Camus's absurdism is a method, not a tidy system
Camus repeatedly denied being a philosopher, yet the Stanford Encyclopedia describes a thinker who opposed systematic philosophy, used assertion and metaphor more than formal argument, and focused on immediate experience and the meaning of life in the face of death. In The Myth of Sisyphus, his philosophy of the absurd takes the form of a striking image: Sisyphus pushes his rock uphill, only to see it roll back down each time he reaches the top. The image is not a tidy solution. It keeps the contradiction in view: continued effort without pretending that repetition has produced a final answer.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Camus's philosophical force may come from refusing to make the problem neater than it is.
That can sound like a pose unless the metaphor does work; Sisyphus gives the abstraction a concrete test.
The rock matters because the image makes the repeated effort visible rather than resolving it.