We are given Don Juan, the actor, and the conqueror as examples of people who multiply their lives in an attempt to live fully within the span of their mortality. The absurd joy par excellence is creation. The artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work. Works of art become, then, the one means for a person to support and sustain a lucid consciousness in the face of the absurdity of the universe. The present and the succession of presents before an ever conscious mind, this is the ideal of the absurd man.
Art is for Camus an essential human activity and one of the most fundamental.
It expresses human aspirations toward freedom and beauty, aspirations which make life valuable for each transient human being. Art defies that part of existence in which each individual is no more that a social unit or an insignificant cog in the evolution of history. In The Myth of Sisyphus then we find the philosophical basis for the stranger, the doctor, and the judge-penitent. This is the starting point of Camus's thought. Camus is concerned here as in his other works with persons and their world, the relationships between them, and the relationships between persons and their history.