An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1951
Metaphysical Revolt
I rebel, therefore we are.
Camus's later position. The absurd revolt is not isolated; in rebelling against meaninglessness, the individual implicitly affirms a shared human dignity. From this Camus argues against the revolutionary violence of his Stalinist contemporaries: a revolt that murders the people it claims to free has betrayed the only ground it had to stand on. The position cost him his friendship with Sartre.