If Meursault is the perfect Nihilist then his behaviour must be entirely arbitrary and illogical, he must be without motive. If all values are an invention of society then he has no logical basis on which to make any decision. Our society likes to compartmentalize morals and values as only being related to obviously ethical decisions, particularly when business is involved we usually see morals as unrelated. Yet I would contend that all the decisions we make are based on morality, more then just decisions our very way of understanding the world around us is very much based off of morality. All of us are constantly making value judgements, consciously or unconsciously, about the world around us and about our possible futures. We all have some idea about the way our own lives and the world in general should be, and we make decisions to try and make things the way they are supposed to be.
I would argue this belief that there is a way things should be is the major steering force of our lives and a direct product of our morals. We all have certain beliefs that allows us to make decisions whether they are the ones we would typically label as moral or beliefs we don’t typically label as morals because they have to do with our own material success. Regardless of how we label these beliefs, they still shape the way we think the world should be. Most of us believe material success is a worthy goal and think a world in which we have material success should exist. However we have other moral principles that interact with this belief and override it and all help us to determine what should be. I realize this argument is kind of sketchy but the point I am trying to get across is that all of our decisions are based on the belief that some futures are more desirable then others and we determine the desirability or value of these futures based on our values and morals. Meursault has no values so he has no way to determine which future is more desirable, whether he pulls the trigger doesn’t matter because to him all values are arbitrarily determined and therefore cannot be used to determine which course of action he should follow. For Meursault there is no logical reason why any course of action is more desirable then any other.
Yet Meursault still clearly makes decisions, he still chooses one even though there is no logical reason to choose it or to not choose it. He is a huge threat to any sort of rational understanding of human behaviour, the only way we could understand and predict the behaviour of others is if they take action for a reason, if it is entirely arbitrary then we can;t understand it. We presume that not only crimes but all other actions have some sort of motive, yet Meursault is entirely without motive. We must try to find a way to explain why Meursault takes action even though he has no motive for it.
I am uneasy with the explanation that he just arbitrarily makes a choice even though he has absolutely no reason to choose either option. We should understand that the idea that a human can behave without motive threatens our understanding of humans and renders Meursault incomprehensible. We can try to use an absence of free will to explain it away, if Meursault’s actions were predetermined then he never had a choice to make, but then we are still left without anyway to understand or predict these predetermined behaviors. If we don’t put Meursault’s cognitive processes in a different category from our own then we leave ourselves open to the possibility that all human behavior is incomprehensible. We must therefore either categorize Meursault as either mad or inhuman, (I would prefer inhuman) or deny that he is a perfect nihilist and assert that there are reasons for his behavior.
1 comment:
I don't see the novel as refuting the idea of free will--Meursault himself seems fascinated with the thought that he can either turn around or keep walking, pull the trigger or not, etc. It's not so much a matter of "fate" or predetermination but a deeper sense that it "amounts to the same thing," it "doesn't matter" in any larger metaphysical sense what he does. And he does (sort of) take responsibility when he describes the firing of the gun as "knocking on the door of unhappiness"--essentially, asking to be let into prison and away from the life that has made him happy, even if he doesn't see this "asking" as under his immediate control.
This doesn't *seem* like nihilism, mainly I guess because Meursault just seems so thoroughly chill and nonthreatening and happy to sit on his balcony and wave at the soccer players, whereas I imagine a nihilist to have a more destructive streak. But outside of _The Big Lebowski_, I don't know that I've ever encountered any actual nihilists, so it's hard to say.
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