on the choice (Camus 2002). On top of the hill which he has decided is the parting of the ways between him and the ‘guest’, he acts out his decision, making it very clear as he does so (unlike Balducci, who was clumsy in his approach) that the prisoner is now the one whose options are before him. He turns him and points him in the direction of his choices: to the East is Tinguit, and the fate that awaits him there, where he must pay for killing his cousin. To the South is the nomads’ camp, where he will be taken in for a time, and cared for. If this were not a philosophical short story, the reader would be forgiven for thinking that the dilemma facing both men is easily solved. But life, as Camus and Sartre write in their similar but not identical theories, is nothing as easy as that. The easy way out is often the way that presents us with fresh problems of the kind that compound difficulties. There is a boulder, you see, that one must shoulder and heave up the hill, only to have it roll down again, to start all over again (Camus 1991). Camus has put this firmly into his character’s mind: Daru knows very well how meaningless his life is, but he is struck helpless by this notion of responsibility. He is struck so forcibly he needs to get rid of it in the cleanest way possible, or it will haunt him to the end of his days. He does not want to send this man to his death. Yet he does not want to be held accountable for any other violent crimes he might commit if he sets him free. Most of all, he does not want to feel this responsibility - or its abrogation - for the rest of his life. Ah: why did the man in the blue jelaba not escape in the night? The question faces the reader as well: why did the prisoner come back inside after a call of nature outside the school house? Why, when given a choice, does he take the road towards Tinguit, towards certain death? Here we appeal to Camus, and his philosophy makes it very clear: the Arab did not realize that life is absurd and meaningless, and that it is repetitive and without value. Heading to Tinguit was tantamount to committing suicide. Whatever his reasons and reasoning, the Arab did not have a fine philosophy that kept him from finding a solution like Daru’s. He did have a plain choice: plainer than Daru’s, and the choice he took illustrated he was trapped in realism and obligation. Camus’s answer to the absurdity of life is not suicide, but revolt (Camus 1991). Daru revolted in a way: he passed on the decision because he saw it as absurd. Absolute responsibility over our lives is the logical requirement of the consequence of our freedom (Sartre 2003). Everything we are involved in - even if it seems to be caused by something or someone else - is ours. So it requires dealing with. Even ignoring it is making a choice and dealing with it in that way. It is inescapable: Camus and Sartre agree that much. So when things ‘happen’ they become ours, and our choices are the only things that can divert, solve, change, abrogate or manage them. Remembering that both these philosophers, Camus and Sartre, lived in times of great upheaval, when war addressed the notions of futility, fatalism and meaning, is important. But when has the human condition ever been free of upheaval? We now live in interesting times, with polemics of a similar nature addressing us: these are new boulders we must shoulder up the hill, or perhaps they are the very same repetitive Sisyphusian ones that are constant in the human condition. We are left the choice of treating life in the realist way that the Arab prisoner in The Guest addresses his problem: he goes to face it, not wanting to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, wondering if they had caught him at last. He wants to be rid of obligation, and only death does that. Or we can pass on the choices given to us to the next person, just as we leave urban, international and environmental problems to the next generation to solve. Or we can acknowledge the absurdity of life and its many apparent problems. What then? Camus says the answer is not suicide but revolt. Revolution - personal or collective - does not have a very attractive history, but we must remember that both Sartre and Camus were French. Their history was tumultuous and the price of freedom in their eyes (Sartre 2003) is possibly not identical to the modern way of regarding liberty in the 21st century. But it is very true that the human condition is inescapable except by death. Perhaps that is what the prisoner knew and understood. Daru held on to life and the knowledge there would be other problems. The Arab wanted to draw a line and end it all. What is absurd about it all is not the actual choices they made, but the difference in their understanding that they were free to make them (Camus 1991). Sources Cited Camus, Albert (2002) ‘The Guest’ in Exile and the Kingdom Translated by Justin O’Brien Penguin ------- (1991) The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Vintage Sartre, Jean-Paul (2003) ‘III - Freedom and Responsibility’ in Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology Routledge Read More