Like a Stone: A happy death and the search for knowledge

Abstract

This article explores the story of ‘the other Mersault’ whose narrative is published in the posthumous and arguably incomplete work A happy death. That this work is incomplete and that it appears (particularly through a reading of Camus’ notebooks) to be a precursor to The outsider, has arguably limited scholarly analysis of its character and plot. However, the themes that are explored in A happy death are significant in their distinction to those themes that are experienced by the other, younger, Meursault. In A happy death the world must be conquered by the will of a young man to find his happiness. He is not an outsider, and he is not content with his lot. Given an opportunity to address this latter concern, he acts upon his life in a search for happiness and in so doing engages in an ultimately frustrating, yet in some way enlightening, quest. In this article Mersault’s search for happiness is plotted in relation to his thinking about time, childhood, happiness and death. His journey is considered in relation to other stories of the search for some greater human condition. It is argued that his will to be happy reveals the absurdity of searching or not searching. This absurdity is considered in relation to the nature and purpose of school in the sense that such a relation to the search for knowledge might free school from its disciplinary tasks … and frees the learner, the child, the teacher, from the violence of having to want to know.

Keywords:

• Camus
• education
• happiness
• school
• Mersault

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Bradley Hannigan for commentary on an early draft of this chapter.

Notes

1. Philosophers Socrates, Aristotle, Spinoza and such have expected that happiness is wisdom, or vice versa. See Hampshire (1951) regarding Spinoza’s own search for happiness through wisdom.