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Albert Camus grew up surrounded by
violence.

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His homeland of Algeria was mired in
conflict between native Algerians

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and colonizing French Europeans.

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He lost his father in the First World War,

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and was deemed unfit
to fight in the second.

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Battling tuberculosis in France and 
confronting the war's devastation

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as a resistance journalist,
Camus grew despondent.

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He couldn’t fathom any meaning behind
all this endless bloodshed and suffering.

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He asked: if the world was meaningless,

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could our individual
lives still hold value?

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Many of Camus’ contemporaries were
exploring similar questions

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under the banner of a new philosophy
called existentialism.

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Existentialists believed people were
born as blank slates,

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each responsible for creating their 
life’s meaning amidst a chaotic world.

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But Camus rejected their
school of thought.

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He argued all people were born with
a shared human nature

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that bonded them toward common goals.

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One such goal was to seek out meaning
despite the world’s arbitrary cruelty.

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Camus viewed humanity’s desire for meaning
and the universe’s silent indifference

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as two incompatible puzzle pieces,

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and considered trying to fit them
together to be fundamentally absurd.

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This tension became the heart of Camus’
Philosophy of the Absurd,

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which argued that life
is inherently futile.

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Exploring how to live without meaning

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became the guiding question
behind Camus’ early work,

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which he called his “cycle
of the absurd.”

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The star of this cycle, and Camus’ first
published novel,

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offers a rather bleak response.

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The Stranger follows Meursault, an 
emotionally detached young man

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who doesn’t attribute much 
meaning to anything.

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He doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral,

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he supports his neighbor’s scheme
to humiliate a woman,

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he even commits a violent crime —
but Meaursault feels no remorse.

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For him the world is pointless and 
moral judgment has no place in it.

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This attitude creates hostility between
Meursault

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and the orderly society he inhabits,

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slowly increasing his alienation until
the novel’s explosive climax.

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Unlike his spurned protagonist, Camus 
was celebrated for his honest philosophy.

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The Stranger catapulted him to fame,
and Camus continued producing works

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that explored the value of
life amidst absurdity

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many of which circled back to
the same philosophical question:

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if life is truly meaningless,

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is committing suicide the
only rational response?

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Camus’ answer was an emphatic “no.”

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There may not be any explanation for
our unjust world,

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but choosing to live regardless is the 
deepest expression of our genuine freedom.

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Camus explains this in one of his most
famous essays

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which centers on the
Greek myth of Sisyphus.

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Sisyphus was a king who cheated 
the gods,

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and was condemned to endlessly 
roll a boulder up a hill.

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The cruelty of his punishment lies in
its singular futility,

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but Camus argues all of humanity is 
in the same position.

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And only when we accept the 
meaninglessness of our lives

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can we face the absurd
with our heads held high.

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As Camus says, when the king chooses
to begin his relentless task once more,

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“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

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Camus’ contemporaries
weren’t so accepting of futility.

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Many existentialists advocated for
violent revolution

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to upend systems they believed were
depriving people of agency and purpose.

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Camus responded with his second
set of work: the cycle of revolt.

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In The Rebel, he explored rebellion
as a creative act,

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rather than a destructive one.

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Camus believed that inverting
power dynamics

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only led to an endless cycle of violence.

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Instead, the way to avoid needless
bloodshed

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is to establish a public understanding of
our shared human nature.

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Ironically, it was this cycle of
relatively peaceful ideas

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that triggered his fallout with many
fellow writers and philosophers.

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Despite the controversy,

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Camus began work on his most lengthy
and personal novel yet:

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an autobiographical work
entitled The First Man.

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The novel was intended to be the first
piece in a hopeful new direction:

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the cycle of love.

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But in 1960, Camus suddenly died in a car
accident

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that can only be described as meaningless
and absurd.

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While the world never saw
his cycle of love,

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his cycles of revolt and absurdity
continue to resonate with readers today.

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His concept of absurdity has become
a part of world literature,

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20th century philosophy,
and even pop culture.

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Today, Camus remains a trusted guide
for moments of uncertainty;

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his ideas defiantly imbuing a senseless
world with inspiration rather than defeat.