Albert Camus
The absurd, revolt, and refusing both despair and false hope.
Ideas
- The absurd
- The clash between our hunger for meaning and a universe that offers none. Camus says to live inside that tension, not escape it.
- Revolt over escape
- He rejects suicide and also the leap of faith, which he calls philosophical suicide. Defiance and lucid attention are the answer.
- Limits and solidarity
- In The Rebel, revolt is justified by what it shares with everyone, and loses its claim when it turns to murder for an abstraction.
In their words
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.”
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
Start with
- The Stranger (1942)
- The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
- The Plague (1947)
- The Rebel (1951)
