Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus; CCWV.LIFE

In 1942 Albert Camus publishes The Myth of Sisyphus, opening with the claim that suicide is the one truly serious philosophical problem. Camus names the absurd, the confrontation between the human demand for meaning and the world's silence, and answers it not with escape but with revolt: Sisyphus, condemned to his rock, is to be imagined happy.

Tagged: Nihilism

The Event

Date: 1942 (exact)
Era: The Century of Catastrophe; Standard periodization of the nihilist movement and idea
Location: Paris; today Paris, France
Traditions: Nihilism
Streams: Nihilism
Key figures: Albert Camus
Key texts: The Myth of Sisyphus

Connections

Illustration for Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

History Event Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1883 answers Nietzsche's death of God with the absurd

Primary Sources

Camus, Albert. Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Paris: Gallimard, 1942.

Secondary Sources

Crosby, Donald A. The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of Modern Nihilism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. Nihilism Before Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Reginster, Bernard. The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Provenance: HIST-1356; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.