To Exist Is to Play

The writer and philosopher Albert Camus was known for his existentialist essays, novels, and love of football. Every intellectually curious football fan is probably grateful for this. I know I am. In this essay, I argue that Camus’s love for football corresponds to his existentialist love for living joyfully and free. In his unfinished autobiographical novel The First Man, Camus writes about how the protagonist overcame his shame of wearing old clothes in the classroom and “on the playground, wh