Albert Camus & "The Absurd"

Let's create a periphery for "The Absurd" from a few different directions before attacking it straightaway.

    In earlier times, we used to think of the Universe in terms of an active agency controlled by God, actively intervening and influencing the affairs of man. In these modern days of science we know better.
    All of us, at some point have realized our 'finitude' in the Universe. That is, the realization that we are just a tiny lump of matter on this large earth; that Earth is but a tiny part of this huge Solar System; that the Solar system is just a system of planets in a gigantic galaxy, and that the known Universe is enormous beyond comprehension, with millions and millions of Galaxies. Also, individually (and as a species) we occupy a very small space on the greater cosmic time scale. Human history is no greater than 10,000 years old while the earth and the Universe are few billion years old, and it seems that time will extend infinitely until the death of the Universe and we will individually live for a hundred years at most if we are lucky. This gives us a sense of our insignificance in the Universe. The feeling that whatever we do, does not matter. That there is this cold dark Universe out there, which just does not care about our existence.
    In our everyday life, we possess, and depend on certain 'values'. This is to say that we place greater significance on some acts/objects than others. In other words, values are the criteria using which we place our judgement on the world. For example, there are moral values: helping the poor and needy is more moral than, say, abusing someone. There are ethical values: communal harmony is supposed to be more ethical than, say, racial discrimination. In other spheres of life too, we possess and use value judgements, for example, someone might value richness more than poverty, some might consider the sciences to be of greater value than the liberal arts etc. We also have a sense of certain absolute values, for example, life is considered valuable in itself.
    We receive values from society, religion, law or other such structures. These social structures also respond to acts done in compliance/contravention of these values. For example, one might get jailed for killing, one might get castigated / condemned for committing a mean act or one might get awarded for bravery etc. We also create some values on our own and respond to those values: for example, a person might want to become a musician more than anything else; he might work hard to attain that value; and if he cannot make this career choice, we can imagine the sense of wretchedness that the person might carry.
    Our societies and surroundings are characterized with such an active response to values judgements / actions, that we seem to have developed an expectation that (a) Value judgements are intrinsic to our environment, i.e. it is true of our environment (and more generally, the Universe) that certain acts/objects will be more valuable than others, and (b) certain values are essential to being human.
    However, a brief look at the history of values reveals that values are prone to change and transformation over time. The values held dear by people a century ago might be considered heinous crimes today (eg. practice of slavery, animal rights movement, the practice of sati in India etc.) In certain tribes around the world, the social structures and human life is so organized that many values we so hold dear in urban societies don't even exist there. Thus comes the realization that values are synthetic, man-made.
    The realization that all our values are human constructs lies a little distance further. The Universe does not come with a manual of Values. It is not even to say that the Universe is value-neutral, but rather that the Universe simply does not care. As the Universe does not prescribe any value it also doesn't respond to a breach or compliance of values.


We do a good deed, and expect the Universe to reward us. We do a bad thing and fear that the Universe will extract a punishment. The truth is, the very notion of something being 'good' or 'bad' is result of human values, and the Universe is indifferent to human values.

"The Absurd" in Existentialism, is the notion that we have this expectation of the Universe, and the cold, dark Universe doesn't respond to that expectation.

I believe (not sure though), that the word was coined by Albert Camus, a French-Algerian writer, and (initially) a very good friend of Sartre; and the term is rightly attributed to Camus, though Sartre clearly resonated the concept in his writings.

I watched this Woody Allen movie named "Crime and Misdemeanour" a few days ago that beautifully exemplifies this notion. The protagonist in this movie becomes an active cause in the murder of a woman (though no evidence of his involvement gets generated) followed by his deep repentance of this act. He is plagued by the possibilities of hell and punishment. However, by the end of the movie, he comes to the realization of his act reducing to an absurd occurance in the scheme of things; the morality or immorality of his act didn't matter and the Universe was too large, too busy and too cold to have registered his very act.

Camus wrote many good novels, plays and essays expanding the idea, eg. the myth of sisyphus, the plague etc.

Sartre's Expansion of "The Absurd"

Sartre picked up the notion of "The Absurd" and developed the positive side of it. Sartre was an atheist, and believed that in a Godless Universe, there is no entity to provide humans with values, there is no entity to react to the deeds of humans in accordance with / in contravention of these values. In a Universe that does not care, there are no fundamental values to guide us, hence we are absolutely free to become anything we want to become and do anything we want to do.

In other words, humans are primarily ontological beings, at first we merely exist. The nature and kind of this existence, i.e. the essence of this existence is secondary, and is value laden. ("existence precedes essence") To use a metaphor, we can sculpt our essential characteristics as an artist paints a picture, and we are absolutely free to choose whatever colours we want, whatever paintbrushes we need. We get no help from the Universe and we have to make the choice of what to make of ourselves.

Sartre goes on to say that, in a similar fashion, the characteristics we attribute to the rest of the world are merely a result of our own choices - and we always possess the potential to transform our view of the world at any time. Just as it is for ourselves, the purported 'essence' of the things of the world is no limitation for our judgement of the world.

Indeed this is exactly what emotions do. For Sartre, Emotions are "Magical transformations of the World", for e.g. loving someone is one such act, when one suspends all judgement about the other person (and even one-self), takes the jump and enters into a particular relationship with someone. To quote Sartre, "It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it." (Nausea)

But this is not so straightforward, Sartre says further that humans are very uncomfortable with this state of freedom, because with the freedom to choose whatever they wish to become, comes the responsibility of becoming the same. ("We are condemned to be free"). Sartre's ideas on how humans cope with the absurd is an interesting account on human psychology.

Sartre proposes that process is characterized by a conflict between two aspects of our personality, our facticity, i.e. the sum total of all those things that are true of us at a given time, e.g. the acts we've done till that time, our age, our education, our capabilities etc. (in a sense facticity represents what we believe is our essence at a particular point in time) and our transcendence, i.e. our ability to rescind all our facticity, discard all our essence, and take a jump to redefine ourselves.

Consider a lady brought up in a homely, household environment who has been acquanted and trained in homely manners & etiquettes but never been in introduced to or trained in physical activities like firefighting, swimming etc. Suppose this lady gives birth and raises a child. Taking care and raising the child confirms to the lady's essence, her facticity as a lady who has turned into a mother. However, if due to some unfortunate turn of events she finds herself in a situation where her child gets caught up in the middle of a building on fire or drowning in the middle of a deep river, she is completely capable of suspending all the facts of her life (say her inexperience with fire-fighting or her incapability to swim) and run into the building on fire or jump into the river to save her child.

This ability, says Sartre, to reject any and all conceptions we carry about ourselves and redefine ourselves at any point in time is our transendence. And given that there is no rulebook in the Universe, we can always transcend ourselves to become something that we were not in the beginning.

When we die, we lose our transcendence and become pure facticity.

"The Absurd" makes us completely free to take any action and holds us responsible for all our actions. The inconsistent human act of sometimes taking refuse in our facticity yet transcending the same when need be is our way of struggling with the absurd.