Kierkegaard and Camus’ Approaches towards “Absurd”
Introduction: people are used to paying attention to the world we live in and to the surrounding details. Nowadays, it is not a wonder to notice absurd around us, as we might say. However, what is absurd at all? Is it something that merely contradicts to the common sense or something that is going on beyond the usual frames?
Argument: Our life is full of absurd, and, probably, such state of affairs has existed since the time, when the human beings started perceiving themselves and other people as personalities. However, at the beginning, the philosophy of existence (existentialism) put its attention on the uniqueness of the human beings’ life. Based on this and on the features authors noticed, another science – the theory of absurd was developed. According to the mentioned theory, human life does not have any sense. Absurd as a structured and formed philosophical concept was presented in the work “The Myth of Sisyphus” which was written by the French writer and philosopher Albert Camus. In his works the writer grounded his ideas on the previously expressed thoughts of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Husserl.
The approaches towards “Absurd” in Kierkegaard’s philosophy.
The idea of the absurd is raised in several works of the writer and the most important among them is “Fear and Trembling”. He criticized in his work the Christian religion, and used the plot from Holy Bible, where Abraham victimized his son for God. Using this example, Kierkegaard shows that a human is not free, on the contrary, the life is absurd, and it does not have any sense. Abraham’s faith for the writer is a complete paradox, which is able to transfer the murder into sacral and holy action, pleasing to God. Following the writer’s idea, this paradox does not fit any frames or common sense.
“Even if a man were born in humble circumstances, I would require of him nevertheless that he should not be so inhuman toward himself as not to be able to think of the King’s castle except at a remote distance, dreaming vaguely of its greatness and wanting (Adams 1987)”, - stated the philosopher.
Nevertheless, despite of critical attitude to the religion, the author did not underestimate or humble the importance of it in the human’s life. On the contrary, Kierkegaard claimed, that the faith exists beyond the common sense and the frames of common understanding, being transcendental, thus being absurd. “Faith is the highest passion in a man. There are perhaps many in every generation who do not even reach it, but no one gets further (Adams 1987)”. The faith itself cannot be grounded, however, it is rather effective. It was the main idea of the author’s theory.
The approaches towards “Absurd” in Albert Camus’s philosophy.
First of all, the Camus’s philosophy refers to the problem of suicide. This problem was interesting for the philosopher since the studenthood, and in the late thirties this …
