Existentialism and Absurdism in Literature
I. Existentialism
In philosophy the term existence denotes something active rather than passive and thus is closely dependent on the Latin root ex 'out' + stare 'to stand.' The term existentialism, which was explicitly formulated by Jean-Paul Sartre, means 'pertaining to existence'; or in logic, 'predicating existence'. Philosophically, it now applies to a vision of the condition and existence of man, his place and function in the world, and his relationship, or lack of relationship with God.
Existentialism as a philosophy movement emphasizes a set of themes such as anxiety, freedom, dread, boredom, alienation, commitment, nothingness, awareness of death, and consciousness of existing. These themes cannot be reduced or explained by a natural-scientific approach that attempts to detach itself from these themes. For Existentialists, man can only be understood from inside, in terms of their lived and experienced reality and dilemmas, not from outside, in terms of a biological, psychological, or other scientific theory of human nature.
Existentialists believe that human beings are 'thrown' into existence, and that "Human condition is essentially absurd"; that is, there is little meaning to existence, and that man can give meaning to his existence through his choices. According to Existentialists, man is in fact what he chooses and what he has already made of himself out of his choices.
In art, the analogues of Existentialism may be considered to be Surrealism, Expressionism, and in general those schools that view the work of art not as the reflection of a reality external to man but as the free immediate expression of human reality.
A. Historical Background
Touches of Existential themes can be tracked down in theses and propositions of many philosophers long before the term was coined. The problem of what man is in himself can be discerned in the Socratic imperative “know thyself,” as well as in the subjectivism of the 4th–5th-century theologian St. Augustine, who urged man not to go outside himself in the quest for truth, for it is within him that truth abides. “If you find that you are by nature mutable,” he wrote, “transcend yourself.” Among others we can name Mullah Sadra's Writings, Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher who asserted that the attempt to explain God and humanity is a form of pride and therefore futile.
Existentialism, in its currently recognizable 20th-century form, was inspired by the religious Dane Søren Kierkegaard who is usually thought of as the father of modern Existentialism. Another source has been the Dionysian Romanticism of Nietzsche, who exalted life in its most irrational and cruel features and made this exaltation the proper task of the “higher man,” who exists beyond good and evil. Still another source has been the nihilism of Dostoyevsky, who, in his novels, presented man as continually defeated as a result of his choices. It became popular in the mid-20th century through the works of the French writer-philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. As a consequence of the diversity of these sources, Existentialist doctrines have focused on several aspects of existence.
The first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement are Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, though neither used the term "existentialism". As the precursors of the movement, they reacted against the absolute Idealism of Hegel, Rationalism of Kant, and Empiricism and Scienticism of John Lock and other thinkers. Traditional philosophers had tried to produce objective, universally true, and certain principles of knowledge. Existentialists criticized people's concealment of the meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche argued that knowledge is an unattainable ideal. They stressed that every individual, even the thinker or the scientist, is a limited human being; therefore, cannot prescribe a universal conception of truth or universal moral standards for the whole humanity. Truth lies in the single individual's conception of it. They believed that truth can be communicated only indirectly. It arises out of the experience of life. The communicator may provoke awareness of truth, but he cannot tell another what to believe. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche differ from each other since the former follows a religious path to Existentialism by advocating a "leap of faith" into a Christian way of life which was the only commitment that could save the individual from despair while the latter followed an atheistic path which is found in the reverberations of the phrase "God is dead".
Kierkegaard is the chief proponent of religious Existentialism, a very personal approach to religion that emphasizes faith and commitment, and minimizes theology and place of reason in religion. He attacked theologians of his time for attempting to show that Christianity is a thoroughly rational religion. He claimed instead that faith is important exactly because it is irrational. According to him, the important thing is not the objective question whether God exists or not, but the subjective truth of one's own commitment in the face of an objective uncertainty. Kierkegaard ultimately advocated a "leap of faith" into a Christian way of life which was the only commitment that could save the individual from despair.
Among Existentialist philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre was the only one who admitted the label 'Existentialist'. In fact, he is the founder of modern Existentialism, and existential tenets expressed through his novels, plays, and philosophical writings have been the most influential after WWII. In Sartre's vision man is born into a kind of void (le neant), a mud (le visqueaux). He has the liberty to remain in this mud and thus lead a passive and submissive life, in a semi-conscious state in which he is scarcely aware of himself. However, he may come out of his subjective, passive situation, in which case he would 'stand out from', become increasingly aware of himself, and experience angoisse (a species of moral anguish). If so, he would have had a sense of absurdity of his predicament and suffer despair. The energy deriving from this awareness would enable him to 'drag himself out of the mud', and begin to exist. By exercising his power of choice he can give meaning to existence and the universe. In short, the human being is obliged to make himself what he is, and has to be what he is. Sartre emphasized that man can stand out from his passive and indeterminate condition, and by an act of will, become engaged and committed to some action and part in social and political life. Through commitment man provides a reason and structure for his existence.
B. Existential Themes
1. "Existence Precedes Essence"
This is a reversal of the Aristotlean premise that essence precedes existence. Accordingly, humans are given a nature that determines what they are and what their ultimate purpose or value is. Sartrean existentialism argues that man has no predefined purpose or meaning; rather, humans define themselves in terms of who they become in their lived life, their choices and actions.
In short we can say that:
a. We have no predetermined nature or essence that controls what we are, what we do, or what is valuable for us.
b. We are radically free to act independently of determination by outside influences.
c. We create our own human nature through these free choices. We are thrown into existence first without a predetermined nature and only later do we construct our nature or essence through our actions.
d. We also create our values through these choices.
2. Thrownness
We find ourselves existing in a world not of our own making and indifferent to our concerns. We are not the source of our existence, but find ourselves thrown into a world we don't control and didn't choose.
3. Absolute Individuality and Absolute Freedom.
When it is said that human is free in his choices, it is meant that every individual chooses his/her existence freely. Since we are all ultimately alone, isolated islands of subjectivity in an objective world, we have absolute freedom over our internal nature, and the source of our value can only be internal.
4. Subjectivity of Values
Sartre accepts the premise that something for an individual is valuable because the individual consciousness chooses to value it. Sartre denies that there are any objective standards on which to base values.
5. Responsibility for choices
According to Sartre, the individual consciousness is responsible for all the choices it makes. Therefore, human is responsible for his own existence.
On the one hand, human beings by their choices affect the whole humanity, too. When an individual chooses to be in a way, s/he approves of that way by his/her choice and wants all individuals to be like this. Something is not good unless it is good for everybody. So an individual is responsible for all human individuals through his/her choices. This sense of universal responsibility more than anything else brings about dread and anxiety.
6. Anxiety
We are faced with the lack of any external source of value and determination; there are no objective criteria according to which we can determine the values. On the other hand, we are faced with the responsibility of choosing our own nature and values, and, in doing so, we are faced we must face the awesome responsibility of choosing human nature and values for all men in our free choices.
7. Despair
In seeing the contrast between the world we are thrown into over which we have no control and the absolute freedom we have to create ourselves, we must despair of any hope of external value or determination and restrict ourselves to what is under our own control.
8. The "alienated" self
It is the estrangement of the self both from the world and from itself. In the first place, though it is through my projects that world takes on meaning, the world itself is not brought into being through my projects; it retains its otherness and thus can come forth as utterly alien. Alienation is the strangeness of a world in which I precisely do not feel "at home." This experience, basic to existential thought, contrasts most sharply with the ancient notion of a kosmos in which human beings have a well-ordered place. The idea of the alienated self connects existential thought tightly to the modern experience of a meaningless universe.
9. Bad faith
Sartre believed that people lie to themselves and ascribe the consequences of their choices, their responsibilities and anxieties to other things or people. Underneath these lies, people negate their own being. In other words, he held that by confronting radical freedom and responsibility, instead of hiding from them in cowardly 'bad faith', human beings can construct a new and more honest reality.
II. Absurdism
Absurdism follows existentialism that tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe, in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however relatively, by human beings' choices, actions and interpretations. It is most clearly theorised by the French philosopher and fiction writer Albert Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus (1942). It states that man’s effort to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail because there is no meaning to existence in relation to human.
In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusion and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile… This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of absurdity.
A. The “point” in Absurdism
Point is that something (an object or living one’s life) must have a higher purpose to justify its existence. However, that higher purpose, too, must have a purpose. These “chains of justifications,” as Camus called them, never come to and end; therefore, nothing can be considered to have ultimate purpose.
According to Absurdism, humans historically attempt to find meaning in the universe. Yet, the world is irrational and does not conform to the standards or wishes of mankind. So this search is inevitably vain. This view usually leads to two paths: 1. the conclusion that life is absolutely meaningless or 2. filling of this vacuum by some other means such as God or religion.
Suicide is a solution to some because it seems a rational reaction to absurdity of life. But for Albert Camus suicide is not a solution, because even though life is truly absurd, “the point of life is to live it.” People may create meaning in their own lives which is not the ultimate meaning but provides something to do.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock up a hill for eternity, but when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll back to the bottom again. Camus believes that this existence is pointless, but he feels Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it.
B. The Literature of the Absurd
During the literary modernist movement in the 1900's, authors began describing dystopian societies and surreal and absurd situations in the universe, a trend that paralleled the existentialist movement. In Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis, a man awakes to the realization that he has turned into an insect. This story, being certainly "absurd" and surreal, is one of many modernist literary works that influenced and were influenced by existentialist philosophy.
The term is applied to a number of works in drama and prose fiction which have in common the sense that human condition is essentially absurd, and that this condition can only be represented in works of literature which are absurd themselves. It was anticipated as early as 1986 in Alfred jerry’s Ubu Roi(Ubu the king) as well as Franz Kafka’s fiction The Trial or Metamorphosis. It has also its roots in the movements of expressionism and surrealism.
Albert Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works with existential themes including The Rebel, The Stranger and The plague. He, like many others, rejected the existentialist label, and considered his works to be absurd.
1. The Theatre of the Absurd
Absurd drama has been shown to have its roots back in Greek drama though the term was coined by the critic Martin Esslin early in the 20th C. who made it the title of his book. He pointed out how many contemporary plays in the late 1940s and 1960s such as Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Eugene Ionesco’s Bold Soprano, Rhinoceros, Jean Genet’s The Balcony, The Blacks, Harold Pinter’s Birthday Party and Caretaker , and Arthur Adamov’s Professor Tarann, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and many of Edward Albee’s works incorporated the existential belief that man is an absurd creature thrown in a universe empty of real meaning. Esslin noted that many of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophies better than Sartre and Camus did in their own plays. Though most of the playwrights subsequently labelled "Absurdist" (based on Esslin’s book) denied affiliations with existentialism and were often staunchly anti-philosophical (for example Ionesco often claimed he identified more with Surrealism than with existentialism). The playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd are often linked to existentialism based on Esslin's observation. Simone de Beauvoir, who was a longtime companion to Sartre, wrote about feminist and existential ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and Ethics of Ambiguity.
2. Absurdist Style
Unlike many other forms of literature, absurdist works will not necessarily have a traditional plot structure (i.e. rising action, climax, falling action). Similarly, the "moral" of the story is generally not explicit, and the characters are often ambiguous in nature. By employing grotesquely comic characters, pointless dialogues, slapsticks, incoherent plot, the absurdist playwright makes a parody not only of traditional Western culture, but of traditional generic forms, and even of its own participation in dramatic medium.
Eugene Ionesco, French author of The Bald Soprano, The Lesson, and other plays in the theater of the absurd had put it:
Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, and useless…People drowning in meaninglessness can only be grotesque, the suffering can only appear tragic by derision.