Absurdism is Albert Camus’s philosophical position, articulated most directly in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). The absurd is not a property of the world or of human consciousness but arises from their confrontation: humans desire meaning, coherence, and purpose; the universe is indifferent to that desire. The absurd is the gap between the two.
Camus identifies three possible responses to the absurd: suicide (refusing to live with meaninglessness), philosophical suicide (adopting a faith or system that provides meaning at the cost of intellectual honesty), and revolt (continuing to live fully in the face of the absurd, without transcendent justification). Absurdism is the third: Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, knowing it will roll back down, and continuing anyway. Camus insists we must imagine Sisyphus happy — not because the task is meaningful but because the engagement with it is freely chosen.
Absurdism is distinguished from nihilism in its response: where nihilism confronts the absence of meaning, absurdism responds with revolt rather than acceptance or despair. It is distinguished from existentialism in its refusal of the claim that meaning can be created by human choice — for Camus, the absurd persists regardless of what one chooses. The connection to anarcho-nihilism and hospicing humanity is structural: resistance without hope, care without cure, action without the guarantee of meaningful outcome.