Born in Algeria to a poor family, Albert Camus was a journalist and novelist and took part in the French Resistance. In The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, he explored the clash between our search for meaning and a silent world. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and died in a car accident at 46.
Core ideas
The absurd arises from the clash between our thirst for meaning and the silence of the world
The answer to the absurd is neither suicide nor escape, but lucid revolt
No cause justifies killing innocents in the name of an ideal future
The tradition: Absurdist
Absurdism sees life as a conflict between the human search for meaning and a universe that does not answer. Camus is its leading representative and proposes living fully in spite of it.
