The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

“Ideology today is concerned only with the denial of other human beings, who alone bear the responsibility of deceit […] murder is the problem today.” 

Camus outlines the biggest issue he sees within the ideologies dominant in his time: their totalizing nature, which leads to the “denial of other human beings” and the steady erosion of freedom in the name of those ideologies. By identifying “murder” as the result of this way of thinking, Camus again alludes to the mass violence of the 20th century, suggesting that extremist thinking ultimately leads to death for any who dare to dissent.

“If our age admits, with equanimity, that murder has its justifications, it is because of this indifference to life which is the mark of nihilism.” 

Camus presents nihilism as the defining philosophy of the modern era, and his identification of “indifference to life” as one of its defining features speaks to one of the most important thematic threads in The Rebel: that in failing to love life, his contemporaries have become more prone to extremist thinking due to an obsession with an idealized future. In believing that “murder has its justifications,” Camus’s contemporaries have embraced the idea that “the ends justify the means,” to the detriment of human society as a whole.

“The most striking demonstration of this [nihilistic tendency] was provided by the Hitlerian apocalypse of 1945. Self-destruction meant nothing to those madmen, in their bomb-shelters, who were preparing for their own death and apotheosis. All that mattered was not to destroy oneself alone and to drag a whole world with one.”

Writing just a few years after the end of World War II, Camus was heavily influenced by the war and its aftereffects. In this passage, he identifies Hitler and the Nazis as the pinnacle of nihilistic tendencies—a theme he develops at more length later in the work. For Camus, what defines the Nazis and their nihilistic nature is their emptiness: They care so little for life that they will destroy both themselves and others without a second thought, all in the name of their violent, extremist ideology that could only destroy the world instead of build it.

“What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.”

Camus offers a succinct definition of what he considers a true rebel. A rebel is someone who refuses to accept things as they currently are, but with one important caveat: this refusal is not a “renunciation” of life, the world, or morality, as it was for the defeated Nazis mentioned in the Introduction. The true rebel’s stance is inherently positive and life-affirming, not destructive.

“[R]ebellion, contrary to current opinion, and though it springs from everything that is most strictly individualistic in man, questions the very idea of the individual. If the individual, in fact, accepts death and happens to die as a consequence of his act of rebellion, he demonstrates by doing so that he is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of the common good, which he considers more important than his own destiny.”

Camus expands upon his definition of the true rebel by demonstrating that, while the rebel’s attitude is life-affirming, it is nevertheless selfless in its love for life and capable of self-sacrifice to achieve something for the greater whole of humanity. This selflessness stands in stark opposition to the selfishness of the Nazis. This passage also highlights one of Camus’s most important arguments about rebellion overall: True rebellion is about identifying oneself with others instead of focusing only on individuality in its purest form.

“The rebel slave affirms that there is something in him that will not tolerate the manner in which his master treats him; the metaphysical rebel declares that he is frustrated by the universe.”

While the disobedient slave protests because he is dissatisfied with his immediate, lived reality, the metaphysical rebel feels restless and discontented on a more abstract and psychological level. The distinction is significant, for while the slave focuses on the present injustices that can and should be remedied, the metaphysical rebel’s discontent is more ill-defined and, therefore, more vulnerable to extremist ideology and the lure of a perfect future.

“Logic founded on passions reverses the traditional sequence of reasoning and places the conclusions before the premises.”

Camus addresses something that he will later discuss as one of the hallmarks of extremist ideology: a belief that is based more in strong desires (“passions”) than in a considered evaluation of reality, with the result that ideologues will search for any means by which to justify what they already believe to be true, instead of first examining the validity of the beliefs themselves.

“Two centuries ahead of time and on a reduced scale, Sade extolled totalitarian societies in the name of unbridled freedom—which, in reality, rebellion does not demand. The history and tragedy of our times really begin with him.” 

Camus frequently turns to other writers and philosophers as the embodiment or promoters of important rebellious ideas. One of the most important examples is the writer mentioned here, the Marquis de Sade, whose amoral and highly sexualized writings shocked Revolutionary France. In this passage, Camus uses Sade as an example of nihilism and its terrible results in the modern era: freedom that becomes destructive instead of constructive, which can ultimately lead to the direct harm of others.

“If nihilism is the inability to believe, then its most serious symptom is not found in atheism, but in the inability to believe in what is, to see what is happening, and to live life as it is offered. This infirmity is the root of all idealism.”

For Camus, the most dangerous aspect of nihilism is its cynical rejection of life and what an individual can currently enjoy or achieve—a trait it shares, Camus suggests, with every extreme form of “idealism.” Camus brands this trait an “infirmity” because rejecting life in favor of abstractions can lead to extremism and totalitarianism, all for the sake of an ideal that cannot (and perhaps should not) be realized.

“Nietzsche, at least in his theory of super-humanity, and Marx before him, with his classless society, both replace the Beyond by the Later On.”

Both Nietzsche and Marx hold an important place in The Rebel. This is because Camus sees them as the wellsprings of 20th-century totalitarianism: Nietzsche’s “super-humanity” lead to fascism, while Marx’s pursuit of a “classless society” lead to Soviet oppression. In remarking upon how “both replace the Beyond by the Later On,” Camus draws attention to the faithlike quality of both men’s ideologies, in which an idealized future replaces both the traditional ideal of heaven and the realities of the present.

“Conformity is one of the nihilistic temptations of rebellion which dominate a large part of our intellectual history. It demonstrates how the rebel who takes to action is tempted to succumb, if he forgets his origins, to the most absolute conformity […] And so it explains the twentieth century.”

Camus warns about the dangers of unthinking conformity in place of true rebellion. While true rebellion is often uncomfortable due to its restless and dynamic nature, conformity tempts the rebel as something easier and less demanding to accept. In remarking that this temptation “explains the twentieth century,” Camus alludes to how the ideologies of his time replaced rebellion with conformity—which, in its most extreme form, results in totalitarianism.

“In fact, if there had ever been one real revolution, there would be no more history. Unity would have been achieved, and death would have been satiated. That is why all revolutionaries finally aspire to world unity and act as though they believe history was concluded.”

While rebellion is dynamic and defies current historical circumstances, revolution takes on a bigger aim: the end of all history and the creation of a definitive society and an ideal man. This is one of the big distinctions between Camus’s ideas of rebellion and revolution. While the rebel believes he can change the world around him for the better because history never ends, the revolutionary believes he can achieve his ends only in a totalizing way that prevents the world from changing any further once his ideal society has been achieved. This is why Camus claims history would end if there were “one real revolution” in the world, and it is why history has not ended at all. Since revolutionaries cannot hope to achieve their idealistic aims, they fail to end history and only manage to pervert it with more violence and suffering.

“Cynicism, the deification of history and of matter, individual terror and state crime, these are the inordinate consequences that will now spring, armed to the teeth, from the equivocal conception of a world that entrusts to history alone the task of producing both values and truth. If nothing can be clearly understood before truth has been brought to light, at the end of time, then every action is arbitrary, and force will finally rule supreme.”

Camus criticizes the totalizing nature of the 20th century’s leading ideologies, which tended to place enormous value on some purported ideal society (e.g., world communism in Marxism, the Third Reich in Nazism). Camus argues that this utopian vision of history leads to both dangerous moral relativism (“every action is arbitrary”) and unchecked violence (“force will finally rule supreme”), as these ideologies provide justification for virtually every action in the present—no matter how extreme—in the name of an ideal future.

“Henceforth, violence will be directed against one and all, in the service of an abstract idea. The accession to power of the possessed had to take place so that it could be said, once and for all, that the revolution, in itself, was more important than the people it wanted to save.”

Camus continues to criticize the undesirable moral results of totalitarian revolutionary ideologies, as they frequently lead to violence against real people in the present time. Because revolutionary ideologues believe that the revolution is the most important thing, it becomes “more important than the people it wanted to save,” meaning that injustices are committed against innocent people in the name of an ultimate revolutionary victory that can bring justice, or an ideal society, for all.

“Nihilism, intimately involved with a frustrated religious movement, thus culminates in terrorism.”

Although Camus argues that the 19th and 20th centuries witnessed the loss of traditional religious faith (at least in Western nations), he also argues that there is something of a religious fervor within the revolutionary ideologies of the 20th century. This quasireligious faith in the justness of the revolutionary cause, combined with the extreme moral relativism brought about by certain strands of secularism (“nihilism”), results in the highest destructive impulse (“terrorism”)—the arbitrary use of violence to achieve political ends.

“The nihilist revolution, which is expressed historically in the Hitlerian religion, thus only aroused an insensate passion for nothingness, which ended by turning against itself […] Hitler presents the example, perhaps unique in history, of a tyrant who left absolutely nothing to his credit.”

For Camus, Hitler and the Nazis represent the zenith of the nihilist impulse in the 20th century. Since nihilism is the absence of any real moral values, Nazism is the perfect embodiment of nihilism due to its destructive and violent nature. In accusing Hitler of having left “absolutely nothing to his credit,” Camus argues that nihilism, when taken to its logical extreme, is both destructive to the world at large and self-destructive to those who embrace it. It creates nothing of value while destroying everything worthwhile.

“[T]he negation of everything is in itself a form of servitude and […] real freedom is an inner submission to a value which defies history and its successes.” 

Camus outlines an important distinction between true and false forms of freedom. As he argues throughout much of The Rebel, modern conceptions of freedom are frequently centered upon the idea of individuality and defiance of any and all values. Here, he argues that true freedom is not about rejection of values at all but is instead an embrace of values, and that such values require selfless submission. For Camus, a worthwhile value is not one that is presented as a historical necessity—as is the case in revolutionary ideologies like communism—but one that “defies history” by allowing man to assert his nature against the limits of his immediate material and historical circumstances.

“But Nietzsche’s tragedy is found here once again [in Marx’s thought]. The aims, the prophecies are generous and universal, but the doctrine is restrictive, and the reduction of every value to historical terms leads to the direst consequences.”

While Camus writes against the flaws in the philosophies of both Nietzsche and Marx, he nevertheless identifies something of their attraction: both thinkers dream of a better world in some form, and much of their vision is, as Camus notes, “generous and universal” in terms of goals. Nevertheless, Camus argues that the “restrictive” nature of these doctrines meant to secure an idealized future are at the root of the problem. In overvaluing the future and committing themselves to idealized versions of society and man, Nietzsche and Marx inadvertently opened the floodgates to violence, oppression, and the loss of present liberty as means that the end goal justifies.

“History, undoubtedly, is one of the limits of man’s experience; in this sense the revolutionaries are right. But man, by rebelling, imposes in his turn a limit to history, and at this limit the promise of a value is born.” 

While thinkers like Marx conceive of history as a rigid, linear process that inevitably leads to an ideal society and the “end of history,” Camus instead argues that man’s true rebellion lies in rejecting historical inevitability in favor of asserting the superiority of moral and political values. In other words, instead of being merely reactive to the forces of history, man can instead be proactive in shaping his own experiences and constructing the kind of society in which he wishes to live.

“[I]nstead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.”

Camus rejects the utopianism and delayed gratification dominant in the leading ideologies of the 20th century. In dismissing the validity of “killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not,” Camus suggests that all violence committed in the name of an idealized version of man is futile. Instead, Camus wishes to promote a commitment to moral values that are creative rather than destructive, and that are in keeping with the best impulses in man’s nature instead of an artificial prototype of what a man could be (“live and let live in order to create what we are”).

“History may perhaps have an end; but our task is not to terminate it but to create it […] Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.” 

In opposition to the dominance of history in ideologies like Marxism, Camus introduces the idea of nature as a potential alternative and challenger. Camus appears to believe in nature as something timeless, something that transcends historical necessity instead of being its byproduct. For Camus, art is the healthier form of man’s longing for greater unity, or even his utopian impulses, because it is creation, not destruction, that expresses the better parts of his nature, and it is the result of will and action instead of historical passivity.

“Rebellion is in no way the demand for total freedom. On the contrary, rebellion puts total freedom up for trial. It specifically attacks the unlimited power that authorizes a superior to violate the forbidden frontier.” 

Camus continues his general argument against nihilism in modern thought by arguing that true rebellion is not about the rejection of limits but rather the assertion of them. Rebellion is about safeguarding the freedom of man by creating boundaries around what is and is not tolerable to do to another human being.

“Despite its pretensions, [revolution] begins in the absolute and attempts to mold reality. Rebellion, inversely, relies on reality to assist it in its perpetual struggle for truth. The former tries to realize itself from top to bottom, the latter from bottom to top.”

Camus addresses another important distinction between revolution and rebellion. He argues that revolution is driven by dangerously totalizing impulses that seek to force man and society into a new shape (“to mold reality”) using any means necessary, and that revolution is a kind of artificial imposition upon the nonrevolutionary masses in the name of abstract principles (“from top to bottom”). Rebellion, on the other hand, springs more organically from present material and natural realities (it “relies on reality to assist it” and develops “from bottom to top”), and is driven more by a need to better realize man’s inherent nature than to shape an idealized prototype of man.