Like the other poster suggested, Camus did not encourage suicide but used the concept of suicide to judge a philosopher's honesty. I'm not French nor do I spea

Like the other poster suggested, Camus did not encourage suicide but used the concept of suicide to judge a philosopher's honesty. I'm not French nor do I speak the language, but I imagine that it has to be a truly uniquely French thing to have the ability to craft otherwise hoky verbiage into something this profound. Camus continually uses the suicide allegory for philosophies that don't answer the question of the separation or alienation of the absurd character (us) from his own play (our lives). Hence the "stranger". For example, religion, as Camus delivers, is a type of philosophical suicide. Only the French can present such an unpallatable morsel with such fantastic grace! :-) If Camus' work is not a triumph of philosophy, it certainly has few rivals in style. Camus, for me, is the hope we lost in the classical pessimists. (And, yes, I say pessimists like it's a good thing. Which it is!) (Post script: I hear Camus' words as echoes of Rumi when he implores the stranger to regain his identity as a first class citizen of the Cosmos. Like the Buddha too said, we ought to imagine ourselves one with the universe ... we have to imagine ourselves scornfully happy!)