Introduction: why Camus matters now a. Then and now: contrasts and comparisons of Camus' times and ours b. Camus as engaged thinker 1. Against nihilism: Camus' task a. Alienation and anomie today b. "Nihilisms" before Camus c. Camus' rebellion: "no, I am not an existentialist" d. If nihilism is murder, what then? 2.

Against polarisation: Camus and democracy a. Polarisation, "post-truth", and incivility b. Camus on the preconditions of democracy c. Dialogue and language d. Solitaire / solidaire : the limits of "the political" 3. Against political romanticism: Camus and the avant gardes a. Commodified dissent: how revolt became the norm b. Post-structuralism as aestheticized revolt c.

Sympathy for the devil: Camus against the romantics d. Camus' Nietzscheanism and the fascism question 4. Against vanguardism: Camus and the divisions of the Left a. Inequality: the economic elephant in the culture-wars room b. The postmodern, professional-managerial Left and the triumph of identity c. Camus' two-sided critique of Marxism-Leninism and the Stalinist disaster d. Balancing liberty with equality e. Camus, colonialism, and the Algerian war 5.

Against fascism: Camus and the Far Right a. The rise and rise of illiberal ethnonationalism b. Competing theories of fascism c. Camus' critique of Nazism d. Cynicism, guilt, and the psychological bases of active nihilism 6. Restoring Balance: Camus, Mesure, and Nature a. The ecological crises and its politics b. Camus, technology and the defence of the sciences c.

Camus' Greeks and natural limits Conclusion: the last Camus a. From exile towards the kingdom: Camus' last works b. Sources of renewal.