Camus's Philosophy of Meaning: Beyond Nihilism

Albert Camus, contrary to popular memes, did not believe life is meaningless. In The Myth of Sisyphus, he distinguishes between meaning as comprehension and meaning as significance. While he rejected preordained meaning from God or religion, he argued that humans must create their own meaning to live a valuable life. Influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly aphorisms GS 125 ("The Madman") and BGE 188, Camus saw the death of God as an opportunity to invent new values. Nietzsche's call to "obey at length in a single direction" to produce something worth living for—like virtue, art, or music—guides the absurd man. Camus concludes that we must imagine Sisyphus happy, implying a meaningful existence achieved through self-created significance. The essay explores how to genuinely believe in invented meanings without self-deception, a problem Camus addressed through his companion works: the novel The Stranger and the plays Caligula and The Misunderstanding.