Abstract

This article focuses on Camus's perception of existentialism, which he characterized in his "absurdist period" as a form of philosophical suicide, while in his "period of revolt," he viewed existentialism as a destructive mode of thought that reduces human life to its historical dimension, leaving no room for the interplay of history and nature, and reducing everything in its path to ideological abstractions. Despite his lifelong opposition to existentialism, many commentators continue to this day to classify him as an existentialist¾a practice the present article challenges as misleading.