The Relevance of Albert Camus in the Contemporary World

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, thinker, writer and journalist from Algeria. He had witnessed both the world wars and was part of the French Resistance army fighting against Nazi occupation of France during 1940-45. Along with Nietzsche, Kirkegaard, and Sartre, Camus was called an Existentialist. However, he rejected the label and reiterated that he belonged to the Absurd school of philosophy. He felt life had become meaningless and hopelessness was seen everywhere. The war itself was absurd as killing of innocents could not be justified by any just cause. Life was capricious because the universe was irrational. The interaction between the rational human being and the irrational universe produced the absurdity in life. Among his works three of his seminal works have been chosen for discussion in this essay. The novel he wrote in 1946, The Plague, The essay he wrote in 1942 of Myth of Sisyphus and the lecture he delivered to an audience in New York in 1946 titled “The Human Crisis.” In the world today, when terror has gripped humanity and made life more and more uncertain; the outbreak of a strange virus that became a pandemic in 2020-2021 killing more people than any war has done so far, Camus’ philosophy and novel has become increasingly meaningful as well as relevant