(included in the arsenal of "speech self-defense").
I wish you to easily laugh it off in negotiations, bringing your opponent's attacks to the point of absurdity. Or it's nice to use "translate arrows" if it is the best way get away from the attack.
Techniques for protection
You are under attack, and you exaggerate it with the help of humor.
A classic of the genre: "Or maybe you also have the keys to the apartment where the money is?".
Here sometimes when a discount is actively knocked out of you, you can answer with humor:
"Why are you only asking for a 20% discount? Let's give you 30%, 40% ... or maybe we'll do the project for free."
If suddenly you are once again asked to work on the weekend, then you can also do it with humor.
"Yes, let me bring a cot here, and I'll sleep right here. Why do I need to meet with my wife and children? Yes, I don't need this."
If the attacker is adequate, then he usually understands that he went too far with his attack. If not adequate, then it is better not to use this technique. Not everyone understands humor.
I suggest watching this technique in the classics:
Arrow translation
The attacker is trying to psychologically pressure you, and you transfer this attack to someone else (or something else).
"This is not for me, this is for Ivan Ivanovich."
But we take into account that Ivan Ivanovich may later disapprove of the fact that you transfer unnecessary problems to him. Therefore, it works well when the arrows are translated to something inanimate.
"Guys, I would be glad with all my heart to do this for you in three days. But look - instructions, technical requirements, it is written here for 7 days. Well, no way."
And transfer the attack on yourself to something inanimate - to regulations, laws, rules. Here, the attacker usually reduces his pressure, because. It's harder for him to attack you.
I propose to see how this technique with humor, in a joke, is described by V.V. Putin:
Bringing to the point of absurdity
The essence of the reception is that you bring the opponent's statement to the point of absurdity, and it becomes ridiculous.
From TV debates:
Question: "In Moscow, it is now planned to build a large number of high-rise buildings. As the events of September 11 showed, there is no escape from the upper floors if there is a fire below."
Answer: "You know, of course you can reach insanity: stop building high-rise buildings ... stop building airplanes, they are a means of terrorists, as we have seen ... stop producing cars that are used as a battering ram ...".
From the movie Heavenly Judgment.
According to the plot, after you get to the other world, you participate in a court session, where they decide where to send you to heaven ("peace sector") or hell ("thought sector"). And the lawyer, in this film, in his speeches very much likes to use the technique of "bringing to the point of absurdity."
In response to the accusation that the defendant killed the cat, i.e. Living being.
... The lawyer addresses one of the jurors: "How often in your earthly life did you boil water?"
- Well, of course, often.
- For what?
- Well, then, so that the water is safe.
- So ... so you deliberately killed about 10 million amoebas? The simplest animals that could breathe, digest food ...
- And tell, please, and on your account, how many victims?
The lawyer turns to another juror and shows a box with a dead cockroach.
- Well ... it's just a cockroach.
- Yes ... yes ... this is a cockroach that we crush with slippers, poison with dichlorvos, this is the creature that each of us could crush at the last moment of our lives ... and is it fair to get a ticket to the "thinking sector (hell)" for this? Gentlemen of the jury, tell me where does the reflex, where we can swat a mosquito or a fly, end and the murder begins?
In response to the accusation that the defendant lied, and lying is a terrible sin.
"Well, what can I say after these terrible words ... The root of all evil is a lie ... Who is more worthy of the "sector of reflection (hell)", if not a partisan who brazenly lies to the Nazis that ours are in a ravine, although they are in a chicken coop? Or maybe a doctor, who bluffed a child and told him that drilling his teeth didn't hurt at all?No,no...probably the husband who tells his 100kg wife that she doesn't look like a hippopotamus at all, except perhaps with her cheerful eyes...Gentlemen...that too lie!"
I hope these video sketches have clarified this technique.
I wish you to beautifully use the technique of "bringing to the point of absurdity" in your life.
recommendations from Sergey Shipunov,
leader
"University of Rhetoric and
Oratory"
Our age is, in fact, the age of the absurd. Poets and playwrights, painters and sculptors proclaim that the world is an unorganized chaos, and so depict it in their works. Politicians of every kind - right, left and center - try to give the world's chaos a faint semblance of order; pacifists and militarists are united in the absurd belief that by weak human efforts emergency situations can be overcome (with the help of means that obviously should destroy everything). Philosophers and other allegedly responsible people in government, scientific and church circles (when they do not hide behind narrow specialization or bureaucracy) only confirm the thesis about the abnormal state of modern man and the world he created and advise to indulge in self-discredited humanistic optimism, hopeless stoicism, blind experimentation or irrationalism is either advised to surrender to a suicidal belief in "faith".
But the art, politics and philosophy of our day are a reflection of life, and if they are struck by absurdity, it is to a large extent because life itself has become absurd. The most striking example of absurdity was, of course, Hitler's " new order”, when a “normal”, “civilized” person could simultaneously be a sophisticated and touching performer of Bach (Himmler) and a highly skilled executioner of millions. Hitler himself was an absurdist who rose from nothingness to world domination and turned back into nothingness. He left behind a shocked world, having achieved his "success" only because he, the emptiest of men, was the embodiment of the emptiness of his time.
The surreal world of Hitler is in the past, but the world never came out of the period of absurdity
The surreal world of Hitler is in the past, but the world has not yet emerged from the period of absurdity. On the contrary, the world is sick with the same disease, although it is less violent. People have invented weapons that, like the Nazi gospel of destruction, are a reflection of the nihilism that reigns in the souls of people. In the shadow of this weapon, a person stands paralyzed, between two extremes: an external force and a helplessness unprecedented in history. At the same time, the poor and “dispossessed” of this world have awakened to conscious life and are striving for abundance and privilege; those who already have them spend their lives among perishable things, or become disillusioned and die of despair and boredom, or commit insane crimes. It seems that the world is divided into those who lead a meaningless, destructive lifestyle without realizing it, and those who, realizing it, come to madness and suicide.
Our time is the time of absurdity, when the irreconcilable coexists side by side, sometimes in the soul of one and the same person; when everything seems meaningless; when everything falls apart, because the center that connects this "everything" is lost. It is true, of course, that daily life apparently flows as usual, although its feverish pace is suspect; it seems that a person is able to "hold on", to stretch from day to day. It is difficult to blame for this, modern life is not easy and unpleasant. However, anyone who thinks, who asks the question of what is really under the deceptive cover of modernity in our strange world, will never be able to feel at least relatively comfortable, will never accept this world as “normal”.
The world we live in is not normal
The world we live in is not normal. No matter how wrong "progressive" poets, artists and thinkers may be, no matter what exaggerations and contradictions they fall into, no matter what false explanations they offer, they are right at least in one thing: something is "wrong" with the modern world. This is the first thing we can learn from the absurdists.
The philosophy of the absurd does not represent anything original - it is a complete negation, and the nature of this philosophy is entirely determined by what it tries to deny. Absurdity is in principle impossible apart from what is considered non-absurd; the fact that the world has lost all meaning can only be understood by those people who once believed that the world had some meaning, and had reasons for this. Absurdism cannot be understood outside of its Christian roots.
Christianity - in the highest sense of the word - is meaningfulness
Christianity - in the highest sense of the word - is meaningfulness, because the God of Christians is the ruler of everything in the universe, both in relation to outside of Him and within Himself, the One Who is the beginning and end of all creation. A sincerely believing Christian sees this divine connection in all areas of his life and thought. For the absurdist, everything falls apart, including his own philosophy, which can only be a short-lived phenomenon; for a Christian, everything is interconnected and corresponds to each other, including things that are incompatible. The meaninglessness of the absurd is, after all, part of a higher meaningfulness (if it were otherwise, then it would not be worth talking about absurdism at all).
The second difficulty we face concerns the approach to research. It is not enough - if we want to understand absurdism - to reject it because it is fallacious and self-contradictory. Of course, no competent mind will seriously consider the claims of absurdism to be true; from whatever side we approach, absurdist philosophy contradicts itself. To proclaim complete nonsense, one must believe that the phrase itself has a meaning, and thus it is clear that absurdism cannot be taken seriously as a philosophy; all his statements must be interpreted figuratively and often subjectively. Absurdism is in fact - as we shall see - not the fruit of the intellect, but the product of the will.
The philosophy of the absurd, which is contained in many modern works of art, but not directly expressed in them, is fortunately directly stated in Nietzsche, since his nihilism is the root from which the tree of absurdism grew. In Nietzsche we can deduct all this philosophy, and in his older contemporary, Dostoyevsky, we find a description of its horrific consequences, which Nietzsche, blind to Christian truth, could not foresee. In these writers, who lived at a turning point, between two worlds, when the world of meaning based on Christianity was shaken and the world of absurdity based on the denial of truth began to emerge, we can find almost everything necessary for understanding absurdism.
The revelation of absurdism spilled out in two shocking phrases of Nietzsche: "God is dead" and "truth does not exist"
The revelation of absurdism, until then long brewing in the underground, spilled out in two shocking phrases of Nietzsche, so often quoted: "God is dead" - which simply means that faith in God is dead in the hearts modern people; and "truth does not exist", meaning that humanity has abandoned the truth revealed to it by God, on which European thought and public institutions were once founded. Both statements are true of atheists and satanists, who testify that they are content and even happy with their lack of faith or rejection of the truth. This is equally true of the less pretentious majority, whose sense of spiritual reality has simply evaporated, which is expressed in indifference to this reality or in the multitude of false religions, behind which lies indifference to the truth. But even among the ever-shrinking minority of believers (melting both outwardly and inwardly), for whom the other world is more real than this world, the “death of God” weighs even on them and makes the world alien and strange for them. Nietzsche, in his Will to Power, succinctly expressed the meaning of nihilism: “What does nihilism mean? That the highest values lose their value. There is no purpose. There is no answer to the question “why?”.
In short, everything becomes questionable. We see an admirable faith in the fathers and saints of the Church and in all true believers, when everything - both thought and life - correlates with God, when He is seen in everything as the beginning and end, when everything is perceived as His will - this faith, which strengthens and which once did not allow the world, society and man to disintegrate, has disappeared today, and the questions that people used to receive answers from God, today for the majority there are no answers.
There were also other forms of nonsense than modern nihilism and absurdism, and other kinds of meaningfulness besides Christianity. In these forms, human life gains meaning or loses it only to a certain extent. People who believe and follow, for example, the traditional Hindu or Chinese worldview, receive some measure of truth and the world that truth gives, but not absolute truth, and not that world that is "beyond all mind" that absolute truth gives. Those who fall away from relative truth do not lose everything like apostates from Christianity.
“God is dead”, “truth does not exist” - both phrases are a revelation about the absurdity of the world, in the center of which there is no longer God, in the core of which there is nothing. But it is precisely here, at the very heart of absurdism, that its dependence on Christianity is most evident. One of the main provisions of the Christian doctrine is creatio ex nihilo: the creation of the world by God not from Himself, not from pre-existing matter, but from nothing. Not understanding this principle, the absurdist testifies to its truth, distorting and parodying it, trying to annihilate creation, returns the world to that same nothingness from which God called it in the beginning. This can be seen both in the assertions of the absurdists that emptiness is at the center of everything, and in the hidden conviction inherent in one way or another in all absurdists that it would be better for man and his world not to exist at all. This attempt at annihilation, this belief in the abyss, which lies at the basis of the teachings of the absurdists, takes its tangible form in the atmosphere that prevails in the works of "absurd" art. In the work of those who can be called ordinary atheists - writers such as Hemingway, Camus and many other artists whose gaze does not penetrate deeper than the realization of the hopelessness of the situation and whose enthusiasm does not go beyond a kind of stoicism in an attempt to look into the eyes of the inevitable - in the art of these people the atmosphere of emptiness is conveyed through boredom, through despair, which, however, can be endured, and in general through the feeling that "nothing is happening." But there is another kind of absurdist art, in which an element of the unknown is added to the mood of hopelessness, something like a vague expectation, a feeling that in an absurd world where, in principle, “nothing happens”, also “everything can happen”. In this art, reality turns into a nightmare and the earth into an alien planet, on which people wander, not so much lost hope as confused, lost confidence in where they are, what they can find, who they are - in everything, but not that there is no God. Such is the strange world of Kafka, Ionesco and - in a less harsh form - Beckett, a number of avant-garde films such as Last Year at Marienbad, electronic and other "experimental" music, surrealism in all forms of art, as well as modern painting and sculpture - especially with allegedly "religious" content, where a person is depicted as a subhuman or demonic creature that has surfaced from unknown depths. And this is the world of Hitler, because his rule was the most perfect political embodiment of what we encounter in the philosophy of the absurd.
Such an atmosphere arises when the "death of God" becomes tangible. It is very characteristic that Nietzsche, in the same paragraph where we first hear from the lips of a madman: “God is dead,” depicts the whole attitude of absurdist art:
“We killed Him (God), you and I! We are all His killers! But how did we do it? How did we manage to drink the sea? Who gave us a sponge to wipe off the paint from the entire horizon? What have we done by tearing this earth from its sun? Where is she going now? Where are we going? Away from all suns? Are we constantly falling? Back, side, forward, in all directions? Is there still an up and down? Are we wandering as if in an infinite nothingness? Isn't empty space breathing on us? Hasn't it gotten colder? Doesn't the night come on more and more?
Such is the absurd landscape - a landscape where there is no up, no down, no truth, no lies, no right, no wrong, because the universally recognized landmark has been lost. In another, more direct and personal expression, the revelation of absurdism was manifested in Ivan Karamazov's desperate exclamation: "If there is no immortality, then everything is permitted." To some this may seem like a cry of release, but anyone who has thought deeply about what death is or has experienced a real sense of personal imminent demise knows this. The absurdist, although he denies immortality, at least admits that this question is central, something that the majority of humanists, busy with endless subterfuges, are unable to think of. One can be indifferent to this question only if one does not have love for truth, or if this love is clouded by deceitful and transient things, when instead of the truth people seek to receive pleasure, engage in business, culture, acquire worldly knowledge or something like that. . The very meaning of human life depends on whether the doctrine of human immortality is correct or false.
The absurdist believes that this teaching is false. And this is one of the reasons why his world is so strange: there is no hope in it, death is the highest deity of this world. The apologists of absurdism, like the apologists of humanistic stoicism, see in this view "courage", the "courage" of people who want to live without the "comfort" of eternal life at the end. They look down on those who need a "reward" in heaven to justify their behavior on earth. They think that it is not necessary to believe in heaven and hell in order to lead a “good life” in this world, and their evidence seems convincing even to many who call themselves Christians and are ready, nevertheless, to debunk the idea of eternal life in favor of the “existential » views, when they believe only in the present.
Such evidence is the worst self-deception, yet another mask with which people cover the face of death. Dostoevsky was absolutely right in giving human immortality a central place in his personal Christian worldview. If a person eventually turns into nothing, then, seriously speaking, it does not matter at all what he does in this life, since none of his actions ultimately make sense, and all the talk about "taking advantage of life on all one hundred percent”, empty and futile. It is absolutely true that if “there is no immortality”, then the world is absurd and “everything is allowed” and it is not worth doing anything at all: the dust of death blows away all joy and dries up any tear, since they are not needed. Indeed, it would be better if such a world did not exist. Nothing in this world - not love, not righteousness, not holiness - has the slightest value or even the slightest meaning if a person does not survive his death. Anyone who intends to lead a “good life” that ends with death simply does not know what O he says, his words are a caricature of Christian righteousness, which is translated into eternity. Only if a person is immortal does what a person does in his life make sense - then every act of a person becomes a seed of good or evil that germinates in this life, but the harvest is gathered in the next. On the other hand, those who believe that virtue begins and ends in this life are practically no different from those who believe that there is no virtue at all. They are separated from each other by only one step, and, as the history of our century eloquently testifies, a logical step that people take very easily.
Europe has been deceiving itself for five centuries, trying to establish the dominance of humanism, liberalism and pseudo-Christian values.
In some ways, disappointment is preferable to self-deception. It can lead to madness and suicide, but it can also lead to awakening. Europe has been deceiving itself for five centuries, trying to establish the dominance of humanism, liberalism and pseudo-Christian values, taking as a basis an ever-increasing skepticism towards the truth of Christianity. Absurdism is the end of this path, it is the logical conclusion of the efforts of humanists to soften and compromise truth so that it can be reconciled with modern worldly values. Absurdism has become the last proof either that the truth of Christianity is absolute and does not compromise, or the absence of truth at all. And if truth does not exist, if Christian truth is not taken literally and absolutely, if God is dead, if there is no immortality, then this world is limited to what we see, and then this is the world of absurdity, then this world is hell. It follows from this that the absurdist worldview is distinguished by a certain insight: it draws conclusions from the provisions of humanism and liberalism that respectable humanists themselves could not see. Absurdism cannot be considered mere nonsense, it is part of the crop for which the Europeans have been planting seeds for centuries - the seeds of compromise and betrayal of Christ's truth. However, it would be wrong to exaggerate, as the apologists of absurdism do, and to see in it and related nihilism signs of a turn or return to once forgotten truths or to a deeper world outlook. The absurdist, of course, looks more realistically at the evil, negative side of life as it manifests itself in the world and in man, but this is relatively little, if we recall the greatest mistakes that unite absurdism and humanism. Both of these worldviews are far from God, in whom alone the world receives its meaning; both of them, therefore, give no idea of the spiritual life and experience that God alone plants and nurtures; both are utterly ignorant in terms of how fully they embrace reality and human experience; both represent an archiprimitive view of the world and especially of man. Humanism and absurdism are in fact not so much different as it might seem at first glance: absurdism is ultimately a disillusioned and yet unrepentant humanism. It can be said to be the last stage of the dialectical removal of humanism from Christian truth, when humanism, following its internal logic and proceeding from its original betrayal of the truth, comes to self-denial and ends its history with something like a humanist nightmare, inhumanism, inhumanity. The subhuman world of the absurdists, however strange and overwhelming it may seem, is fundamentally one-dimensional, portrayed as "mysterious" through various tricks and self-deceptions; this is a parody of the real world, known to Christians - really mysterious, because it has heights and abysses, which the absurdist, and even more so the humanist, never dreamed of.
Smart absurdists know that, as Nietzsche said, God not only "died", but people "killed" Him.
If, from an intellectual point of view, humanism and absurdism are cause and effect, then obviously they are united in their desire to destroy christian god and the order that He established in this world. This may seem strange to those who look with sympathy at the deplorable state of modern man, and especially to those who listen to the evidence of the apologists for absurdism, relating to the "spirit of this age", that in our age any philosophy other than the philosophy of the absurd is impossible. They prove that the world has become meaningless, God is dead, and all that is in our power is to come to terms with it. However, intelligent absurdists know that, as Nietzsche said, God not only "died", but people "killed" Him. Ionesco, in an essay on Kafka, admits that “if a person has lost the guiding thread (in the labyrinth of life), it is only because he no longer wanted to hold on to it. Hence his sense of guilt, hence his anxiety, his sense of the absurdity of history. In reality, a vague feeling of guilt is, in many cases, only a remnant of a person’s sense of responsibility for the state modern world. But man is responsible for the world, and therefore any fatalism is an empty fiction. In this respect modern science is not just neutral, but actively hostile to any idea of the utter absurdity of anything, and those who use it to prove the meaninglessness of the world have no idea of the essence of the matter. As for the fatalism of those who are convinced that a person must be a slave of the "spirit of the times", it can be exposed by a Christian worthy of this name, since the life of a Christian is empty if he does not fight the spirit of any time for the sake of eternal life. The fatalism of the absurdist is not born of knowledge or any necessity, but it is an act of blind faith. The absurdist, of course, does not want to face the fact that his disappointment is an act of faith, because faith is opposed to all fatalism and determinism. But to a much greater extent, the absurdist must avoid the realization that his worldview is a product of the will, for the direction of a person's will basically determines what he believes in, and in general the whole personal worldview based on faith. The Christian who possesses a meaningful doctrine of human nature, penetrating deeply through this into human motives, is well aware of the full responsibility of man for the world, which the absurdist prefers to deny. It follows from this that the absurdist is not a passive "victim" of his time or worldview, no, he is rather an active - although often embarrassed by this - collaborator, henchman, assistant in a gigantic enterprise started by the enemies of God. Absurdism is not a worldview, first of all, it is not just a recognition of the fact of the absence of God - all this is speculation and masks; absurdism is a phenomenon of will, anti-theism, a war against God and the God-established order of things. Probably none of the absurdists are fully aware of this; they cannot and do not want to think, they live in self-deception. No one (except Satan himself, the first absurdist) can reject God and, clearly realizing, refuse the greatest happiness available to a rational being, but in the soul of every absurdist, in the depths where he does not want to look, lives the original denial of the existence of God, and this the root cause of all the phenomena of absurd philosophy, as well as the meaninglessness that underlies our age.
If it is impossible not to sympathize with at least some of the absurdist artists, seeing in them an agonizing consciousness that is trying to live without God, then let's not forget how deeply these artists belong to the world they depict; let's not be blind to the fact that their art touches important chords in the souls of many people, because they share the mistakes, blindness, ignorance and perverted will of our age, the emptiness of which they portray. To step over the absurd, unfortunately, much more is needed than the best intentions, the most painful suffering or genius. The path leading to deliverance from the absurd is only the path of truth, and this is what both the contemporary artist and his world lack, this is what the conscious absurdists and those who live the absurd without being aware of it reject.
Let us summarize the diagnosis that we made of absurdism: this is life, this is the worldview of those who can no longer or no longer want to see in God the beginning and end and the highest meaning of life; those who, for this reason, do not believe that God has revealed Himself in Christ Jesus, and do not recognize the existence of the Kingdom of Heaven, which He has prepared for believers and those who live by this faith; those, finally, who have no one to blame for their unbelief. But what is the cause of the disease? What, besides all historical and psychological reasons (always relative), what is the real explanation, the spiritual reason? If absurdism is indeed a great evil, as we believe, then people cannot come to it for its own sake, because in a positive sense, evil does not exist, and people choose it under the guise of good. Up to this point we have described the negative side of the philosophy of the absurd, the chaotic, disorientated world in which people live today, but it is worth turning now to the positive side and discovering what the absurdists believe and what they hope for.
Absurdists are not at all happy that the universe is absurd
It is clear that absurdists are by no means happy that the universe is absurd; they believe in it, but they cannot accept it, and their art and philosophy is an attempt to step over the absurd. As Ionesco once said (apparently on behalf of all absurdists), “to fight the absurd means to affirm the possibility of the non-absurd,” and he sees himself as a participant in the constant search for a way out. So we return to the atmosphere of anticipation that we have already noted in some works of art. This reflects the current situation, when people, desperate and lonely, nevertheless hope for something indefinite, unknown, something that should open up and give them back the meaning and purpose of life... People cannot live without hope, even when they are completely desperate, even when all hopes were in vain.
But all this means that the void, the obvious center of the absurdist world, is not true essence disease, but only its most acute symptom. The true faith of absurdism, in Godot, which is always invisibly present in absurdist art, is a mysterious something that, when understood, will return the meaning of this life.
In contrast to modern art, where these aspirations are expressed indistinctly, in the real "prophets" of the absurd age, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, they are expressed absolutely clearly. In the writings of these prophets we find the very essence of absurdism. "All the gods are dead," says Nietzsche's Zarathustra, "and now the superman must live." And the Nietzsche madman speaks of the murder of God: “Isn't this thing too big for us? Shouldn't we ourselves become gods, just to become worthy of it? Kirillov in Dostoevsky's "Demons" knows that "if there is no God, then I am God."
Original sin and the cause of the deplorable state of man in all ages are laid down in the following temptation of the serpent in paradise: "You will be like gods." What Nietzsche calls the superman, Dostoevsky calls the man-god, is in reality the same deified "I" with which the devil has always tempted man; "I" is the only thing that can be worshiped by a person who has rejected true God. Freedom is given to man to choose either the true God or himself; either the path of true deification, where the “I” is humbled and crucified in this life in order to rise and ascend in God forever, or the false path of self-deification, which promises exaltation in this life, but ends in an abyss. This choice, offered to a free man, is the only and final one, and on these two possibilities are based two kingdoms - the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, which in this life only faith can separate, but in the next they will be divided among themselves and become heaven and hell. It is clear to what kingdom modern civilization belongs, with all its Promethean attempts to build a kingdom on earth in open rebellion against God; however, what is more or less clear in today's thinkers was proclaimed absolutely clearly by Nietzsche. The old commandment "you must" has outlived its time, says Zarathustra, the new commandment - "I will." And, according to the satanic logic of Kirillov, "the attribute of my deity is self-will." The as yet unmanifested new religion, which is to replace the "old" Christianity, which, as modern man thinks, has received a mortal blow, is in the highest sense a religion of self-worship.
This is where absurdism and all the futile experiments of our time lead. Absurdism is the stage when, along with modern Promethean efforts, there is a secret doubt, questions and a faint premonition of the coming satanic chaos, followed by the end. Although the absurdists are less gullible and more fearful than the humanists, they nevertheless share the humanists' belief that the modern way is the right way, and despite their doubts, they retain the hope of the humanists - the hope not in God and His Kingdom, but in tower of babel erected by man's own hands.
Modern efforts to establish a kingdom of self-worship have reached one peak in Hitler, who believed in a racial superman, and their other culmination is communism, whose superman is a collective whose self-love is masked by a veneer of altruism. Nazism and Communism are the clearest expression (their phenomenal success proves it) of what everyone everywhere believes today - all who have not openly and absolutely chosen Christ and His truth. This means that a person, having freed himself from the yoke imposed by God, in whom he no longer believes, even when he confesses Him with his lips, imagined himself to be a god, the master of his destiny and the creator of the “new earth”. Created for myself new religion"of his own invention, in which humility gives way to pride, prayer to worldly knowledge, dominion over passions - power over the world, fasting - to contentment and abundance, tears of repentance - to vain fun.
It is to this religion of one's "I" that absurdism points the way. Of course, his explicit intentions are not always the same, but such is the inner content of absurdism. Absurd art depicts a person as a prisoner of his "I", incapable of communicating with his neighbor and of any connection with him, except for subhuman ones; there is no love in this art, there is only hatred, violence, horror and boredom - because, having separated from God, man has cut himself off from his "humanity", from the image of God in man. And if such a “sub-human” is waiting for some kind of revelation that should put an end to absurdity, then this is by no means the Revelation known to Christians; the only thing that all absurdists agree on is the complete denial of the explanation of the world that Christianity offers. The revelation that an absurdist can accept while remaining an absurdist must necessarily be "new." In Beckett's play, one of the characters says to Godot: “I would like to know what he has to offer us. Then we either take it or leave it." In the life of a Christian, everything is related to Christ, the old "I" with its constant "I want" must be replaced by a new one, directed to Christ and to the fulfillment of His will; but in the spiritual world of Godot, everything revolves precisely around the old "I", and even new god is forced to present himself as a spiritual merchant, whose goods can be accepted or rejected. Today, people are "waiting for Godot," the Antichrist, whom they expect to be able to satiate the mind and bring back meaning and joy to self-worship. In the hope that he will resolve what is forbidden by God and finally justify a person. Nietzsche's superman is also absurd. This is a modern man whose sense of guilt is suppressed by the insane enthusiasm generated by the false "earthly" mysticism and worship of this world.
Where is the end of all this? Nietzsche and the optimists of our time see the dawn new era, "a story greater than that which has gone before" begins. Communist doctrine confirms this, but the communist transformation of the world will ultimately prove to be nothing but the systematized absurdity of a modern machine that has no purpose. Dostoevsky, who knew the true God, was more realistic. Kirillov, this second Zarathustra maniac, is forced to kill himself in order to prove that he was a god; Ivan Karamazov, tormented by the same ideas, ended up insane like Nietzsche himself; Shchigalev (from The Possessed), who invented the first perfect social organization of society, discovered that nine-tenths of humanity must be reduced to absolute slavery so that one-tenth could enjoy absolute freedom, a plan that the Nazis and Communists carried out. Madness, suicide, slavery, murder and destruction - these are the results of arrogant philosophizing about the "death of God" and the coming of the superman; and this is the most bright themes absurd art.
The Antichrist will be the ruler of the humanistic world, during the reign of which it will seem that darkness is light, evil is good, chaos is order
Many, along with Ionesco, are convinced that only with the help of a deep study of the absurd situation in which a person finds himself today, and the new opportunities that this situation has opened up for him, can one find, bypassing absurdity and nihilism, the path to some new meaningful reality: such is the hope of absurdism and humanism, and this will be the hope of communism when it enters a period of disillusionment. And this is a vain hope, but that is why it can be fulfilled. Because Satan is a caricature of God. Since the God-given order and meaning is shaken and people no longer hope for the full meaning that God alone can give to human life, the opposite order that Satan will create can look very attractive. It is no coincidence that in our time, responsible and serious Christians, dissatisfied with neither frivolous optimism nor frivolous pessimism, are again given great attention a doctrine that, under the influence of the philosophy of enlightenment and progress, was completely forgotten over the centuries, at least in Western Europe (Joseph Piper "The End of Time"; Heinrich Schlisr "Beginnings and Powers in the New Testament"; and above all, Cardinal Newman). This is the doctrine of the Antichrist, universally recognized by the Eastern and Western Churches, the doctrine of this strange figure who will appear at the end of time. He will be the ruler of the humanistic world, during whose reign it will seem that the order of things has changed to the exact opposite, that darkness is light, evil is good, chaos is order; he is the final and protagonist of the philosophy of the absurd and the perfect incarnation of the man-god; he will worship only himself and call himself a god. However, for lack of space, we will only note that such a doctrine exists and that the Antichrist and the satanic confusion and inconsistency of the philosophy of the absurd are secretly connected.
But even more important than the historical climax of absurdism (whether it really be the reign of the Antichrist or just one of his predecessors) is its prehistoric incarnation. This is hell. After all, absurdism, in its essence, is an invasion of hell into our world; it proclaims that which all men seek with all their might to avoid. But those who avoid thinking about hell are even more chained to it: our century, the first in christian times, when faith in hell is completely lost, the infernal spirit is exceptionally fully embodied in himself.
Why don't people believe in hell? Because they do not believe in Paradise, that is, they have lost faith in life and in the Living God, because they consider what God created to be absurd and would like it not to exist. Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov speaks of such people:
“Oh, there are those who were proud and fierce in hell ... for they themselves cursed themselves, cursing God and their lives ... They cannot contemplate the Living God without hatred and demand that there be no God of life, that God destroy Himself and all creation Own. And they will burn in the fire of their anger forever, longing for death and non-existence. But they will not receive death ... "
Such people, of course, are extreme nihilists, but they differ only in appearance, but not in essence, from those who curse this life less violently and find it absurd, and even from those who, calling themselves Christians, do not yearn for the Kingdom of Heaven with all their hearts. but they imagine paradise, if they believe in it at all, as a vague reality of sleep or repose. Hell is the answer and the end of all who believe in death more than in life, in this world and not in the next, in themselves and not in God: in short, all those who, deep down, are committed to the philosophy of the absurd. Christianity proclaims (Dostoevsky understood this, but Nietzsche did not) that there is no annihilation and no disorder; all nihilism and absurdism is in vain. The flames of hell are the final and terrifying proof of this: every creature testifies, voluntarily or against its will, of the perfect interconnection of things. This connection is love for God, and this love is even in hellfire; it is the love of God that torments those who reject it.
It is the same with absurdism: it is negative side positive reality. There is, of course, something inappropriate in this world - this is what man himself brought into the world by his fall in paradise; consequently, the philosophy of the absurd is based not on an absolute lie, but on a deceptive half-truth. However, when Camus defines absurdity as a clash between the human thirst for rationality and the irrational external world, when he believes that man is an innocent victim and the world is a criminal, he, like all absurdists, exaggerates the depth of his penetration into the essence of things, turning a partial truth into a completely distorted worldview, and in its blindness comes to a conclusion that directly contradicts the truth. In general, absurdism is an internal problem, not an external one; it is not the world that is irrational and meaningless, but man.
If, however, the absurdist is fully responsible for not seeing the world as it is, and even unwilling to see the situation as it really is, then the Christian bears all the greater responsibility if he does not set an example of a meaningful life, life in Christ. . Compromises in thoughts and words that Christians have gone to, their negligence in deeds open the way for the forces of the absurd, Satan, Antichrist. The modern era of the absurd is a just retribution for Christians who failed to be Christians.
This is the only antidote to absurdism: we must become Christians again.
And from this it is clear that this is the only antidote to absurdism: we must become Christians again. Camus was absolutely right when he said: "We must choose between the miracle and the absurd." In this respect, both Christianity and absurdism are equally hostile to Enlightenment rationalism and humanism, that is, to the view that all reality can be interpreted in a purely rationalistic and human sense. Therefore, we really must choose between the "wonderful" Christian worldview, in which God is the center and the end of which is the Kingdom of Heaven, and between the absurd, satanic worldview, in the center of which the fallen "I" and the end of which is hell: hell and in this life and in eternity.
We must become Christians again. It is senseless, truly absurd to talk about the transformation of society, about a historical turning point, about entering an era “over absurd”, if there is no Christ in our hearts; and if Christ is in our hearts, then nothing else matters.
Of course, an era “over-absurd” is possible, but most likely - and Christians should be ready for this - it will not exist, and the age of absurdity is the last time. And it may happen that the last thing Christians can testify to the truth is with their martyr's blood.
And this is a reason for joy, not despair. Because Christians place their hope not in this world and in its kingdoms - hope for this would be the height of absurdity - Christians hope in the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world.
And it means absurdity and nonsense. People often use it for Everyday life, without even realizing that a deep philosophical meaning, and many writers created great works on its basis. Let's try to understand in more detail.
The world of absurdity in which we revolve
No one ever in everyday life pays due attention to how absurd what is happening around us. Young beautiful girls are engaged in prostitution, talented people kill themselves with drugs or alcohol, and mediocre individuals sit in high offices and rake in state money with a shovel. And after that, you want to say that this world has a meaning, it moves forward, and does not stand still? All of the above is only a tiny part of the absurdity that is happening in the world. And How component of the universal system, the life of every person, according to the philosophy of the absurd, is meaningless.
The absurdity of life, which is eternal and inevitable
If a person comes up to you and says that he is going to lift his car over his head with only his own hands, you will tell him: "This is absurd." Why? Because you recognize the futility of his efforts, you see a conflict between his means and a reality that is not conducive to the successful completion of this enterprise. He just physically cannot lift this car over his head.
Absurdity is the relationship between what people are trying to do and the reality in which they exist. There are absurd wars and absurd politics. There are absurd marriages, ridiculous university assignments, and so on. Wherever a goal (say, the war on drugs) seems impossible given the reality (there will always be some group of people producing and distributing drugs), we say it's absurd.
The philosophy of the absurd idea of life begins with the idea that life has no meaning (at least not the one we have created for ourselves). Thus, the ordinary desire of a person to find the true meaning of life can bring to the point of absurdity, since this is useless. Any attempt to create it means an inevitable conflict with the world, which is arranged differently, contrary to your desires.
Sisyphus as a symbol of the philosophy of the absurd
A clear metaphor for this is about Sisyphus. He rolls his rock up the hill only to have it roll down the hill, then it starts all over again. He will never roll a stone up a hill, because it will always roll down. But Sisyphus continues his hard work, he accepts his fate. In this sense, Sisyphus is an absurd hero. Imagine that he is as happy as you are, because everyone in life has at least the absurdity of existence. Such a philosophy says that the absurd is living in a meaningless world where all our efforts are ultimately useless and do not lead to anything good.
Absurdity and time
People usually think that there are two main problems in life: finding love and finding a job. So much has been written about how little time is given to acquire both. We could give up love or work, but having lost one fundamental human purpose in order to have time to move more effectively to the next, we will be left with a half life at best. And even half of life is actually out of reach for most of us - life is too short just for work. Absurdity - this is the constant lack of time.
By the time we feel like we've found our dream job and a great job seems to be going right into our hands, most of us have little time to realize ourselves. At that moment, we are no longer as competent and active as before, and our minds are not flexible. The rate of cognitive decline (which begins before age 30) increases as we age, with a steep decline after age 60.
Time and experience are needed to develop wisdom and maturity, to choose the right partner with whom we would be happy in love. Relationships require attention, and it takes a lot of time. Children should also be given enough time and energy, but often they are born when we are still young and unreasonable.
Most of us seem unable to refrain from wasting time. It is rare when a person can really be as efficient and productive as possible. For the rest of us, that is, almost all of us, Seneca's advice about not just wasting time is useless.
Literature of the absurd as an attempt to more accurately reflect reality
When we talk about absurdity in literature, the historical context plays an extremely important role. In the 1950s, people faced devastation after two world wars, disillusionment with modernism and rationalism, and a more liberal approach to faith—what was considered traditional. Without a stable social structure, beliefs in religion, the question arose about the reliability of the human psyche. Thinkers have begun to use the ideology of existentialism, which goes hand in hand with the absurd.
Existentialism places man at the starting point of thought and emphasizes the bewilderment that man feels in the face of a meaningless and lonely existence in the world. Separated from other people and cut off from the world itself, a person is left to wander alone and is much more susceptible to mass manipulation and state control.
A lot of writers of this time used the techniques of absurdism: Franz Kafka, Camus, Beckett, Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut and others. They went against classical literature and insisted that there must be a strong correlation between setting, character, and plot. In other words, the authors introduced ideas of meaninglessness not only into the content, but also wove them into the very structure of the story.
Alice: life's absurdity in fairyland
Absurdity in fiction also depicts meaninglessness. For example, in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Alice finds herself in a world that is, first of all, meaningless, everything there is ridiculous, absurd and causes ridicule. Gardeners who turn white roses red, strange foods that cause them to shrink or expand to gigantic proportions, are just a small part of the mass of absurdity that Alice stumbles upon.
Ahead of his time, Carroll was assimilating new avant-garde (experimental and provocative) methods of description that are characteristic of only a few writers of the mid-twentieth century. Literary absurdity is a tool for writers to explore the elements of absurdity in a world that makes no sense. He deals with questions of the meaning of life, and writers often use absurd themes, characters, situations and ask if there is any meaning or structure at all.
Instead of a conclusion
The absurdity of human life is a threat to all its meaning. Absurdity and meaningfulness do not go together. This, however, does not mean that if life is not absurd, then it will matter. The elimination of absurdity as an obstacle does not entail the emergence of a clear meaning by which we will be guided in life. But if we cannot eliminate the absurd, it will be difficult to conclude that life has any meaning. Here is such a clown costume worn by the world as a whole and for each individual ...
"Soul, do not strive for eternal life, But try to exhaust what is possible" Pindar. Pythian Songs (III, 62-63)
At first glance, the moral of this myth is the futility of being. But the main problem of existentialism is formulated (in particular by Camus) differently - it is the problem of suicide, the solution of which provides answers to the most mysterious aspects of being. The question - “What is suicide?” is addressed directly to being and can be considered one of the main questions of any philosophy to the extent that it seeks a dialogue with the truth and justifies its honorable duty - to represent a person in this, if you like, dispute.
First, Camus viewed suicide as an individual act: "suicide is prepared in the silence of the heart." Secondly, what are called causes are usually just an excuse. Thus, Camus slowly moves on to the main theme of his work - the theme of the absurd in life.
It must not be forgotten that here we have before us more Camus a psychologist than a philosopher, and let us turn to the senses. Does the absurd lead to death?
We can, for example, subtract that the feeling of absurdity is a discord between a person and life: "when evidence and delight balance each other, we gain access to both emotion and clarity." This is followed by philosophical question in the best traditions of hermeneutics: “does not the conclusion of absurdity follow the fastest way out of this state?”. Many "no" answerers act as if they had said "yes"; conversely, suicidal people often believe that life has meaning. And looking at life as nonsense is not at all equal to the assertion that it is not worth living. “Nuances, contradictions, a psychology that explains everything, skillfully introduced by the “spirit of objectivity” - all this has nothing to do with this passionate search (there are searches - “where does the absurd lead?”), He needs the wrong, that is logical thinking". absurd walls"A sense of absurdity is elusive in the dim light of its atmosphere." We can find what the atmosphere of feeling according to Camus is - "great feelings" - the whole universe. Endowed with its own affective atmosphere, this universe presupposes the presence of a certain metaphysical system or attitude of consciousness.
I would like to emphasize here the word own”, because "certainty" is introduced according to the laws of this "universe" itself. Elusiveness, however, deserves special attention. Perceptibility is a practical assessment. Feelings, which are inaccessible to us in all their depth, are partially reflected in actions, in the attitude of consciousness necessary for this or that feeling. This sets the method, but it is a method of analysis, not of knowledge in the sense in which I wrote earlier. The method of cognition presupposes a metaphysical doctrine that predetermines the conclusions, contrary to all the assurances that the method is without prerequisites, which is actually not so scary, but not in this case.
Maybe it will still be possible to reveal the elusive feeling of absurdity in the kindred worlds of intellect of the art of life? Let's start with the atmosphere of the absurd. The ultimate goal is to comprehend the universe of absurdity. “The beginning of all great thoughts is insignificant. This is the paradox of boredom. Further, Camus notes that the feeling of absurdity is born with a sense of age, since the elementality and certainty of what is happening is the content of an absurd feeling. While the mind is silent, plunging into the motionless world of hopes, everything is ordered and reflected in the unity of its nostalgia. At the first movement, this world cracks.
What is the conclusion from these arguments about the limitations of the mind? Alienated from itself and from the world, armed for any occasion with thinking that denies itself at the very moment of its own affirmation (in the first circle - in the approach to truth and falsity, in the second - in overcoming unity; pure reason is “corrupted” by the desire for clarity in where the manifestation of the absurd is in the unfilled ditch between my own existence and the content invested in it, indeed, how can a thinking being be mortal) - what kind of destiny is this, if I can come to terms with it only by renouncing knowledge and life, if my Does desire always run into an insurmountable wall? It means to wish - to bring to life paradoxes. Everything is arranged in such a way that this poisoned peace is born, giving us carelessness, sleep of the heart and renunciation of death.
Absurd is the clash between irrationality and the frenzied desire for clarity. The absurd here equally depends on the person and on the world, and so far it is the only connection between them. The last statement can be regarded as a creed of French existentialism, when such a postulate about the place of man in the world leads to the idea of absurdity, as a special "soul" of the world, self-moving like the soul of man. So, from the paradoxical nature of desires, the author proceeds to the main question: “why does the heart not burn out at the moment of the appearance of a feeling of absurdity”?
« Stop in the desert Heidegger said: "care is a brief moment of fear." The appeal to death is a brief moment of care, a voice of anxiety, conjuring existence to return to itself. And this is the way of existentialism: Jaspers was looking for the thread of Ariadne, Kierkegaard not only looked for the absurd, but also lived it. To think means to learn to see again, to become attentive; it means to control one's own consciousness, learning from Proust, to give a privileged position to every idea, to every image. From the very beginning, this method puts an end to unrealistic hopes and pseudo-scientific knowledge. All thinkers agree on one thing: a person is able to see and know only his own walls ...
philosophical suicide As I wrote earlier, the sense of the absurd is not the same as the concept of the absurd. After passing judgment on the universe, the feeling may die. It is necessary to understand why people voluntarily leave this universe and why they remain. To remain means to wage a continuous struggle. This fight involves complete absence hopes, but not despair, constant refusal, but not renunciation and conscious dissatisfaction. Everything that destroys, hides these requirements or runs counter to them is absurd and devalues the supposed attitude of consciousness. The absurd has a meaning and a power that is difficult to overestimate in our lives when we disagree with it. Where does it come from? First, absurdity is generated by comparison or opposition. Absurdity is a split, because it does not exist in any of the compared elements, it is born in their collision. And this split is an essential link between man and the world.
A person knows: firstly, what he wants, and secondly, what the world offers him and what unites him with the world. To destroy one of the questions of the triad means to destroy it all. The latter is the only certainty. The task of a person is to derive from it all the consequences that will later determine the essence of the method. Therefore, the first rule of the method - if I consider something to be true - is to preserve it. Here is how Camus himself puts it: "The first, and in fact, the only condition for my research is the preservation of what destroys me, the consistent observance of what I consider the essence of the absurd." A person who has realized the absurdity is attached to it forever. Thus, existentialism, deifying that which crushes a person, offers him an eternal flight from himself. So Jaspers, saying that everything has an explanation in being, in the “incomprehensible unity of the particular and the general,” finds in this a means for reviving the entire fullness of being - extreme self-destruction, hence concluding that the greatness of God is in his inconsistency. Shestov said: “The only way out is where there is no way out for the human mind. Otherwise, what is God to us? It is necessary to rush into God and by this jump get rid of illusions. When an absurdity is integrated by a person, in this integration its essence is lost - split. Thus we arrive at the idea that the absurd presupposes equilibrium. If existentialism tries to shift the focus to one of the components of the triad, then the balance is violated. Considering the rest of the components from such a distorted position leads to the conclusion about the weakness of the mind. Absurdity is a clear mind, aware of its limits. absurd freedom A rebellious person sees his limits, but closing his eyes to the nature of the absurd, he looks for the easiest way - fighting with his own walls, he creates more and more new walls around himself. Without putting any questions to his life, he always takes the occasion as the reason for what is happening, without making attempts to see beyond his walls. Here Camus speaks of a leap. This idea can be found in different forms in R. Bach, Berdyaev or Kierkegaard. It's worth stopping there. “The absurd person is required to make something completely different - a leap. In response, he can only say that he does not understand the requirement very well, that it is not obvious. He only wants to do what he understands well. He is assured that this is the sin of pride, and the very concept of "sin" is not clear to him. He feels incorrigibly innocent... “Camus simplifies the leap into a term that means any escape from a problem, an escape from a conflict. The question of what a person is unable to discard even during a jump, when he decides to do without a jump, but in a state of "complete innocence", remains open.
And again Camus returns to the problem of suicide, saying that the main thing is to stay on the crest of the wave, between the realization of the absurd and the leap. Suicide is the exact opposite of rebellion, as it involves consent. And, at the same time, like a leap, suicide is acceptance of one's own limits, but these are two mutually exclusive outcomes. From the point of view of the artist, it is rebellion that gives the price of life. “Rebellion is a constant given of man to himself. “This is how Camus brings the theme of permanent revolution into everyday experience. The problem of rebellion leads us to think about the absence of "freedom at all." The absurd offers us the following alternative: either we are not free, or we are completely free. “The only freedom available to my mind and heart is freedom of mind and action. And death is the only reality."
“There is no tomorrow - from now on it has become the basis of my freedom,” - by the way, it looks like female logic. Absurdity teaches - the main thing is not the quality, but the quantity of experience. This leads to a lack of a hierarchy of experience and a lack of a value system. Breaking all records - collide with the world as often as possible. "The universe of the absurd man is a universe of ice and fire." metaphysical absurdity irrationality
absurd man“An absurd person is ready to admit that there is only one morality that does not separate from God: this is the morality imposed on him from above (Camus opposes her own morality of man). But the absurd man lives just without this god. As for other moral teachings (including immorality), he sees in them only justifications, while he himself has nothing to justify himself. I proceed here on the principle of his innocence. "Next, Camus talks about the dangers of the innocence complex." The credibility of God is much more attractive than the credibility of the unpunished power of evil deeds. “It would seem that the choice is not difficult. But there is no choice, absurdity does not free from choice, it binds to it forever. Absurdity only shows the equivalence of the consequences of any choice, if you like, reveals the futility of remorse." “One can be virtuous out of a whim. Can absurdity deliver a person from this vicious circle of remorse, when the desire to regain innocence interferes with the analysis of "pure choice", returning a person to agreement with his own walls? The absurd mind is ready for reckoning.” “For him there is responsibility, but there is no guilt. Moreover, he agrees that past experience can be the basis for future actions.
The only truth of the absurd is revealed and embodied in concrete people. The result of the search for an absurd mind is not the rules of ethics, but living examples. This, perhaps, is the main humanistic merit of the philosophy of the absurd. A living person always means much more to another person than all invented "truths". We are talking about a world in which both thoughts and life are devoid of a future, here only those heroes who have set as their goal the exhaustion of life have been chosen for art.
Absurd creativity“In the rarefied air of absurdity, the lives of such heroes can only last thanks to a few deep thoughts, the power of which allows them to breathe. In this case, we will talk about a special sense of loyalty.
You can add: and about the author's sense of loyalty to his heroes, "loyalty to the rules of battle." Children's searches for oblivion and pleasure are now abandoned. Creativity, in the sense in which it is able to replace them, is primarily an absurd joy. Art is a sign of death and at the same time an increase in experience. To create means to live doubly. Therefore, we conclude the analysis of the topics of this essay by referring to the creator’s universe full of splendor and at the same time childishness. It is a mistake to regard it as symbolic, to believe that a work of art can be regarded as a refuge from the absurd. A work of art takes our mind outside of it for the first time and brings us face to face with the other. Creativity reflects the moment when reasoning stops and absurd passions burst to the surface. In absurd reasoning, creativity follows impartiality and reveals it.
I would like to finish with one more quote from the essay: “The old opposition of art and philosophy is rather arbitrary. If we understand it in a narrow sense, then it is simply false. The only acceptable argument here is to establish a contradiction between the philosopher, enclosed in the core of his system, and the artist, standing in front of his work. But, like the thinker, the artist becomes involved in his work and becomes himself in it. This mutual influence of the creator and the work forms the most important problem of aesthetics. Between disciplines that are created by man for understanding and love, no limits».
Within the framework of post-modernity, philosophy is increasingly turning to the problem of the absurd. If we ask ourselves a question about the origins of this phenomenon, then we run into certain crisis states of both society and individual individuals.
In modern times, an all-encompassing despotism of reason took shape, exactly supported by the words of Hegel: "everything that is real is reasonable, everything that is reasonable is real." But representatives will soon appear to the world non-classical philosophy, and an intense "revaluation of values" begins.
The philosophy of life of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer undermined the foundations of Logic and provided a voice for the Will, which is all penetrating and not grasped in strictly academic categories. The concept of Will has become the answer to the crisis of the ever-increasing sense of disproportion between school categories and dynamism as objective reality and directly subjective. Following them, the crisis of oppressive rationality was felt by the existentialists. Representatives of this trend announced that the world cannot be understood, since, faced with the material nakedness of the material world, we, as a creature striving for clarity, feel like strangers in the world itself. "The world itself is simply unreasonable, and that's all that can be said about it." The world stands apart in relation to man, the world is cold towards us. And so there is a feeling of absurdity.
It is also worth mentioning Kierkegaard, who spoke about the power of the absurd in the context of theology. And here the absurd has its positivity, but, of course, if the absurd itself as such is overcome on the path to the Divine. To act with the power of the absurd, according to Kierkegaard, means to do something unthinkable, to make a transgression in the name of love for God, already overcoming the absurdity itself as such. Abraham, for example, does the unthinkable by subscribing to the murder of his own son. Going to such a terrible deed, Abraham, according to Kierkegaard, still cherishes the hope that God will not allow this sacrifice - this is the real movement of faith. Tertullian's words are appropriate here: "I believe, because it is absurd." The movement of faith must constantly be driven by the force of the absurd. Thus, Abraham believes with the power of the absurd and eventually becomes the Father of Faith, who overcomes the absurd by gaining his son.
Thus, the absurd contains within itself the possibility of its overcoming. Overcoming the absurd may also consist in coming to terms with it. Camus, speaking of the insurmountability of the absurd, preaches about conscious resignation to the absurd, which is also a kind of overcoming. The overcoming of such a plan is a conscious act, which also, in turn, appears as self-awareness. This self-awareness is connected with the existence of oneself in the world, and this is already something more than what is rooted in consciousness. Thus we enter the realm of the ontological.
According to Heidegger, a person is defined through Dasein (here-being), that is, through “a being, in whose being speech (deed) is about this very being” . Only man is capable of inquiring about his being and its meaning. But when do we allow ourselves to do this? And again, according to Heidegger, our questioning comes from a certain mood. One of its main categories is horror. Horror before the figure of Nothing. A person asks a question about being out of horror, which is characterized by a total loss of ground under one's feet. Horror - and there is such a mood. Horror is connected directly with our finiteness, which means that in the face of Nothing (death), we, horrified, ask about being and its meaning. Horror is interconnected with absurdity, since absurdity is a kind of semantic gap, as well as a kind of onto-gap, to which horror draws attention. Losing the ground under his feet and horrified by the lack of meaning within the framework of temporal finiteness, a person demands a meaning that constantly eludes him.
Heidegger remarks very well that when we ask about the meaning of being, we are always already in it; from the very meaning of being they are able to talk about being, since “meaning is the existential of presence (Dasein)”. Meaning is originally rooted in human being, for “the meaning of being can never be put in opposition to being or to being as a supporting “foundation” of being, because the “foundation” becomes available only as meaning, even if it is an abyss of loss of meaning” . This is a kind of pre-givenness, requiring to give "through speech the word to the unspoken meaning of being." Questioning, like philosophizing, in horror already reveals the meaning of being - questioning overcomes absurdity.
Camus' concept of the absurd and Heidegger's philosophy concisely converge at one point. Camus postulates the realization that there is no meaning; but comprehending this absence, we already proceed from the meaning of being. Camus proceeds, of course, from the subject; Heidegger, on the other hand, proceeds from Dasein (here-to-be), thus, subjectively, we put up with the absence of meaning (absurdity), but existentially we always overcome absurdity. The very same overcoming is revealed in questioning.
With the help of metaphysical questioning, because the question of being and its meaning is metaphysics, we are able to regain the elusive being (the world), we rise back to earth. "Metaphysics is a questioning beyond the existent, beyond its limits, so that we get the existent back for understanding as such and as a whole" . And, in the end, we get the opportunity to understand the world and ourselves-in-the-world in a new way.
So, we are not talking about the meaning of existence in the subjective sense, which is associated with the socio-psychological identity of a person and his Self as a whole, but about the meaning of existence in the existential, that is, based on the very possibility of “being”. The very meaning of human existence is the meaning of its being, since a person is a being that exists and exists at the same time.
The possibility of “being” is given to us from co-existence with the Other, and therefore one can speak about meaning only while being in co-existence with the Other. The absurd manifests itself when a person alone tries to resist the non-existing being. And it is the Other who is able to help us jump over the abyss of meaning loss (absurdity).
