“They question my right to the title of philanthropist. Ah! What injustice! Who cannot see that I want to cut off a few heads to save a great number?”

In his 1951 essai, Camus examines different aspects of rebellion, how in the 20th century, “in the fond conviction that this world is dedicated to death” and lost in nihilism and the deification of history, it legitimised murder and oppression and how, “claiming the unity of the human condition”, it helps to overcome the absurd.