Both literature and philosophy, as genres of writing, can enable us to address important ontological, epistemological and ethical questions. One author who makes it possible for readers to bridge these two genres is Albert Camus. Nowhere is this more evident than in Camus’ short novel, The Fall. The Fall, through the character and words of Jean‐Baptiste Clamence, prompts readers to reflect deeply on themselves, their motivations and commitments, and their relations with others. This paper discusses the origin and structure of (...) the book, identifies some of its key philosophical themes, and explores some of its educational implications. (shrink)

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 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. (shrink)

When The Myth of Sisyphus describes those who live in the ‘rarefied air of the absurd’, Camus uses the word fidelity. This signals a recognition of both defeat and the demand for struggle. This suggests a humility. Education can be said to have this characteristic; it is constantly in service to the new and yet understands these come with limits. And these limits are overcome as education develops the mind to see differently and change the world we live in. This (...) type of education has fidelity to the absurd because of its cognisance of both aspiration and failure: it is aware of its useful potential to help make sense of the world, and yet it understands this requires disjuncture from what has come before. It promises the Sisyphean climb and return. Education does this consciously and deliberately. Education, in some ways, is therefore absurd. Or at least, from time to time it finds itself in the rarefied air. If this is the case then how should practitioners interpret or care for the absurd experience and what exactly might this look like in educational contexts. This article chooses The Fall for the purpose of better understanding the experience of absurd anxiety in the context of education. It uses, as an original device, the imagery of the ‘little ease’ to explore this feeling and the forces underpinning it. (shrink)

In this paper, we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works, these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines towards developing an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. We focus on the phenomenology of inquiry; that is, inquiry (...) that begins with genuinely felt doubt, pointing to a problematic to which the inquirer seeks a solution or resolution. We argue that the central purpose of education is to develop lucid individuals. To this end, we concentrate on Dewey and the pragmatist tradition, starting from Peirce, leading to Lipman’s development of Dewey’s educational guidelines into classroom practice. We show where Camus and the pragmatists are congruent in their thinking, insofar as they can inform the educative process of the community of inquiry. What we conclude is that the role of the teacher is to develop lucid individuals facilitated in a classroom that is transformed into a community of inquiry embedded in contemporary historical moments. (shrink)

In this paper we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works (Denton, 1964; Oliver, 1965; Götz, 1987; Curzon-Hobson, 2003; Marshall, 2007, 2008; Weddington, 2007; Roberts, 2008, 2013; Gibbons, 2013; Heraud, 2013; Roberts, Gibbons & Heraud, 2013) these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines to develop an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did (...) from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. To this end we offer comparisons and contrasts between Camus and the pragmatist educational discourse centred on communities of philosophical inquiry (or, more broadly, collaborative philosophical inquiry). In particular we focus on the phenomenology of inquiry, namely, that “inquiry must begin with a problem, question, or doubt and must aim at a solution or resolution, both of which are genuinely felt—something in which the inquirer actually has a stake” (Gregory & Granger, 2012: 13). We conclude that what Camus calls lucidity has implications for the notion of reconstruction, prominent in Dewey’s thoughts on education, and central to Lipman’s focus on philosophy functioning educationally. (shrink)