Absurdism

• 1. Introduction

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  Absurdism begins with a person throwing a shoulder against a heavy front door. The house has no back wall, so anyone could walk in from behind. Philosophers call this an absurd situation, because effort and reality are badly mismatched. Absurdism makes a much bolder claim than that. It says the mismatch is not a rare accident but the shape of existence itself. The theory holds that the universe is irrational and meaningless, and that every search for meaning sets people against it. Yet even the definition of the term is disputed. Its defenders also complain that professional philosophers give it far less attention than it deserves. Why would a meaningless world be a problem at all, rather than a shrug? Where does the conflict actually sit, in the world or inside us? And if the answer is not to give up, what can anyone do about it?

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• 2. Where the Conflict Lives

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  One often-quoted line says the absurd "is not in man... nor in the world, but in their presence together." That sentence captures the traditional picture. People carry a desire for a life that matters, including transcendent aspirations that reach for a higher form of meaning. The world, meanwhile, is indifferent to what one writer calls our "need for validation of the importance of our concerns." Neither side is absurd alone. The collision is what counts.

  Some later theorists reject this and move the whole conflict indoors. For them the absurd "derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision within ourselves." Two features of the mind clash. One is "our capacity to recognize the arbitrariness of our ultimate concerns." The other is "our simultaneous incapacity to relinquish our commitment to them."

  The difference has a startling consequence. If the conflict is purely internal, no change in the world could cure it. Even a universe designed by a god, and steered toward a higher purpose, would seem equally absurd. Consciousness can always step back and ask for the reason behind whatever it examines. Aim that question at the world as a whole, god included, and it is bound to come up empty.

  The conflict also has a practical face and a theoretical face. On the practical side, think of the seriousness people bring to fame, pleasure, justice, knowledge and survival, for themselves and for others. That seriousness looks strange beside how arbitrary everything seems from far away. It is most vivid when someone agonizes over a choice between options that do not truly matter. On the theoretical side, the world stays silent when asked why things are as they are. Everything simply exists, without a reason. This limit is said to be built into human cognition, not the product of bad principles or accidental weakness. Reason is skilled at linking one justification to the next. When it tries to justify the whole chain at once, it runs in circles, and some thinkers suggest that pressing the attempt could end in madness.

  A further question is whether the person must notice the conflict at all. Some researchers say awareness is essential, which would explain why we call human aspirations absurd but not those of lower life forms or non-organic matter. Critics answer that this would spare everyone who never notices. In their view, failing to see the conflict is just as absurd as living through it knowingly.

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• 3. Courtrooms and Boulders

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  Josef K. is arrested in Franz Kafka's The Trial, and he is convinced he has done nothing wrong. The authority prosecuting him cannot be reached. He tries desperately to learn what he is accused of and how to defend himself. Every attempt fails against a judicial system that seems indifferent and impenetrable. In the end he abandons the effort and submits to his execution without ever learning the charge. For absurdists, the story shows a world that resists every attempt to make sense of it.

  The Trial is typical of how the idea usually travels. It is sometimes argued openly in philosophical writing, but it often arrives in novels and plays that never name it. Such works tell stories that embody its key aspects and leave the audience to draw the conclusion.

  The other great image comes from Greek myth. Zeus punishes King Sisyphus by forcing him to roll a massive boulder up a hill. Whenever it reaches the top, it rolls down again, and he must start over for eternity. Read as a parable, it describes human life: toil that is replaced by fresh pointless tasks the moment the old ones end. Some writers add a twist. They argue that the heart of his predicament is not only that the labor is futile, but that he knows it is.

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• 4. Arguments Over Meaninglessness

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  A span of one million years is the yardstick behind the most popular argument for absurdism: nothing we do today will matter that far ahead. A related version points to scale, since a human life is tiny beside the universe in both space and time. A third version starts from death. If everyone dies, there is no final end to pursue, and death wipes out the career, wealth and knowledge people worked to build. Helping others softens this a little. But their lives lack a final end too, so the problem is merely passed along.

  Thomas Nagel has pushed back on all of these. His charge is circularity: they assume that life is absurd rather than show it. That nothing will matter in a million years does not mean nothing matters now. And a process that never reaches a meaningful goal can still contain parts that justify themselves.

  A subtler argument looks at the great philosophers themselves. René Descartes builds his system on the certainty of "I think, therefore I am." He then brings in a benevolent, non-deceiving God without proper justification, so that we can know the external world. John Locke demands that all knowledge rest on sensory experience, yet he accepts a God beyond the senses. Supporters of absurdism read such lapses as wishful thinking, a way to dodge an unsettling truth.

  Another argument treats meaning as relational. A word means something through its place in a language. A life might mean something through service to a larger project, such as serving God or fighting poverty. But then the larger project needs its own meaning, and so does whatever gives it meaning, in an endless regress. Only something with intrinsic meaning could stop the chain, and if the wider contexts have none, they cannot lend any. A final argument says standards of mattering can only be judged by those same standards. As one formulation has it, "what seems to us important or serious or valuable would not seem so if we were differently constituted."

  Critics begin with the plain claim that life does have meaning. Supernaturalists locate it in God. Naturalists find it in the natural world. Some hold that meaning is subjective and varies from person to person, while others point to external values such as morality, knowledge or beauty.

  A second line of attack targets the moral attitude of absurdism. Some absurdist writing seems to deny moral values outright. One passage puts it this way: "belief in the meaning of life always implies a scale of values" while "belief in the absurd... teaches the contrary." Objectors say this clashes with common sense and implies that no one is ever guilty of blameworthy behavior.

  Yet absurdists are not consistent about it. Many defend sincerity, authenticity and courage, which suggests it matters how one faces the absurd. Critics call that inconsistent: if nothing matters, why should the response? Another charge is the is-ought fallacy, since a descriptive claim slides into recommendations. One defense softens the recommendations into prudential advice, a kind of self-help that suits some people's interests without claiming universal force.

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• 5. Roots Before Camus

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  Ecclesiastes, a book of the Bible, holds some of the earliest echoes of absurdism, and the works of William Shakespeare hold more. Foucault viewed Shakespearean theater as a precursor of the idea. A different ancestor is Immanuel Kant, who separated phenomena from noumena. Phenomena are things as they appear to us, while noumena are things as they are in themselves. Space and time, on his account, belong to the realm of appearances because the mind organizes sensory impressions that way. If the gap is real, human limits may keep the mind from ever grasping reality, and reality stays absurd to it.

  The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote extensively about the absurd a century before Camus. In Fear and Trembling, published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, he turned to the story of Abraham in the Book of Genesis. God tells Abraham to kill his son Isaac, and an angel stops him at the last moment. Kierkegaard believes that by virtue of the absurd, Abraham defied reason and ethical duty and still got his son back. The first stance is summed up by the words "you cannot act", and the second, where faith is reaffirmed, by "where I have to act".

  The Sickness Unto Death, signed with the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, explores the forms of despair, including one called defiance. From it Kierkegaard draws three traits of the Absurd Man, later discussed by Camus. He rejects escape from existence through suicide. He rejects help from a higher power. He accepts his absurd and despairing condition. Kierkegaard cautioned in The Point of View of My Work as an Author that his pseudonymous writings do not necessarily reflect his own opinions. Even so, his work anticipated many absurdist themes.

  Absurdism as a belief system emerged from the European existentialist movement that followed. The aftermath of World War II, especially in a devastated France, supplied the social conditions for its popular growth. A famous phrase from this tradition has a curious history: "leap of faith" comes from Kierkegaard's pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, although Kierkegaard himself never used the term.

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• 6. Camus and His Cycles

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  "I wanted to first express negation." That was how Albert Camus described the plan behind his work. He pursued negation in three forms: the novel The Stranger, the plays Caligula and The Misunderstanding, and the essay The Myth of Sisyphus. The novel and essay appeared in 1942 and the plays in 1944. Together they form the cycle of the absurd, which deals with suicide and the human condition. The certainty of death, Camus argued, only deepens the sense that existence is useless.

  He knew that no one can live inside negation. A second cycle, the cycle of revolt, answered the first in matching forms: the novel The Plague in 1947, the plays The State of Siege in 1948 and The Just Assassins in 1949, and the essay The Rebel in 1951. Here only action and commitment count. In his phrase, "Man refuses the world as it is, without agreeing to escape it." He pictured intelligence grappling with the "unreasonable silence of the world." Without a hope of eternal life, he argued, people are released from an uncertain future and gain freedom, lucidity and dignity.

  A third layer, built around love, was already taking shape in his mind. Each cycle is tied to a Greek myth, in turn Sisyphus, Prometheus and Nemesis. With the "midday thought", or la pensée de midi, the philosophy gains a principle of measure and pleasure, close to Epicureanism.

  Inside The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus calls the human condition a confrontation, even a "divorce," between the desire for significance, meaning and clarity and a silent, cold universe. His verdict on the boulder-pusher is the famous line "one must imagine Sisyphus happy." He writes, "Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion." Revolt is the refusal of suicide and the continued search for meaning. Freedom means no imprisonment by religious devotion or by other people's moral codes. To "live without appeal" lets each person define absolutes subjectively. Passion means living every moment fully, since hope has been rejected. In his words, "Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable."

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• 7. Ways to Respond

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  Camus counted three possible responses to the absurd, and the first is the bluntest. Most researchers argue that the basic conflict can never truly be resolved, so every response is a way of living with it. Camus called suicide the only "really serious philosophical problem", the question "Should I kill myself?" He called it a "confession" that life is "too much." Most researchers acknowledge it as a response but reject it as radical and irreversible.

  The second response is to find a higher purpose to join, such as service to society, the progress of history or God's glory. The individual plays a small part but gains meaning and escapes the absurd. The flaw is that the purpose can be doubted just as a single life can. If it is itself absurd, it cannot lend meaning to anyone. Camus labeled this philosophical suicide, because the person simply assumes the purpose is meaningful and never examines its absurdity.

  Traditional absurdists reject both exits, since each is an escape. They recommend facing the absurd directly and rebelling against it. Accepting the absurd means giving up hope of a happy afterlife free of contradiction. The rebel affirms freedom against adversity, takes responsibility and defines his own essence. Life is lived passionately, with a hunger for new experiences. Examples include an actor, a conqueror or a seduction artist, always seeking new roles, conquests or people while knowing these pursuits are absurd. Creativity belongs here too, where a person acts as the maker of their own works and paths. Even so, the rebellion does not solve the problem, because a life devoted to rebellion is still absurd. Its defenders say it has one great advantage: it neither denies the absurd nor ends existence. Some call it the only philosophically coherent response.

  Later thinkers added more options. Irony offers a way to loosen life's seriousness without escaping the absurd. Thomas Nagel noted two theoretical ways to dissolve the problem. A person could stop caring about things, as some Eastern religions seem to suggest. Or someone could find something with non-arbitrary meaning that earns that concern. For those who think awareness is essential, a further option is to stay ignorant of the conflict as far as possible.

  Others say no response is needed or even possible. If nothing matters on the grand scale, neither does how people react. Passionate rebellion then looks less like a heroic quest and more like a fool's errand. Jeffrey Gordon objects that absurdity and lack of importance are different things. Some facts can matter more than others, and he suggests that life being absurd as a whole is a good candidate for one of the more important facts.

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• 8. Neighbors and Aftershocks

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  Camus himself rejected the label of existentialist, in an essay titled Enigma and in the collection The Lyrical and Critical Essays of Albert Camus, though others often call him one. He also worked passionately against nihilism, as he explained in The Rebel. Absurdism, existentialism and nihilism all spring from anguish over a world without evident meaning that humans still feel compelled to fill. They part ways from there. Existentialists generally stress building one's own meaning and the free will of the individual. Nihilists hold that "it is futile to seek or to affirm meaning where none can be found." Absurdists following Camus hesitantly allow some value in life, but trust neither the constructed meaning of existentialists nor the total emptiness of nihilists. They also devalue or reject free will and urge only that people live defiantly and authentically.

  The two positions may differ less than they seem. The existentialist does not deny death. But the absurdist insists that death nullifies our meaning-making, a conclusion existentialists resist through ideas of posterity or, in Sartre's case, joining a grand humanist project.

  In practice, the absurd usually arrives not through calm study but as an existential crisis. That is an inner conflict with the impression that life lacks meaning, bringing stress, anxiety, despair and depression that can disturb daily functioning. Realizing that vigorous everyday engagement sits beside apparent insignificance can cause estrangement, alienation and hopelessness. There can be benefits too. Accepting absurdism may give a psychological distance from unexamined dogmas and a wider, more objective view of one's situation. The danger is a leveling of all significant differences, which makes it hard to decide what to do or how to live.

  Absurdism in practical life also resembles skepticism about knowledge. Take the claim that the sun is shining. We trust our perception, though its reliability depends on not dreaming, and a dreamer could not tell. In the practical realm, a person takes an aspirin to avoid a headache, though they may be unable to say why their own wellbeing should matter at all.

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