I rebel, therefore we are.

Camus treats revolt as a way beyond the isolation of the absurd, replacing a solitary assertion of existence with an acknowledgment of others. The synopsis of Part I compares this move to the cogito. The publisher stresses that the larger book then asks how revolt can turn into crime and police states.

Resistance discloses a value shared with other people; the “I” who rebels thereby affirms a “we.”

The plural matters. This is not a slogan for unlimited individual self-assertion, nor a blanket justification of violence in the name of rebellion.

Life, Society, Politics, Morality

• My nationalism, fierce though it is, is not exclusive, is not devised to harm any nation or individual. Mahatma Gandhi
• It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. André Gide
• One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
• the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; Martin Luther King Jr.
• By definition, he cannot today put himself at the service of those who make history: he serves those who undergo it.

• paulatim.net/?oeuvre=lhomme-revolte

Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951), Part I, “L’Homme révolté”, our own translation. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/i-rebel-therefore-we-are/ (24 October 2026).

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