  The existentialist philosophers did not refrain from formulating internal (aesthetic) and external (ethical and political) constraints to artistic practice, but their aesthetics fundamentally proclaims the radical freedom of the artist, also seeing in it the privileged exemplar of human freedom in general. Camus, for example, makes artistic activity, the choice of becoming an artist, one of the privileged modes for humans to deal with the absurd (Camus 1942b, 86–88). Many existentialist texts dedicated to aesthetic matters emphasise the ‘mystery’ of creativity, the amazing ‘solution’ that an artwork represents, the ‘miracle of expression’ that elicits admiration from the audience and the philosopher.