The Absurd and the Free

Camus and Sartre were friends until one of them wrote a book about murder — and the argument that ended them is the argument itself.

A course on the thought of Camus & Sartre.

What you will learn

• Define the absurd as a relation rather than a property of the world.
• Distinguish it from pessimism and from despair.
• See why suicide is the question the essay has to begin with.
• State the three consequences Camus draws from the absurd.
• Explain why the myth ends in happiness rather than defiance alone.
• Assess whether the answer is earned or merely asserted.
• State the formula 'existence precedes essence' and its atheist premise.
• Explain why the doctrine produces anguish rather than relief.

Course outline

1. The Silence of the World — Camus opens his essay by saying there is only one serious philosophical problem, and it is suicide. He is not being dramatic. He is asking what follows when you stop pretending the universe answers.
2. One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy — The answer is not hope, and it is not resignation. It is a man who knows the rock will roll back, walks down to it anyway, and is not broken by knowing.
3. Condemned to Be Free — There is no human nature, because there is no God to have conceived one. You are nothing but what you make — which sounds like a liberation until you notice there is no longer anyone to blame.
4. Bad Faith, and the Look — The manoeuvre by which you lie to yourself about your own freedom — and why other people are the one thing that can turn you, from the outside, into the object you were pretending to be.
5. I Rebel, Therefore We Exist — Nine years after Sisyphus, Camus asks the question the absurd left open: if nothing is given, may I kill? His answer, and the limit he finds, is the book that ends the friendship.
6. The Explosion — 1952. Les Temps Modernes reviews The Rebel savagely, Camus replies to the editor rather than the reviewer, and Sartre answers in public. What the fight was actually about — and who was right about…
7. Algeria, and the Silence — The hardest module. Camus was Algerian, opposed independence, said one sentence at Stockholm that has followed him ever since, and then stopped speaking publicly. Sartre backed the FLN and endorsed…
8. No Exit — Camus dies in 1960 with an unused train ticket in his pocket. Sartre writes the obituary. Neither position was abandoned, nobody reconciled, and the argument is still open — which is the point.

Works read in this course

• The Myth of Sisyphus — Camus, 1942 — the absurd, suicide, and why neither despair nor the leap follows
• The Stranger — Camus, 1942 — the novel written alongside it; Meursault and the sun
• The Rebel — Camus, 1951 — rebellion, limits, and the refusal to justify murder. The book that caused the break
• Existentialism Is a Humanism — Sartre, 1946 — the popular lecture; existence precedes essence, condemned to be free
• Being and Nothingness — Sartre, 1943 — the system: facticity, bad faith, the look, and freedom without excuse
• No Exit — Sartre, 1944 — three people, one room, no torturer needed
• Algerian Chronicles — Camus's Algerian journalism, 1939-58 — the record behind the silence
• (secondary, authoring-only) Aronson, Camus and Sartre (2004) — the scholarly account of the friendship and the quarrel — not ingested, not quoted

Terms introduced

the absurd, revolt, philosophical suicide, existence precedes essence, facticity, bad faith, the look, rebellion

Part of the Simposeum course library.