I began this study with the claim that it was singularly unhelpful to read Camus as an existentialist (at least in the technical sense), and that it was more fruitful to examine his writings in the context of the relationship between the ontological concept of the absurd, as articulated in The Myth of Sisyphus, and the moral-political concept of revolt, as articulated in The Rebel. This perspective, I have argued, indicates a profound coherence between these two concepts. This coherence is perhaps especially striking when we note the distinct similarities between Camus's rejection of existentialism in the context of the absurd, and his rejection of Marxism in the context of revolt. His rejection of teleological and messianic Marxism (its “deification of history”), in favour of a conception of revolt that places the precariously balanced values of relative justice and relative freedom at its heart, has, it seems, a great deal in common with his rejection of the “religious” “forced hope” he identified in existentialism in favour of a more modest hope or optimism.