Existentialism and Law in the Philosophy of Camus

The present essay aims to shed a light on the relation between Camus' philosophy of existentialism and the concept of law. As will be shown, his moral philosophy does not consist in a mere nihilistic, subjectivist and positivist approach, which could possibly contradict the idea of law or respectively certain premises of legal philosophy (e. g. protection of human life or legal interests). On the contrary, Camus integrates a concept of law (although not fully specified in its details) as a main characteristic in his definition of the revolt. He links his concept of revolt to certain moral values such as charity, human dignity and solidarity. This essay intends to reconstruct in particular the relationship between these values and the idea of law as set forth in "L'Homme Revolte". Camus extends the moral nature of the aforementioned moral values to a normative foundation of law through his definition of the revolt. As such, revolt and law become closely linked to metaphysics, especially through the idea of nature worth protecting. ism, metaphysics