Camus's unbeknownst legacy

or, "I'm having an existential crisis!"

Michael Y. Bennett

pp. 53-62

in: Emmanuelle A. Vanborre (ed), The originality and complexity of Albert Camus's writings, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

All good academics should refer to the same two dictionaries: the Oxford English Dictionary, to see what a word technically means, and the Urban Dictionary, to see how the word is actually used. First consulting the scholarly Oxford English Dictionary, I discovered that the OED does not contain an entry for "existential crisis." Instead, I piecemealed together a definition out of "existentialism": "A doctrine that concentrates on the existence of the individual, who, being free and responsible, is held to be what he makes himself by the self development of his essence through acts of the will."¹ An existential crisis, in turn, should, in keeping with the OED's definition of "crisis," refer to, "a vitally important or decisive stage in the progress of "² the existence of the individual.