CLASH OF THE TITANS: CAMUS AND SARTRE

William Blake it was, that raunchy illustrator-cum-mystic, who first introduced the startling image of the universe revealed in a grain of sand.

A singular grain comes from somewhere, he mused poetically, worn down from igneous rocks that were once mountains at the birth of the planets, themselves seeded from constellations of suns too numerous to count—as if one could "hold infinity in the palm of your hand." Or, still more simply: the smallest detail viewed in the right light can tell a whopping story. Perspective is everything.

With Blake’s granular image firmly in mind, there was a time when a much younger version of myself, replete with a flaming mop of hair, would meet up with Raol, a friend from college days. Fleeing Franco’s dictatorship, his recently married Catalan parents had immigrated to the USA in the 1950s. Before long, Raol was born and raised, eventually enrolling in business school focusing on P.R., picking up a Columbia MBA along the way, no less. We had gone our own separate ways inevitably, though we continued our chatting downtown for an hour or two every Friday morning, as time allowed. No agenda, other than mawkish backslapping.

In keeping with his bohemian self-impression, Raol’s regular wardrobe was a buttoned-up collarless shirt of white poplin, mandarin style, oddly matched with green chinos. Likable to a fault, he was an innate entrepreneur, owning an otherwise successful import business distributing to mainstream retailers. The rise of the dot-coms had begun and Raol was an early adopter, riding the wave. Investors flocked to his stock offerings, long before the bubble burst. Happy days. This was during that niche period when bespoke rattan cane outdoor furniture was regularly showcased in glossy design magazines, the latest blooming of edgy modernism. Raol insisted he didn’t sell mere furniture, but rather the calming ambience of sinking into a rattan club chair on the back deck at sunset, Margaritas in hand.

At this point, Raol would kick back to sip his imaginary cocktail. "Bottoms up!" he quipped, putting his hands on his hips with a slight bow. Almost by accident, he discovered a knack for oddball comedy. So much for scholarly MBAs.

Commercial buyers lapped up his sense of style no less than his hammy gimmicks… duly passed on to their own sales staff. Expecting a deadly-dull sales pitch, they got savvy vaudeville instead. His jazzy byline went so far as to avoid any mention of commonplace furnishings: "Purveyor of Elegant Lifestyles" said it all. "We see ourselves through our artistic choices," he crooned, slowly rolling over each syllable as if it were divine revelation. Listeners were bowled over by his heady mix of the comedic with the serious. Playful with a mission.

Raol had found his groove.

As with most business cycles, there were always those annoying downturns when monthly balances drift into red ink. For one thing, the dot-com marketplace had become swamped with vendors and copycats, as the new wave regressed into a digital battleground. Adequately caffeinated by now, Raol idly mentioned how sales were trending in the wrong direction… surely, only a minor setback. He raised his chin, a telltale habit, tilting his head quizzically to one side, puppy-style. Worry-lines spread like hen-scratchings across his forehead. That’s when it happened.

All at once, he startled, crying out plaintively: "It’s just a man’s bad luck!" as though some unexpected shock had come out of nowhere. At the same time, he thumped the bistro table theatrically with the flat of his hand.

I scoffed haughtily at his bout of "fatalism"—unsure if he was play-acting—in a chummy but ill-timed attempt to make light of his outburst. Hardly skipping a breath, he then sat back and slipped into our usual good-natured conversation as if nothing whatsoever had occurred. It felt like one of those befuddled, slapstick scenes—everything at cross-purposes—straight out of a Borat film.

If this was my first memorable experience of his "tantrums," as I began to call them, it was by no means the last. Be that as it may, the experience was extraordinary, certainly disturbing… even a little frightening. Each happening seemed like the first time. Caught off guard, all I could do is just go deadpan. A minute, sometimes, can take forever. For one thing, there was always an air of resignation in his performance as if compelled to deliver his lines. Even at the best of times, sitting still was difficult for him which, for better or worse, I wrongly attributed to his Latino background. I later found out he suffered from Hyperactivity Disorder, another lesson in jumping to conclusions.

What gave his outbursts their special resonance, though, was neither the minor financial losses nor his histrionics. Rather, it was the shocking lapse from his otherwise urban, almost apologetic demeanor. Raol was just not that kind of person who let his hidden emotions get the better of him.

He was wearing a tailored biker’s jacket today, mixing fetish with fashion, complete with a silver chain. The "Fashion Pages" was just another man-about-town business opportunity. The Downtown Bistro was notoriously loud and always bustling. His inevitable tantrum, when it came, went largely unnoticed. Furthermore, a preemptive wave of the hand made it abundantly clear that any response by me was an unwanted interruption. Just as quickly as it had first appeared, the outburst would be inexplicably dropped. At the same time, his distress over the red ink was much relieved by what I came to realize was an emotional discharge of sorts. "Catharsis" sounds too pompous and anyway, my role at best, was that of a wallflower wearing a suit. Besides, the more I listened, the less I believed it had anything to do with me personally. So, no offense taken.

Then there was the aftermath, in its own way just as striking as the "tantrum" itself. Despite my personal misgivings for Raol’s well-being, the worry-lines visibly lifted from his contorted face. He never left our meetings "stuck" in ways that would consume his time, energy, and peace of mind. It was "a man’s bad luck" and seemingly the matter was rubber-stamped, done and settled once and for all. We would then carry on with our exchange—corny jokes and late-breaking gossip—as if nothing had happened. Raol would return to his office beaming, ready and eager for the next item of business. His staff, ever discreet, would whisper to me about the lasting benefits of his "therapy," though this only added to my bewildered feelings.

Sounds straightforward, but such niggling financial worries I knew only too well, don't normally lend themselves to such magical hocus-pocus. Looking back, the whole thing seemed unbelievable. Did this "unburdening," I wondered, foster his larger-than-life persona? Raol was a born people-pleaser with an unbeatable smile, that softened his most prickly clients—leaving them with the feeling that making sales was always secondary to good fellowship. It was also the secret behind his profitable business.

Time passed and our onetime "Chai Americano" barista had miraculously become an overnight Sushi Bar Chef, catering to a Gen Z clientele… hungry after a raucous morning waving "#MeToo" placards at Times Square. Apart from these cosmetic changes, William Blake's grain of truth—whatever was feeding my friend's absurdist pantomime—remained as blank as ever. How did he manage to arrive at such a state of equanimity so quickly, so effectively… as if an invisible switch was thrown? My curiosity was piqued. His secret, be it as it may, should be shared if for no other reason than it was driving me half-crazy. A somber deadpan can only hold for so long.

Alas, I admit that I didn’t know Raol as well as I thought. While he kept his private life on a tight leash, "the old school tie" and a little digging loosened a few precious nuggets. In what must surely be an improbable match, he had taken elective philosophy subjects during his MBA, especially the "absurdist" writings of Albert Camus. I had always thought that if Raol had not become a businessman, his quick-witted determination would have made for a great scholar. As it was, he blended philosophy with Wall Street. Quite a neat trick.

He was particularly drawn to Camus’ archetypal philosophical novel, "The Outsider" (aka, "The Stranger," 1942), both cryptic and sublime in equal measure. No surprise that he identified with the displaced figure of Meursault, the absurd anti-hero, not Catalan-Spanish but French-Algerian. Close enough, I suppose.

Camus’ novel, with its own cult following, sidesteps the issue of what’s wrong with the protagonist… charged with the senseless murder of an Arab man. Hauled into court, Meursault refuses to talk other than replying "the hot sun and the heat" over and over again. The narrative is turned on its head by asking instead what’s morally wrong with a society in which Meursault is the true victim, alienated from human fellowship. For his part, the prisoner offers no coherent explanation for his actions. In short, he does not present himself as would normally be expected in such cases, much to the consternation and uproar of the court.

The prosecutor argues that this is more than a customary case of simple murder, but rather one of unspeakable evil, deserving of the ultimate penalty. Meursault is sentenced to death because he represents some "thing" infinitely worse, a "social monster," an outsider whose mere existence is an imminent threat to the civil order of society and the rule of law. The judge desperately urges the prisoner—unsuccessfully—to at least acknowledge his remorse and plead for forgiveness, which will surely save him. The court is left rattled by his refusal to lie, but mostly that life itself is meaningless to the prisoner and not worth living. Meursault finally has a sense of purpose and direction, albeit by rebelling against all the empty conventions of society, an act of his own choosing. The novel ends with the prisoner awaiting his execution, enlightened, finally at peace with himself and with the world.

"The Outsider" is not all that it appears. More than a novel in the popular sense, the crafty author uses it to convey his own ideas, albeit in an oblique manner. What begins as a mild discomfort grows with each mounting scene into a felt disturbance. Camus seeks to seduce the reader. To do so, he chooses the most compelling means possible, by embedding it within the stock medium of storytelling… and so, the courtship begins. We are driven to keep reading, unsure of how matters will end. The denouement unfolds but without any sense of gratification. One is left wondering, perplexed about the unanswered questions. The truths lurking behind the words—for there are several truths—seep through inductively as if seemingly incidental. Other great novels do this as well, of course, though Camus remains exceptional, the whole novel lingering onwards in the mind after the last word. What to make of it until, piece by piece, it morphs into a revelation?

Spoiler Alert. It helps to think of the work as a kind of satire in which the prisoner struggles to reconcile the fragmented, chaotic subjectivity of being alive with the contrived orderliness into which he was born, having no choice in the matter. Hence, the deeper irony of Camus’ title—the "outsider" expresses a universal dilemma of all humanity.

For Meursault, society is ontologically bankrupt in which governance and the artifice of law are mistakenly used to impose some semblance of higher purpose on what is otherwise a meaningless, confusing world. This too was Socrates’ original teaching, for which—like Meursault—he was executed. Troublemakers, both of them.

The truth is hiding out in plain sight, yet ignorance is bliss: people don’t know what they don’t know… and woe betide those that want them to know it!

What at first appeared to be no more than Raol’s wacky rite, superficial by all appearances, was actually his own way—following Camus—of rebelling against the absurdity of the situation confronting him. "A man’s bad luck" was that catch-cry by which he warned himself of the random uncertainties of existence. Absurdity comes in many shapes and sizes. Consider for example, our time as children brought up to believe we are special… then the shock of finding ourselves in a world that doesn’t care, lost and alone, where betrayal may lurk behind any smile.

Only later did I understand Raol’s "tantrums" as a vehicle for altering his perception, part of a chain reaction of leveling matters down to a perspective where they properly belong. As with most people, Raol perceived an object or event according to the reactive fears or hopes it generated, lending it greater or lesser meaning… which of course, is no way to run a business. On the other hand, the idea of the absurd reminded him that the only real meaningfulness of any object is that which he alone chose to give it. This significance may or may not align with the significance attributed by others… but that too, was Raol’s personal choice. Meaningfulness can be made and remade.

Meaning was not a "given" for Raol, something that was assigned and untouchable, to be taken for granted. Rather, it was a proactive decision, Camus’ deliberate break in the "routine perception of the world," a willed change in perspective. Reducing everything to a baseline meaninglessness enabled him to reassess matters from a distance. All that mattered was the present instant, when his hand struck the table (a device of convenience Raol invented to mark his shift in perception), at which everything became at once removed and coequal. He could then calmly reassess the significance of each item and quickly regain his composure—his single organizing idea around which his workaday life revolved. Last month’s red ink for example was only a drop in the ocean, to be recouped many times over in the following months. A pragmatic if anomalous take on Camus’ absurdism.

Mistaking reaction for deliberation, what I at first judged to be Raol’s momentary "tantrum" was in fact, the mere tip of a lifelong devotion. His work is not a means to an end, financial or otherwise, but an end in itself by his choice to assign it a token significance in an otherwise meaningless world. No purist, Raol adopted the absurdist philosophy as a kind of tool or sounding-board in opposition to his own subjective fears.

Interestingly, Raol was also a hard-nosed businessman who gave little bother to the issue of whether meaning existed in the world at large. "To do so," he said, pursing his lips, "would mean getting caught up in all those fancy, metaphysical theories in which I am nothing but a mere leaf blown in the wind." Here perhaps, with his distrust of abstraction, is the very point at which Raol comes closest to the true absurdist profile… while dodging the risk of nihilism.

The question then arises, splitting hairs, as to where absurdism ends, and nihilism begins? Is this just bantering about different ends of the same cryptic stick? While the nihilist view of the world is one without meaning, it goes a step further, warning of the futility of seeking such gratification as well as the bitter disappointment that follows the dashing of false hopes. By comparison, the idea of an absurd world does not abandon the search for meaning altogether—instead, meaning is derived from the exercise of one’s private choices. In a strange twist, what begins as Raol’s response to the absurdity of the world, by choosing to imbue meaning to one choice over another, gravitates to the concrete and practical.

At the same time, Raol’s story speaks to yet another long-running debate concerning the varied nature of absurdism as a concept. Should it be widely eclectic in scope and interpretation or defined more narrowly as a unitary "whole" in line with other more traditional philosophies? Taken at face value, Camus’ explanatory essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942) would seem to support a limited viewpoint. After all, how many different ways can one push a boulder uphill only to watch it roll back down again?

Camus is a cagey one however, who chooses this extreme example to illustrate his paradox. Sisyphus remains a contented fellow who finds fulfillment and sense of completion in spite of his endless, meaningless task. In fact, the very absurdity of the task reinforces the need to redefine his own self-conception. In such a manner, the absurdist sense of agency may be twisted, turned, and adapted to suit the lifelong needs and personality of each person… even when one is managing a worldly business like Raol.

What with our busy careers, relocations, and family commitments, I am sorry to report, alas, that Raol and I eventually lost track of each other. Disheartening, but that’s life! I still get a kick nevertheless when I spy his name writ large in the Fortune 500 list of upbeat corporate players. Only now, I know his "great secret."

In a topsy-turvy world, are humans driven to find meaning in the Other, I ask myself, if for no other reason than to satisfy ourselves for our own sake, slaking our own need for meaning. That said, finding meaning in the words of a stranger, do we complete an arc of reciprocity, connecting each to the other? Does this exchange of meaning perhaps, unstated and profound, lend substance to our inner lives? Does it sustain the Self? I think of Logotherapy and the "will to meaning" as developed by Viktor Frankl, philosopher and Holocaust survivor.

From the start, Camus’ life began as an existential conflict of identity: an Algerian by birth, though both his parents were of French descent, albeit working-class. He never forgot this, nor was he allowed to forget it.

Perhaps, just perhaps, buried beneath the layers of his absurdist philosophy was the imprint—stuffed with traumata and intrigue—of the Algerian War of Independence. Wherever he went in life, he always carried with him the existential unease of someone who can never forget his past, the terror of war in the night. On the other hand, Jean-Paul Sartre, his on-again off-again friend of later years—born in the highbrow 16th arrondissement of Paris—had no experience of such an unimaginable thing.

Both Sartre and Camus flaunted meaningless conventions in their writing, especially in their choice of words and images. While Sartre was known for his singular swagger, Camus didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, except when it came to his writing. He was impressed by Sartre’s insistence on the power of life choices as the basis of self-conception. At the same time, there was something unnameable that so often befuddled these life choices. For better or worse, choosing and naming were interwoven. The more he studied literature, philosophy, and political theory, the greater Camus appreciated the power of words—words that could edify just as easily as confuse. For better or worse, choosing and naming were interwoven, each shaping the other. Or maybe it’s the syntax playing tricks—he smiled to himself and snapped out of it.

Despite his athletic appearance and handsome features, Camus was diagnosed with tuberculosis and suffered from episodes throughout his life—a legacy of his time as a street urchin in the working-class slums of Algiers, living hand to mouth. It is to be expected, in the normal course of things, that his poor health and poverty would have sorely limited his future prospects. In this case, however, it had the opposite result, igniting his smoldering anger and ambition.

Despite being white and ethnic French, it comes as no surprise that he joined the anti-colonialist rebels, largely Arab, which made up a huge majority of the population. Not any glamorous game of high-stakes espionage and double-agents—nothing more raffish than functional work as a courier. Then the absurdity of World War Two came knocking. As it so happened, he was in Paris during the Nazi invasion. Rather than a passive onlooker, he took up the pen as a weapon, contributing articles for the French underground resistance magazine "Combat."

Camus soon gained a reputation for his fiery literary ability and despite his youth, was offered a trial as editor. His long-awaited chance had come. As such, the role enabled him to make connections with many contributors around the world throughout the war. None proved more significant, however, than his newfound friends, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir with whom he shared communist sympathies.

Peace had arrived, but Marxist Russia remained in turmoil. This was the time of the gulags, and the gruesome truth was slowly trickling back to the West. With mounting evidence, Camus came to oppose the use of Stalinist-style violence and other radical left-wing assumptions—that the end justifies the means. Heads turned when he took a moderate position on the Algerian independence struggle, hoping for a reconciliation, efforts that nonetheless contributed to his 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. The hot-headed firebrand had become a latter-day peacemaker. Meanwhile, Sartre became evermore strident in his views and advocacy of the Soviets.

It didn’t help matters that Camus had supported Sartre’s prior visit to the USA as the representative of "Combat." Only later did Camus discover that Sartre was sending his best articles to the rival French newspaper, "Le Figaro," with its wider circulation. Sartre was driven by a personal myth-making of epic proportions which justified all manner of self-promotion. On the other hand, this betrayal marked a watershed moment in their friendship… there could be no turning back.

In October 1951, Camus published "The Rebel," in which he discriminated between the reasoned rebel and the violent revolutionary. Camus held to a view of Hellenic humanism passed down by the ordinary people of the Mediterranean since ancient times. In particular, he criticized the French Communist Party for its blind loyalty to Moscow. The whiplash wasn’t long in coming. As if to put a distance between them, Sartre—a card-carrying Party member—published a stinging review of Camus’ book, without giving his friend any advance notice. Sartre’s shallow understanding of "class conflict" was limited as much by his recurrent trope as "an intellectual revolutionary" as it was by his coterie of bourgeois followers at the Café Flore in Paris. Sartrean extremism grew increasingly dogmatic in its support of the Soviet state, while Camus’ disillusionment with communism became complete. He saw little difference between Nazi fascism and Stalinist oppression, both brutal totalitarian regimes.

Camus was a master novelist and streetwise tactician, after all, whose childhood training in the slums finally paid off. He astutely played the long game, staying true to the hard-line ethics of one who brushed aside Sartre’s sleazy grandstanding. This had the net effect of keeping the political spotlight on Sartre as an outlier, raising questions of his loyalty to France… at a time when the Cold War with the Soviets became ever hotter. As Sartre famously proclaimed, "Hell is other people!"—an undertone of misanthropy?

On the other hand, Camus actually liked people. He had that ease of being commonly found in persons who had witnessed much and suffered a great deal. Along with the celebrity, however, came the "party animal." Women especially were attracted to him, and his personal mystique blossomed into several serious affairs. Ill-prepared for the trappings and excesses of fame, the poor boy from Algiers was all too human. Despite the problems, he refused to be separated from his family life with Francine… as well as his status as the proud father of twin daughters. Happily, the family relocated to a remote village in the south of France far away from the seductions of Paris with all its spurious "book-signings."

Meanwhile, Sartre was cultivating a pseudo-Oedipal relationship with a nineteen-year-old Algerian woman, the youngest of his harem, less than half his age, who he later formally adopted as his daughter… so that he remained nominally single and free. She later inherited the total of his estate, including his literary legacy.

It may have been expected that de Beauvoir, as his earliest advocate, advisor, travel companion, and lover, would have received a level of recognition in his Will. Then again, she had published her own runaway feminist classic, "The Second Sex" in 1949, after which things between them were never the same. Overnight, she became a competitor of sorts—in Sartre’s febrile mind—stealing the limelight away from him. She nonetheless stayed affectionate towards him, avoiding an open rupture… despite his misogynistic excesses.

The erstwhile "friendship" of Sartre and Camus, simmering for several years as rivals, came to a head in 1952 in a bitter, very public quarrel. In the final analysis, Sartre turned out to be a faux friend of convenience. They never spoke again.

What remained when the dust settled, is an astonishingly intimate chronicle of one of the dazzling, if acrimonious, intellectual breakups of all time! Moreover, between two of the outstanding existential philosophers of the 20th century—though to be fair, Camus always rejected the trendy label. One is left wondering what happens to a philosophic belief system—steeped in sagely thought—when regrettably, its two leading icons have such a sordid falling out? While Sartre may be the most influential of 20th-century existentialists, personal popularity is a different thing altogether, and Camus comes shining through. If nothing else, their respective book sales went berserk—apparently, scandal is good for business.

Camus was a keen soccer player—a goalkeeper—where he learnt about the power of teamwork. While both were undoubtedly charismatic, Sartre was neurasthenic and "gnome-like" in appearance, relying more on his daunting cerebral appeal. Sartre followed soccer too, not as a player, but rather as an abstraction in his writings, for what it revealed about the philosophy underpinning gamesmanship. In several ways, each was a foil for the other, yet at the same time, a stimulus for creativity.

Somehow, it’s refreshing to discover that even giants have feet of clay! In the end, fate would play its own devilish card in the affairs of the two rivals.

So often when the conversation turns to Camus, the question of his legacy comes to the foreground with speculations left hanging in the air, unspoken, amidst a chorus of heavy sighs. What "could have been" had he lived a full life?

Camus never forgot the haphazard nature of life, when nobody really knows what might happen from one moment to the next. The inherent uncertainty of existence is no better illustrated than the sheer absurdity of his own violent death.

Camus died in a car crash at Villeblevin, 68 miles from Paris, on January 4, 1960. He was 46 years old. The accident scene was not for the faint-hearted—a fractured skull and broken neck. The end of his life came quickly, unexpected by all, so often the case with accidents that apparently come out of nowhere. His gruesome death received widespread coverage around the world, as well as begetting an ongoing mystery which continues to the present day. A single-vehicle accident on a bright afternoon, along three miles of perfectly straight road with no other cars, under dry conditions, in which the two survivors in the back seat report that the vehicle was not speeding, yet the driver lost control and suddenly veered off the road, crashing into two plane trees. An unused train ticket to Paris, most poignantly, was found in Camus’ pocket.

He had spent several contented months with his family at his private villa in the village of Lourmarin in Provence, spending Christmas there. The retreat was perfect for his scribblings, overlooking the Luberon mountains, surrounded by vineyards, olive groves, and orchards. Camus had originally planned to accompany his wife and daughters back to Paris on the train. At the last minute, he reluctantly agreed to join his publisher and friend, Gallimard, who was driving to Paris at the same time. They could discuss future projects along the way.

Although never actually afraid of death, Camus had a long-standing phobia of car travel and dying absurdly in a car crash. He would sit there—in his mind’s eye—all hunched over, shoulders curving like a scythe, waiting for the impact. He may or may not have felt a shiver run down the nape of his neck, an uncanny life-or-death premonition. Who could have foreseen that? He trailed off into incoherent mutterings but refused to change his mind. It was as if he had managed to shed some pointless worry, suddenly feeling lighter. He felt better for it.

"Nothing ever happens after all," he said, echoing himself, "yet I always think the worst." He laughed, joylessly.

He took the front passenger seat without second thoughts, sitting next to his friend (Gallimard also died of his injuries several days after the accident). A diary entry records Camus’ worries that he may be on a Russian KGB hit list, following a series of damning articles on Soviet massacres. At one point, controversy reached the stage at which a 2011 review by The New Yorker magazine sought to put the matter to rest. The article failed to arrive at a definitive conclusion however, other than an assassination narrative "seems unlikely." Several scenarios were examined at length, for and against, most notably that Camus’ last-minute decision to travel by car would have left little time to "stage" a roadside interception and cover-up. Then came "The Death of Camus" (2013) by Giovanni Catelli citing a tire blow-out which reputedly showed evidence of prior interference.

It is surely an irony nevertheless that Camus’ violent background in the slums of Algiers is mirrored in the shocking circumstances of his early death, moreover in the specific manner he most feared. A regrettable accident according to the official ruling, yet as matters would have it, no better illustration of his position that existence is a labyrinth of ends and means, an absurd collision of vectors. All things considered, probability tilts against a conspiracy but still, closure remains as elusive as ever.

More importantly, endless speculation should not cast a morbid shadow over the life and good works of such a celebrated writer, philosopher, and humanist. To his credit, Sartre published a glowing eulogy to his former friend. What Camus might have achieved and consolidated, had he lived longer, is an open question forever lacking an answer. He was always predestined to be a man of mystery… now frozen in time for posterity.

Sartre lived and wrote for another twenty years, amid a miasma of cigarette smoke, coffee, heavy drinking, and amphetamines for inspiration, dying peaceably in bed in 1980. Nothing highlights their differences more than the manner of their passing. It’s difficult to shy away from the fleeting idea—tongue in cheek—that a final reckoning of sorts mysteriously played out, each passing in accordance with his view of existence.

As for Camus’ afterlife, his writings continue to inspire others, more relevant than ever. When all the world is nonsense—goes the saying—then the idea of the absurd is the only remaining sensible response. While absurdism won over many converts, the name itself struck his followers as a misnomer, as… well, absurd! Camus adamantly refused to make any change, arguing that the gauche reaction to the name itself invited questions from the naturally curious.

Still, the long-running debate persists—some would call it sophistry—that when a philosophy is said to cover everything we think and do, it risks meaning nothing at all! If such a rejoinder were true, it would include most of the social sciences!

"It is absurd that we are born; it is absurd that we die" (Sartre, "Being and Nothingness," 1943)… but surely—despite the simple duality—it is the space in-between that really counts!

Camus filled this space with his larger-than-life personage, as few philosophers before or since have done. He was laid to rest, not at the Montparnasse Garden Cemetery in Paris along with other notable figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, but rather at the remote Lourmarin

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Paul B. Donovan is a humanist writer and forensic psychologist, best known for the seminal work, “Epicurus in Love: Mythos and Desire in Ancient Greece” (2023, The Euphorion Press). He is a regular contributor to The Montreal Review. Pamela S. Pease has exhibited her art in Santa Fe and Maine galleries, as well as internationally. She is also the author and illustrator of several children’s books, lately "El Joffee: Poodle de Santa Fe.”

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