The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

In Part 3, Camus writes in more detail about the divide between rebellion and revolution, which he considers to be two different things, though the former sometimes morphs into the latter. While rebellion is more spontaneous and disorganized, and is born as a reaction against lived realities, the more abstract nature of revolution is problematic, as “a revolution is an attempt to fit the world into a theoretic frame” (233). In many revolutionary ideologies, there is a fixation on the idea of “the end of history,” in which, if the revolution achieves its aims, an ideal world can be achieved. Camus argues that this utopian thinking is a very dangerous tendency, as it can lead revolutionaries to justify all kinds of crimes committed in the name of a perfect future they think they can achieve.

Camus also writes in more detail about the history of modern revolutions, which he sees as beginning with the French Revolution and the execution of King Louis XVI. Camus interprets this event as both a political event (the overthrow of an absolute monarchy) and as a metaphysical event (the rejection of the idea of the Divine Right to Rule and the idea of God having a representative on earth in the form of a king).