Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French-Algerian philosopher, essayist, and writer who is most reputed for his part in democratizing the school of the Absurd through works such as The Stranger (L'Étranger) and The Plague (La Peste). While an ardent left-wing advocate who sought to remedy the imbalances between the whites and the natives in his homeland of Algeria, Camus opposed the violence justified by communism and its underlying revolutions, positing that leadership change brought about by communist revolution would merely result in the replacement of an unpopular authoritarian regime with another, popularly justified, one. Camus' absurdist philosophy was a combination of nihilist and existentialist ideas, from which he proclaimed his absurdist centerpiece that "[t]here is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide," with this suicide being categorized into physical and philosophical properties.

Camus was first introduced to philosophy in 1930, by his mentor and teacher Jean Grenier. This encounter with philosophy was a fortuitous one, since at the time Camus had been forced to relocate after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. After his recovery, Camus was further edified by Grenier at the University of Algiers, acquiring profound interests in literature and philosophy (Sherman 11). During his matriculation years, Camus read and came to support the ideas of agnostic and pessimist philosophers such as those of Friedrich Nietzsche. In addition, Camus embraced left-wing ideals, retaining many of them throughout his life though his passion for communism quickly burned out.

His leftist and anti-colonialist/fascist standpoints solidified with the outbreak of WWII and the Nazi German occupation of France, during which he became a member of the French Resistance and worked as chief editor of a forbidden newspaper, Combat. Living in Paris, he also wrote two of his most renowned absurdist and nihilist compositions: The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger. Camus, though an advocate of the political left, openly demonstrated his anti-communist stance in The Rebel, a novel satirizing and critiquing the justifications for violence inherent in communist revolutions and how one absolute force is merely supplanted by another in such transformations (Simpson; Eubanks & Petrakis 310; Bowker 233).

Concerning human existence, Camus consistently denied being an existentialist regardless of his endorsement of nihilistic, pessimistic, and skeptic philosophies. Yet, the existential questions advanced by his writings make it so that Camus’ contributions to the modern interpretations of human destiny are unmistakable, best represented by his notions of physical and philosophical suicides, in addition to those of revolts. While Camus described physical suicide to be the most effortless "way out" of human existence, he contended that killing oneself is absurd of itself in that one personally chooses to induce an end to his/her being. Philosophical suicide is what Camus pointed the "leap of faith" to be, also denouncing it as absurd in relying on irrationality rather than empirical observations. Camus asserted that the struggle against such urges for suicide with full knowledge of the "absurdity of human existence" formed the basis for revolts, offering a rational substitute for the irrational desires of suicide and hope.

Gahlam Samy