Rebellion vs Absurdism: Dostoevsky and Camus on Living Without Answers

By Agneya Dhingra 31st May 2025

Is it possible to live morally in a world that defies moral logic? Can we go on living at all when the universe seems indifferent to suffering—or worse, governed by a God who permits it?

This is the crux of Ivan Karamazov’s rebellion in The Brothers Karamazov and Albert Camus’ absurdism in The Myth of Sisyphus. Both writers confront the silence at the heart of existence. But while Ivan chooses protest and withdrawal, Camus chooses confrontation and endurance. One turns away in outrage. The other walks forward without hope.

Ivan Karamazov: The Rebellion of the Righteous

In Dostoevsky’s novel, Ivan is not an atheist in the strict sense. He does not deny the existence of God. Rather, he rejects the moral structure of a world governed by a divine being who permits unspeakable suffering. His is not a rebellion of disbelief, but of ethical protest.

In one of literature’s most harrowing passages, Ivan recounts real and imagined stories of atrocities committed against children—beatings, mutilations, psychological torment. These are not philosophical thought experiments; they are visceral, sickening accounts of suffering that defy abstraction. And then Ivan says it plainly:

“It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, it’s the world He created.”

For Ivan, no future paradise, no divine harmony, no theological calculus can justify the tears of a child. He “returns the ticket” to any metaphysical order that demands such a cost. His moral intuition revolts against any system that seeks to redeem suffering by subsuming it into a larger good. The idea that eternal bliss might retrospectively justify pain is, for Ivan, ethically grotesque.

This is rebellion as moral refusal—a refusal to allow any theological narrative to override basic human empathy. He does not reject God’s existence, but he refuses to be complicit in a divine economy where suffering is permitted, and perhaps even necessary. His rebellion is principled, emotionally powerful, and intellectually forceful.

But it is also unstable. Ivan’s rejection of divine order leaves him unmoored. His protest contains no alternative structure. He is left haunted by doubt, gripped by spiritual paralysis, and ultimately fragmented by contradiction. His position, while sincere, is corrosive. Without metaphysical belief, and unable to accept nihilism, Ivan is suspended in moral protest with nowhere to go.

Camus and the Absurd: Meaning Without Metaphysics

Writing decades later, Albert Camus begins from a similar position: the universe offers no ultimate moral order, and human suffering remains unexplained. But where Ivan rebels against a flawed divine framework, Camus rejects the need for one entirely.

For Camus, the absurd is born from the collision between the human demand for meaning and the world’s refusal to provide it. We seek coherence, justice, transcendence—but the universe is indifferent. This conflict is, in Camus’ view, unresolvable. But rather than collapse into despair, he asks us to live in full awareness of it.

“There is only one truly serious philosophical problem,” Camus writes, “and that is suicide.”

This is not rhetorical flourish. If life has no ultimate meaning, why should one endure it? Camus answers: because the very act of living in the face of absurdity becomes a form of resistance. Suicide, he argues, is an admission that life must have meaning to be worth living. But what if we reject that premise? What if we live despite the void?

This is the rebellion Camus advocates—not against God, but against despair. His hero is Sisyphus, condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll back down again. It is a symbol of futility, but Camus reimagines it as a symbol of freedom. Sisyphus becomes noble not because he escapes his fate, but because he accepts it fully—and still endures.

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

This is not naivety. Camus does not ask us to pretend the world is fair or that suffering is meaningful. Rather, he insists that our refusal to surrender is meaning. Where Ivan is immobilized by his inability to reconcile suffering with belief, Camus finds moral clarity in the decision to live without belief. The absence of metaphysical guarantees becomes the condition for authenticity.

Camus' ethics are not grounded in theological absolutes, but in lucidity and perseverance. He offers a model of dignity that does not rely on salvation, a life that is valuable because it is finite and unredeemed. His response to absurdity is not resignation, but revolt—a conscious, continuous affirmation of life.

Holding the Tension

Both Ivan and Camus begin in the same place: an unflinching confrontation with suffering, and a rejection of false consolation. But their paths diverge. Ivan demands moral coherence and is broken by its absence. Camus accepts its absence and chooses to live anyway.

What Dostoevsky and Camus offer are not opposing ideologies, but complementary perspectives. Ivan’s rebellion reminds us that suffering should never be rationalized or made palatable. Camus reminds us that we can still live with integrity even when meaning eludes us.

Perhaps the most honest position is not to choose between them, but to hold their tension: to refuse to justify suffering, yet also refuse to be defeated by it. To protest where we must, and to persist where we can.

In a world without clear answers, that may be the most moral stance of all.