The Myth of Sisyphus

Main ideas

• The absurd as a relation between human demand and world silence.
• Revolt, freedom, and passion instead of resignation.

Important themes

Reading context

Published in occupied France in 1942 and opening with the claim that suicide is the one serious philosophical problem. The absurd, for Camus, is not the world's meaninglessness but the collision between our demand for meaning and the world's silence.

How to approach it

The first essay carries the argument and the closing pages on Sisyphus are the payoff. Read it alongside The Stranger, published the same year.