Stockholm Philosophy Study Group

This time we take take on absurdity in its fictional form: the Stranger (L'Étranger, 1942), is the book that made Camus (1913–1960) famous at twenty-nine. A French-Algerian novelist, playwright and journalist, Camus was born into poverty in Algiers and raised by an illiterate mother — a childhood he returned to throughout his work. He edited the resistance paper Combat during the German occupation and won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957. He is remembered as one of the central figures of twentieth-century existentialism, a label he rejected, and he broke publicly with Sartre over it.

The book focuses on Meursault, a French clerk in colonial Algiers, who buries his mother without crying, begins an affair the next day, and some weeks later shoots an Arab man on a beach. Is Meursault honest or merely empty? Is he condemned for a murder or for refusing to play the part society assigns him? And can a life lived without illusions still be lived well?

A 1944 translation can be found online through the link below. For newer translations, you will have to buy it. It should be available in any good bookstore. https://www.macobo.com/essays/epdf/CAMUS,%20Albert%20-%20The%20Stranger.pdf

Secondary sources (optional). The Partially Examined Life and In Our Time both have podcast episodes on Camus worth a listen.
Come join us as we ask what we owe the world in the way of feeling!

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Stockholm Philosophy Study group is a group for thoughtful discussion on philosophical topics. Everyone is welcome regardless of previous philosophical experience. However, you have to have read the text ahead of time to participate, as the conversation will revolve around it. This is a space were we learn from and listen to each other, our focus is on deliberation, not debate. If we are a large group, remember to leave room for everybody's voices to be heard. We read all sorts of philosophical texts, some are easier and some are difficult. If you don't understand everything, don't worry, we will make sense of it together. Our meetups are at a public café, so if you participate, please buy something from the café to support them. We often have many people on the waitlist, so If you secured a spot but can't make it, please remember to cancel here on meetup to make room for someone else.

Anne Carson (1950–) is a Canadian poet, essayist translator and 2026 literature Nobel Prize winner. Eros the Bittersweet was her first book, a philosophical essay on desire, grown out of her doctoral dissertation.

Carson begins with a single word. Glukupikron, which we translate as “bittersweet” — but ancient poet Sappho put the sweet first: sweetbitter. From that inversion Carson builds a structural account of desire. Eros requires three points, not two: lover, beloved, and the gap between them. It is the gap that desire actually loves, which is why desire cannot survive its own satisfaction. The book moves from Sappho to the Greek novels to Plato’s Phaedrus, where the same geometry turns up in the account of how we come to know anything at all.

Is desire really an appetite for absence, or has Carson mistaken one kind of love for all of them? If eros depends on distance, what should we make of the long marriage? Read the book with us and let's explore desire.

The book can be found online, or in any good bookstore
https://www.are.na/block/16964500

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Stockholm Philosophy Study group is a group for thoughtful discussion on philosophical topics. Everyone is welcome regardless of previous philosophical experience, but you have to read the text ahead of time. Everyone having read the text is essential for a good discussion, if you don't have time to do the reading, please leave those that do. This is a space were we learn from and listen to each other, our focus is on deliberation, not debate. If we are a large group, remember to leave room for everybody's voices to be heard. We read all sorts of philosophical texts, some are easier and some are difficult. If you don't understand everything, don't worry, we will make sense of it together. Our meetups are at a public café, so if you participate, please buy something from the café to support them.