Camus’s explanation is that Hegel and other apostles of absolutist thought transformed the spirit of revolt into its opposite, revolution.

Camus places a desperate wager on the rebel’s persistent humanity, but he does not explain how rebellion can be maintained without spilling into either revolution or reaction.

Or at least L’homme révolté was. The concept of revolt that the writer held up high as a destiny is now going through political revival. Camus, however, is not the father of the Arab spring.

Kierkegaard and Camus each pointed to some fundamental conditions of our existence. Life is about creating meaning. When one lives passionately, one can die without rebellion.

November 7 was the birthday of French Nobel Prize–winning philosopher and novelist Albert Camus, the great contributor to the rise of Absurdism.

“Revolt,” declared Albert Camus in 1951 in The Rebel, “protests, it demands, it insists that the outrage be brought to an end, and that what has up to now been built upon shifting sands ...

It was a bad moment. The Hungarian revolt was going on, and intellectuals in Budapest sent messages to Camus beseeching him for help. Although he was working, he dropped everything.

Camus writes in his greatest book, The Rebel, published in 1951, that ever since the mythical Prometheus rose up against Zeus in the deserts of Scythia, revolt has been a distinguishing ...

Kierkegaard and Camus each pointed to some fundamental conditions of our existence. Life is about creating meaning. When one lives passionately, one can die without rebellion.