Why Camus Took One Look at Existentialism and Ordered Another Drink

Camus took one look at existentialism, smirked, and lit a cigarette.

Sartre was busy dissecting freedom, anguish, and nausea—Camus just shrugged and ordered another round.

Life was absurd, sure, but sitting around philosophizing about it?

That was for suckers. You either laugh at the void or let it eat you alive.

Camus preferred to laugh, preferably with a drink in one hand and a soccer match on the radio.

1. Existentialism Was Too Damn Serious

Sartre and his boys sat around chain-smoking in dim-lit cafés, talking about how life was a locked room with no exit, no meaning, no way out but death.

They made existence sound like a dull weight pressing on your ribs, a joke without a punchline.

They called it freedom, but it felt more like a sentence—like someone hands you a shovel and says, “Congratulations, you get to dig your own grave.”

Camus, though—Camus had a different idea.

He saw the absurdity too, saw the joke for what it was, but instead of wringing his hands about it, he laughed.

He lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and decided if life was a ridiculous play, he might as well play his part.

Keep going, keep drinking, keep waking up in the morning just to see what happens next.

That was the trick. Not to solve the puzzle, but to sit with it, maybe even enjoy the mess.

Sartre made it feel like a courtroom drama where you were both the defendant and the executioner.

Camus turned it into a carnival—dark, sure, but still worth the price of admission. And maybe that’s all we’ve got. A handful of good moments in a world that doesn’t give a damn.

Might as well take them.

2. The Absurd Doesn’t Care About Your Labels

Existentialism loves its labels: authenticity, bad faith, nausea (Sartre was really into nausea).

Camus, on the other hand, didn’t give a damn about labels.

He was all about one thing—the absurd. The idea that life is fundamentally meaningless, but instead of crying about it, you laugh.

Because what else can you do? That’s not existentialism; that’s something weirder, funnier, and slightly drunker.

3. “Existence Precedes Essence”? Sure, Whatever.

Sartre famously said, “Existence precedes essence.”

That means we’re born with no inherent meaning, and we have to make our own.

Camus wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but he’d roll his eyes at the pompousness of it all.

He wasn’t interested in defining things so neatly. Instead, he was more concerned with how you react when you realize life is just a guy pushing a rock up a hill forever.

Do you give up? Or do you whistle while you work?

4. Camus Didn’t Want to Join the Sartre Club

Sartre and Camus were friends—until they weren’t.

Sartre was the intellectual rockstar of his time, and Camus, despite being wildly successful, didn’t want to be swallowed up by Sartre’s cult of personality.

He rejected existentialism, partly because he genuinely disagreed with it, and partly because he didn’t want to be another name on Sartre’s guest list.

5. The Myth of Sisyphus Wasn’t an Existentialist Text

They say existentialism is about carving out your own meaning, like a sculptor hacking away at a block of stone, trying to make something worth looking at before time turns it all to dust.

Fine. That’s nice. Sounds productive.

But Camus? Camus wasn’t handing out chisels and blueprints.

He looked at the stone, the dust, the whole stupid process, and said, “So what?”

He wasn’t interested in making some grand, noble story out of nothing.

He just wanted you to see the nothing for what it was and keep going anyway.

The Myth of Sisyphus wasn’t about triumph, it wasn’t about crafting meaning—it was about staring at the absurdity, the uselessness of it all, and deciding to show up anyway. Rolling that boulder up the hill not because it leads somewhere, but because it’s yours to push.

And maybe, just maybe, you smile a little while you do it.

Not because it makes sense. Not because you’ve figured anything out. But because the whole thing is too ridiculous not to.

6. Camus Had More Hope (And Less Nausea)

Sartre’s world was bleak. Camus, for all his talk about the absurd, actually believed in human decency.

Read The Plague. It’s about people trying to do good despite everything being terrible.

It’s about finding something worth fighting for, even when the universe doesn’t give a damn.

That’s not the cold despair of Sartre’s existentialism—that’s something warmer.

7. If You’re Drinking, You’re Not Overthinking

Here’s the thing: Sartre would probably sit in a café, chain-smoking and monologuing about the burden of existence.

Camus? He’d drink his wine, laugh at a joke, and maybe write a book about it later.

That’s the difference. Camus didn’t need to be an existentialist.

He was too busy living.

TL;DR – Why Camus Wasn’t an Existentialist

Point	Sartre’s Existentialism	Camus’ Absurdism
Attitude	Overthinking & despair	Laugh & keep going
Meaning	You must create it	Accept there is none
Philosophy	Heavy intellectualism	Just deal with it
The Absurd	A thing to be conquered	A thing to be embraced
Major Work	Being and Nothingness	The Myth of Sisyphus
Take on Life	Free but doomed	Free and still kicking
Would They Drink?	Too busy debating	Pass the bottle

Final Thoughts (Or: The Part Where I Pretend to Be Deep)

Look, arguing about whether Camus was an existentialist is like arguing about whether whiskey is a type of beer.

Sure, they share some ingredients, but the final product is totally different. Camus wasn’t interested in playing Sartre’s game. He saw the absurd, he laughed, and he ordered another round.

And if that’s not a philosophy worth living by, I don’t know what is.