Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French-Algerian existentialist .n awarding him its prize for literature in 1957, the Nobel committee cited the author’s persistent efforts to “illuminate the problem of the human conscience in our time,” and it is pre-eminently as a writer of conscience and as a champion of imaginative literature as a vehicle of philosophical insight and moral truth that Camus was honored by his own generation and is still admired today.There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” (Camus, Myth, 3). This bold and striking assertion is how Camus begins The Myth of Sisyphus, his essay on the absurd and its implications for human life. Immediately, one might object that there are more serious philosophical problems than that of suicide. While this issue is certainly important, Camus might first consider the epistemological question of whether we can actually know whether life is worth living (Kamber, 51). Camus, however, is not actually considering the problem of suicide in general, but rather the much narrower question of whether the discovery of the absurd leads one to the conclusion that life is not worth living. Or to put it simply: “should a person convinced that life is absurd conclude that there is no point in continuing to live?” (Kamber, 52) The idea of the absurd is a common theme in many existentialist works, particularly in Camus. Absurdity is the notion of contrast between two things. As Camus explains it in The Myth of Sisyphus: The absurd is born out of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.