Albert Camus is usually described as an atheist, but he denied that. Instead, he called himself a blasphemer, one who rejects the orthodox Western view of supernaturalistic theism. He searched for a new sense of the sacred that he never found. He never found it because he was committed to his understanding of the Absurd: the clash between a nonfeeling universe and a feeling, thinking humanity, which is a philosophical inheritance from Cartesian dualism. Yet in his rebel’s sense of beauty and art, Camus lays the groundwork for a new, natural theism, a position we will explore in class.
