The Rebel () is a 1951 book-length essay by Albert Camus, which treats both the metaphysical and the historical development of rebellion and revolution in societies, especially Western Europe. Examining both rebellion and revolt, which may be seen as the same phenomenon in personal and social frames, Camus examines several 'countercultural' figures and movements from the history of Western thought and art, noting the importance of each in the overall development of revolutionary thought and philosophy. He analyses the decreasing social importance of the king, god and of virtue and the development of nihilism. It can be seen as a sequel to The Myth of Sisyphus, where he ponders the meaning of life, because it answers the same question, but offers an alternative solution. Influence Camus relates writers, artists, politicians and revolutionaries as diverse as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Marquis de Sade, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, Arthur Rimbaud, Mikhail Bakunin, Vladimir Lenin, Sergey Nechayev, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adolf Hitler, Max Stirner, André Breton, Ivan Kalyayev, Joseph de Maistre, Comte de Lautréamont, Lucretius, Epicurus, Max Scheler, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Dmitry Pisarev in an integrated, historical portrait of man in revolt. Fred Rosen has examined the influence of ideas of Simone Weil on Camus' thinking in The Rebel. According to him, Camus adopted her criticism of Marxism and her conception of the rebel as an artisan. George F Selfer has analysed parallels between Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche in philosophical aesthetics and found significant similarities and profound differences. Themes One of Camus' primary arguments in The Rebel concerns the motivation for rebellion and revolution. While the two acts—which can be interpreted from Camus' writing as states of being—are radically different in most respects, they both stem from a basic human rejection of normative justice. If human beings become disenchanted with contemporary applications of justice, Camus suggests that they rebel. This rebellion, then, is the product of a basic contradiction between the human mind's unceasing quest for clarification and the apparently meaningless nature of the world. Described by Camus as "absurd," this latter perception must be examined with what Camus terms "lucidity." Camus concludes that such an 'absurdist' sensibility contradicts itself because when it claims to believe in nothing, it believes in its own protest and in the value of the protester's life. Therefore, this sensibility is logically a "point of departure" that irresistibly "exceeds itself." In the inborn impulse to