Absurdism
Absurdism is a philosophical concept that explores the inherent meaninglessness and irrationality of the world. It suggests that humans seek meaning in a universe that has none, leading to feelings of confusion and alienation. In literature, absurdism is often portrayed through characters and situations that highlight the futility of human existence and the struggle to find purpose.
7 Key excerpts on "Absurdism"
eBook - ePubCamus' Literary Ethics
Between Form and Content
- Grace Whistler(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...As such, plays by these writers that contain images which convey the feeling of the absurd —not just its theoretical understanding. He writes: In the Theatre of the Absurd, the spectator is confronted with the madness of the human condition, is enabled to see his situation in all its grimness and despair. Stripped of illusions and vaguely felt fears and anxieties, he can face this situation consciously, rather than feeling it vaguely below the surface of euphemisms and optimistic illusions. By seeing his anxieties formulated he can liberate himself from them … It is the unease caused by the presence of illusions that are obviously out of tune with reality that is dissolved and discharged through liberating laughter at the recognition of the fundamental absurdity of the universe. (Esslin 2015, 350) Tragedy and comedy are thus two sides of the same coin in this kind of theatre, and this confrontation between humans and our mortal condition is cathartic—watching this kind of play allows us to witness the world in all its madness, and nevertheless see the hilarity of it. Esslin credits Camus with having formulated the conceptual foundation for this kind of theatre, citing Camus’ own remarkably theatrical definition of the absurd : ‘This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity’ (Camus 2005, 4–5). This lineage has rightly been observed by numerous scholars, such as Sophie Bastien, who suggests that ‘the authors of the theatre of the Absurd are perhaps those who have benefited from Camus’ thought in the most positive way’ (Bastien 2007, 89). 1 Esslin points out that ‘the plays we are concerned with here pursue ends quite different from those of the conventional play and therefore use quite different methods’ (Esslin 2015, 4)—much like (as I have argued throughout this volume) Camus’ philosophical venture...
eBook - ePubKantian Antitheodicy
Philosophical and Literary Varieties
- Sami Pihlström, Sari Kivistö(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...The scene reminds us that it is almost impossible to write a book on antitheodicy in literature without referring to absurd literature, since the problem of suffering for which there is no apparent reason is in itself absurd. Furthermore, personal experience of life devoid of purpose and our perception of a world deprived of reason and moral certainty constitute the feeling of absurdity that is “of necessity cosmic”. 72 The opening comment of Estragon—“Nothing to be done”—can be read as a reflection of the cosmic and existential human feeling of purposelessness and of humankind without meaning. 73 It has often been noted that absurd literature illustrates the basic human condition when people are cut off from their transcendental roots and therefore their actions become senseless. 74 As Cox has mentioned in his studies on Job and the absurd, the timeless feeling of the absurd represents the response of the human mind to a certain sense of dispossession. 75 However, interpretations that make the groundlessness of being the main message of Beckett’s oeuvre have also been consistently challenged. Critics such as Simon Critchley have emphasized that Beckett’s plays are uniquely resistant to philosophical interpretations and conceptual frameworks, and therefore they should not be read as illustrations of some easily identifiable philosophical, religious, or humanistic ideas. 76 Another polemical discussion has developed about Beckett’s relationship to religion...
eBook - ePubEnglish Literature
A Student Guide
- Martin Stephen(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1937) is also often linked with this group. These dramatists shared a belief that human life was essentially irrational, purposeless, and out of harmony with its surroundings, the result of this being a chronic state of uncertainty, anguish (angst), and depression. Other authors had reached this conclusion before; none had allowed it to dictate the form of their work as well as its content. Absurdist plays can drop all logic and rationality, and allow absurd, illogical, or irrational things to happen on stage in order to illustrate the central thesis that this is the nature of life. The opening shot in this revolution was fired by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953), which shocked theatre audiences at first by its absence of plot or structure, its bare set, and its central concept that ‘nothing happens’. Absurd drama could be seen as a blend of surrealism and farce. An excellent example is Ionesco’s Rhinoceros (1960), in which people keep turning into rhinoceroses, whilst others frantically try to ignore the fact. In the novel, works such as The Trial (1925) and Metamorphosis (1912) by Franz Kafka (1883–1924) have absurdist elements in them. AESTHETICISM and DECADENCE: the Aesthetic Movement originated in France in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and in English literature its best-known adherents are Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Algernon Swinburne (1837–1909) and the artist Aubrey Beardsley. The Aesthetes believed in ‘art for art’s sake’, and the pursuit of beauty to the exclusion of all else, particularly materialistic or worldly values. The Aesthetic Movement was closely linked with the Decadent Movement, with its search for exquisite sensations, its hatred of all that was ‘natural’ and its obsession with high artifice. Aesthetes and Decadents were associated with the flouting of conventional morality. AFFECTIVE FALLACY: the attempt to evaluate a poem by its emotional effect upon the reader...
eBook - ePub- Arnold P. Hinchliffe(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Camus suggests that a world which can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But in a world from which illusions and insight have been suddenly removed man feels himself a stranger. At its most intense this sense of alienation is carried to the point of nausea, when familiar objects normally ‘domesticated’ by names – such as stone or tree – are also robbed of their familiarity. 4. A sense of isolation from other beings. The Absurd, for Camus, is an absence of correspondence between the mind’s need for unity and the chaos of the world the mind experiences, and the obvious response is either suicide or, in the opposite direction, a leap of faith. Camus distinguishes two kinds of suicide, physical and philosophical (and under the latter heading he looks at previous philosophers who have recognized Absurdity – Jaspers, Husserl, Heidegger, for example – but have evaded it in one way or another), and rejects both. Man must accept the feeling of Absurdity, which then becomes a springboard for action, giving him a sense of freedom and passion. But, as Cruickshank points out, Camus has already given the word three different meanings during his demonstration: (i) the whole tragic paradox of the human condition and anguish (ii) which, as a source of lucidity, we are called upon to maintain as fully as we can to produce (iii) an attitude of revolt that somehow requires us to use ‘absurd’ (sense ii) against ‘absurd’ (sense i). This is both confusing and confused. It is as if Camus had taken the key to existence as not being given a key and made his own leap of faith! But Camus is not writing philosophy, and he is interested in consequences; the prime response is revolt...
eBook - ePubCamus in 60 Minutes
Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
- Walther Ziegler(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Books on Demand(Publisher)
...Camus’ Central Idea The Sense of Absurdity Absurdity, for Camus, is not the result of conscious reflection or rational analysis but rather a feeling – one which always arises when one’s familiar daily routine collapses: Because once a human being has begun to doubt the world he is accustomed to he will never again be completely absorbed and subsumed in it. Once the experience of absurdity has arisen, it will never again release its grip on him. The direct perception of absurdity can be awoken by individual feelings or events. If, for example, a relationship breaks down and you lose a partner whose love and devotion you believed were yours forever, this often renders fragile and uncertain all the other aspects of your life as well. Everything in which one had, so recently, had an implicit trust now seems strange and absurd. One suddenly notices that all the things that one had formerly looked on as real and objective were in fact things that one had merely read into it: The romantic, old-world style apartment, for example, that we had shared with our departed partner; the restaurants and little squares which had once so warmly received us – all these things suddenly become again what they really were all along: anonymous and unconcerned with us. The romantic movies on TV seem false to us now and even the woodland paths on which we’d walked and all the rest of Nature around us suddenly show their true face. That Nature which had seemed a bosom friend reveals, all at once, its utter indifference: The diagnosis of a serious illness such as cancer is also apt to awaken the sense of absurdity.The medical explanation here – namely, that the renewal of the body’s cells is a perfectly normal process and that cancer cells are simply cells that reproduce beyond the natural rate – is reasonable and comprehensible. But for the person actually affected by it this process of accelerated cell-division is an absurdity that he cannot be reasonably expected to come to terms with...
eBook - ePubSartre's French Contemporaries and Enduring Influences
Camus, Merleau-Ponty, Debeauvoir & Enduring Influences
- William L. McBride, William L. McBride(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...S EFLER is chairman of the department of philosophy at Mansfield State College, Pennsylvania. THE AESTHETICS OF SISYPHUS In the opening paragraphs of “Absurd Creation”—that section of Sisyphus intimating a philosophy of art—Camus quotes Nietzsche: “Art and nothing but art, we have art in order not to die of the truth.” Death, in the form of suicide, is the subject of Sisyphus. The man of Sisyphus discovers that essences are non-existent; absolutes, nowhere to be found. Desperately, he searches throughout the world in quest of “the good,” “the true,” and “the beautiful,” and constantly he is disappointed. The world, to all his pursuits, reveals itself only as pure, brute facticity, devoid of any inherent value. Despair seems imminent. Yet, in a moment of contempt, man revolts. In defiance of his situation, he perseveres in this absurd relation to the world. Art is an instance of this perseverance; it is a recreation of man's senseless situation. As a result, description is the technical keynote of Camus's aesthetics. The absurd art work is constantly representing to man his existential predicament in “a sort of monotonous and passionate repetition of the themes already orchestrated by the world…” 2 Art confronts man anew with the contradictory tensions which plague his own life. Even in fictional writing, wherein feigned situations constitute the structural basis of the art form, man is not separated from his everyday experiences. Absurd art gives no meaning or purpose to life; it does not give any solutions to or explanations of the problems of life's absurdity. “Explanation,” feels Camus, “is useless.” 3 Any interpretation of life is relative to one's presuppositions and therein fails to attain “the truth.” Explication of the absurd is, then, by its very endeavor, absurd; art, if it attempted such, would be reduced to a form of meaningless verbiage...
eBook - ePub- Robert Zaretsky(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Belknap Press(Publisher)
...Like any philosophical concept, the absurd was born in a specific time and place. As Terry Eagleton recently observed, while all men and women ponder the meaning of life, “some, for good historical reasons, are drawn to ponder it more urgently than others.” 74 This, we have seen, was the case with France—and Camus—in 1940. As early as 1946, however, scarcely four years after the publication of The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, the philosopher A. J. Ayer, then serving in the British embassy in newly liberated Paris, began to insist on the term’s limitations. In an essay on Camus, the English apostle of logical positivism dismissed the concept, in the strictest sense of the word, as nonsense. Anglo-American philosophers, Ayer observed, did not recognize the way in which Camus employed terms like “logic” and “reason.” The absurd, he wrote, fell into “what modern Cambridge philosophers would call a ‘pointless lament.’” 75 Nevertheless, Ayer acknowledged there was a point, unwelcome and awkward though it might be, just below the surface of Camus’ prose. An undeniable “emotional significance” pulsed through the essay, Ayer confessed: “I myself happen to have considerable sympathy for the standards of value that Camus there associates with his doctrine of absurdity.” 76 Moreover, he believed there was metaphysical validity to the questions asked by Camus. But this, for Ayer, is faint praise: “They are metaphysical because they are incapable of being answered by reference to any possible experience.” 77 Many years later, in his autobiography, Ayer expressed his admiration for Camus’ writing and personal character: the Frenchman, he recalled, was a “man of great integrity and moral courage.” His integrity seems to have been so great that at a meeting between the two men, Camus agreed with Ayer’s dim view of his philosophical reasoning...
