Albert Camus's figure of the "absurd man" is the literary incarnation of Richard Rorty's "liberal ironist" avant la lettre.
Both share an intense apprehension of the absolute contingency of human existence and both regard traditional theism as a failure of nerve in the face of the brute facts of the human condition.
Moreover, both recognize a form of ironic detachment as the appropriate moral response to the tragi-comic nature of that condition and, in addition, both pledge themselves to humanity in solidarity as fellow sufferers caught in the vortex of an absurd set of circumstances.
Where they tend to part company is on the issue of institutional religion and its cadres of clerics. Rorty was, until quite late in life (when he began to moderate his position slightly), a determined anti-clericalist. Camus, on the other hand, was tolerant of clericalism insofar as it proved capable of being enlisted in the cause of human solidarity. There are hints in his work that he held out hope for some clerics in this regard (think Fr. Paneloux of The Plague).
Both provide insights into the class of characters we occasionally encounter as "disillusioned saints" or "God's unruly friends."
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