Alright, I see what you mean now. Thanks for the explanation! Whether or not I agree, that’s a lot more nuanced than my earlier interpretation of your opinion.
I like the religious lens of his work, though. I don’t personally identify with it, especially his particular brand of it, but that’s part of the work’s appeal to me. Similarly, I’m not an existentialist but it was neat to see the world that way through “L'Étranger” (even though Camus rejected the label).
But I do want to push back against the idea that we know vastly more about human nature today than in the 1800s. We’ve been formally studying western philosophy, intently and seriously, for at least 2,500 years. On a timeline between Plato and today, “C&P” was written 94% of the way to the finish line. We might have better models of some details now, but we’ve had a pretty solid knowledge of the fundamentals for an awfully long time. By analogy, Monet didn’t know jack about quantum physics, but he famously explored the subtleties of the appearance of light in nature.
I surely don’t want to take the position that older = better, either. You’re right: we’re still learning, practicing, and getting better! There’s still an awful lot of gold to be found in earlier works, though.