Absurdity

“absurdity: The experience of absurdity is a common theme in the work of novelists such as Dostoevsky and Kafka, as well as in the many varieties of existentialism. The early essays of Albert Camus and his first novel The Outsider are classic modern expressions of this experience. The realization that existence is absurd arises from the sense of futility and meaninglessness provoked by the perception that there is a divorce between the human aspiration towards infinity and the finite nature of actual human experience, or between the intellectual desire for rationality and the irrationality of the physical world. The world is experienced as something unintelligible, and as the product of random combinations of events and circumstances. Although the experience of the absurd can induce s suicidal despair, the realization that there is no God and that human beings are not immortal can also produce an exhilarating sense of freedom and inspire a revolt against the human condition. There is a somewhat tenuous connection between the literary-philosophical notion of the absurd and the themes of the Theater of the Absurd.”

Excerpted from: Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. New York: Penguin, 2001.