DE Weekly: Camus, Animals, & Human Nature
Below is an archived email originally sent on October 20, 2025.
Camus, Animals, & Human Nature
Albert Camus wrote in The Rebel, “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” This quote has stuck in my mind recently, and I’ve thought quite a bit about its meaning and everything it entails.
Camus believed humans are unique among all the creatures of the Earth, not in the least for our self-awareness of our own existence. He argued that this self-awareness, however, leads us to reject our fundamental nature.
Unlike other creatures (at least as far as we know), we humans are in a constant struggle with our identity, rooted in our search for meaning and purpose in the world.
Also unlike other creatures, we often struggle with this search for meaning.
The sheer level of freedom we have to make important choices in life causes us great anxiety; being ultimately aware of our own mortality––our death––adds even more flames to the fire of our burning desire to “have a purpose.”
What’s more, some humans resign themselves to the disposition that life, death, the world, the universe––everything––is meaningless. What’s the point? they ask.
I would like to relay a personal experience which set my mind on Camus’s quote and, really, inspired me to write about this topic.
I try to go on a walk every day of the week if I can. A few weeks ago, I saw two things which got me thinking.
On a walk through my neighborhood, I witnessed a cat running out of his front yard chasing a squirrel across the street. The squirrel narrowly escaped capture, running up a telephone pole for refuge.
As he clutched his heart and caught his breath, the cat retreated to his front yard, standing on watch and glaring at the squirrel.
A few days after this, I took a walk in the park near a small lake.
As I walked along the lake, I saw a family of ducks: one mother duck led a group of ducklings through the water, occasionally sticking their beaks down in search of food.
Looking inland, I saw among the trees and fallen leaves another squirrel, this one rummaging through the floor of the woods for something to eat. In the distance, I saw a hawk circling high above the ground, he, too, looking for his next meal.
Chasing prey across the street, foraging among fallen leaves, swimming through the water, gliding in the sky…
All of these animals are living in accordance with nature. They are, without even thinking, being what they are.
The squirrel has no choice but to emerge from hiding and search for food, even if cats and hawks lurk somewhere ready to prey on him.
The ducklings have no choice but to follow their mother through the chilled water and learn how to take care of themselves.
The cat does not think twice about chasing a rodent down the street, even if it means leaving the comfort of his front yard. He simply does it because it’s his instinct: it is what he is.
All these animals, living in accordance with their nature.
Why, then, do we deny ours? Why do we refuse to be what we are?
I mentioned earlier that Camus defined our human nature as a constant struggle, one between our desire for meaning and the supposed meaningless inherent in the universe.
This is what Camus and others referred to as “the Absurd.”
It is absurd, he argued, that we seek purpose and meaning but the universe offers none. It is absurd that I can observe other animals and understand instantly what they are. It’s even more absurd that even these creatures themselves, seemingly less intelligent than I, appear to have no qualms at all about their purpose or their meaning.
In thinking all this over recently, there is just one thing I haven’t been able to reconcile with Camus’s beliefs.
On the one hand, he declared that we “refuse to be what we are.” However, as an existentialist, he also believed that “existence precedes essence.”
If that really were the case (I personally do not believe it is), then that would mean humans have no inherent essence from birth. This, in turn, would mean we have no “what we are.” If that were the case, then there would be nothing at all to refuse.
To make sense of his quote at all, it must be that our essence precedes our existence. That it means something to be a human being. That, when we are born, we have a nature inherent to what we are which demands something from us and which allows us to imagine and to act on our imagination.
Perhaps we are born with a nature distinct to ourselves, different from that of other animals. I happen to believe we are.
With that being the case, why must we “revolt” or “rebel” against that nature, as Camus suggested?
Why should we not live in accordance with our nature? Like the cat and the squirrel and the duck and the hawk, we are creatures after all.
Why should we not live in accordance with the freedom, the responsibility, the mystery, the absurdity––all of it––as we were created to?
We would do well to stop disobeying the innate qualities of our human nature… there is our meaning!
“In so far as I am Man I am chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humanity that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny – all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god.” –– G.K. Chesterton
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Sometimes, I don’t feel like explaining what the existentialists thought, but instead explaining what I think. Hopefully you don’t mind.
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