absurdism is direction in the avant-garde artistic culture of the mid-20th century. Absurdism is part of the worldview theory of existentialism, a kind of reaction of the artist and philosopher to a series of bloody wars that swept the world and showed that human life is dust and an inexhaustible source of suffering.

The roots of absurdism

The roots of absurdism, as an artistic phenomenon, are much deeper, in the concepts of the philosopher of Danish origin of the 19th century, Søren Kierkegaard, he comes to the theory of absurdity in several of his works, however, it is presented in one, considered classical, in a whole and most convincingly. In his philosophical work Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard brings out the biblical story of the sacrifice of Abraham.

Human life is absurd and not free - such is the conclusion of the philosopher. Abraham is forced to sacrifice his son to God, for his faith in the Heavenly Father is boundless. Murder is elevated to a high rank of a sacred deed, in fact - an absurdity that brings deep suffering.

The return of Isaac to Abraham is also a paradox, which cannot be logically comprehended. Belief in a creator is absurd, the philosopher concludes, because it cannot be substantiated, but it is effective. Abraham is unshakable, because all the meanings and arguments of man have long failed, only one remains - the divine. The best proof of the absurdity of being is the examples cited as an argument for its greatness.

If Kierkegaard, and also, to some extent, F. Dostoevsky, F. Nietzsche, L. Shestov, N. Berdyaev, E. Husserl are the roots of absurdism, then Camus and Sartre formalized the theory into a certain harmonious philosophical concept. The cornerstone from this point of view are the works of A. Camus "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942) and J.P. Sartre's Being and Nothing (1943). Partly their early works The Stranger by Camus and Nausea by Sartre.

It should be noted that existentialist sentiments are aggravated during periods of global cataclysms and catastrophes. These ideas permeate the works of J. Joyce, R.M. Rilke, F. Kafka, F. Selina and many other writers, regardless of their views and political preferences. In Russia, this trend is developing and ending up in the so-called "black" humor. An example of this is the Oberiuts (D. Kharms, A Vvedensky, N. Oleinikov.

Naturally, existential ideas did not pass by the fine arts (S. Dali, P. Picasso, O. Zadkine) music (K. Penderetsky, I. Stravinsky, A. Schoenberg)

Camus in the famous myth-manifesto considers absurdity as a conflict of ideals. A person wants to be significant, but meets only the cold indifference of the Universe (God). Awareness of the uselessness and vulgar meaninglessness of existence leads him to thoughts of suicide. Suicide is a recognition of one's uselessness, a way out of the absurdity of being and a conscious decision to end once and for all the vanity of life.

There is another option: a "leap of faith" (here in common with Kierkegaard), which reconciles a person with the absurdity of existence. Camus sees him as a shelter in deceit. Hence another conclusion of the artist: acceptance and reconciliation with the fact of the absurdity of life. The meaning of freedom is in the choice of the individual. A person focused on striving to follow their own path. Then the personality itself expands the boundaries, is realized as a small Universe.

Jean-Paul Sartre in his book "Being and Nothingness" deduces the thesis: it is absurd that we were born, it is absurd that we will die. A person is haunted by visions of perfection all his life. Embodied in the matter of the body and living in the material world, he is included in the process of being. Thus, a person makes an idea of ​​his capabilities, decides: to embody or destroy them.

The birthplace of absurdism

France is considered the birthplace of absurdism as a literary movement, but its founders are by no means French. The Irish Beckett and the Romanians Ionesco wrote in French, that is, not in their native languages. Ionescu, was bilingual. It was the linguistic foreignness, (Sartre noted) that gave him an advantage and endowed him with the ability to dissect linguistic constructions and bring them to a meaningless state. The same is true for Beckett. A notorious shortcoming turns the authors into dignity. The language in their plays is an obstacle in communication, the lexical system turns into the ideology of the direction.

Absurdism is based on the relativistic (from the Latin Relatives - relative). A worldview based on the denial of knowledge of the world.

The plays by E. Ionensko "The Bald Singer" (1950) and S. Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" (1953), which marked the beginning of the "theater of the absurd", are recognized as the manifesto of absurdism in the drama. There are several synonymous names: “anti-theater”, the theater of paradox, ridicule, nihilistic.

It is believed that the forerunner of absurdity in drama was the Frenchman A Jarry with his comedies "King Ubu", "Kill on the Hill" and others written at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. It is noteworthy that the direction itself took shape not during the Second World War and not even after, but almost a decade later. It took time to realize the horror of the disaster, to survive and move away. Only after that, the artistic psyche is able to turn the catastrophe into material for their works.

In the essay "The Theater of the Absurd" (1989), Ionesco contrasts the theater he created with Brecht's boulevard plays and dramaturgy. The first, in his opinion, prefer the trivial - everyday worries, adultery, simple stories, like pictures. Brecht, on the other hand, is too poetic. In fact, the main obsessions of life are love, death and horror.

According to the author, he owes the idea of ​​the cult play "The Bald Singer" to the self-instruction manual of the English language. His characters build meaningless cliché phrases, pronounce sentences mechanically, as if their language is unnatural bilingual phrase books, where thoughts and words are reduced to simple platitudes that have nothing to do with life and feelings.

The plot, the behavior of the heroes of the play are incomprehensible, illogical, sometimes simply outrageous. Reflecting the absence of any mutual understanding, both in language and behavior, the play recreates a picture of chaos. Eugene Ionesco believes that the absurdity of his play is the absence of language as such, the problem is purely linguistic. Personality - first of all, it is an individual speech, the loss of it leads to the destruction of the personality itself. The play is a call to fight against any imposed patterns: political, philosophical, literary, because they level us.

If in the work of existentialists the absurdity is inseparable from the rebellion against the “destiny of man”, then the adherents of absurdism as such are alien to the protest and praise of the great ideas of mankind. The hero of the theater of the absurd is sure that the world is driven by an invisible inexplicable force, against which he is not able to rise up and fight (E. Ionesco "Notes for and against"). However, at the same time, a person is not able to abandon the search for meanings and reasons in which he is doomed to live, but the search is fruitless and will not lead to anything.

Waiting for Godot (1952) is the title of a acclaimed play by the Irish writer and playwright, Nobel Prize in Literature (1969) winner Samuel Beckett.

Its main characters are vagabonds Vladimir and Estragon, anxiously waiting for the upcoming meeting with a certain Godot, who was never destined to appear. They wonder why they are waiting, they cannot find an answer, but the viewer knows it. We are here, in the monstrous confusion of the world, to wait. How many can answer the question of what and why? On the one hand, Beckett believes, human life is devoted to eternal expectation, on the other hand, Godot, the embodiment of the "inexpressible", like the very meaning of life.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Beckett's plays Endstil, Krepp's Last Tape, Happy Days, Ionesco's Delirious Together, Victim of Duty, Rhinoceros, Disinterested Killer became notable works of the absurd.

In the same 50s, the Spaniard F. Arrabal came to Paris, who liked the theater of the absurd. He also begins to write, following the fashion trend, and also in his non-native language, French. His plays are well known. These are "Picnic", "Cemetery of cars", as well as later ones - "Garden of Delights", "Architect and Assyrian Emperor".

The word absurdism comes from the Latin absurd, which means absurd in translation.

In logic, absurdity is usually understood as an internally contradictory expression. In such an expression, something is affirmed and denied at the same time, as, say, in the statement "Mermaids exist, and there are no mermaids."

An expression is also considered absurd if it is not outwardly contradictory, but from which a contradiction can nevertheless be derived.

For example, in the statement "Ivan the Terrible was the son of childless parents" there is only an affirmation, but there is no denial and, accordingly, there is no obvious contradiction. But it is clear that an obvious contradiction follows from this statement: "Some woman is a mother, and she is not a mother."

The absurd as internally contradictory does not, of course, belong to the senseless. "The robber was quartered into three unequal halves" - this, of course, is absurd, but it is not meaningless, but false, since it is internally contradictory.

The logical law of contradiction speaks of the inadmissibility of simultaneous affirmation and negation. An absurd statement is a direct violation of this law.

The understanding of absurdity as a denial or violation of some established law is widespread in the natural sciences.

According to physics, the absurd include, for example, statements that are not consistent with its principles, such as "Astronauts flew from Jupiter to the Earth in three minutes" and "Sincere prayer overcomes the earth's gravity and elevates a person to God." From the point of view of biology, the statements are absurd: "Microbes are born from dirt" and "Man appeared on Earth immediately in the form in which he exists now."

Of course, there is no particular certainty in the use of the word "absurd". Even in logic, the terms "meaningless" and "absurd" are used interchangeably. In ordinary language, both internal contradictory and meaningless are called absurd, and in general everything absurdly exaggerated, caricatured, etc.

In logic, proofs are considered by reduction to absurdity: if a contradiction is derived from a certain position, then this provision is false.

There is also an artistic technique - bringing to the point of absurdity, which, however, has only an external resemblance to this proof.

About the nose of the American actress Barbara Streisand, one reviewer said: "Her long nose starts at the roots of her hair and ends at the trombone in the orchestra." This is an absurd exaggeration, pretending to be comical.

And another example - from army life, interesting not so much in itself, but as a commentary on it.

A rookie artilleryman is not stupid, but has little interest in the service. The officer takes him aside and says: "You are not good for us. I will give you good advice: buy yourself a gun and work on your own."

The usual comment on this advice is: "Advice is sheer nonsense. You can't buy a cannon, besides, one person, even with a cannon, is not a warrior." However, behind the outward senselessness, an obvious and meaningful goal is visible: the officer who gives the artilleryman senseless advice pretends to be a fool to show how stupid the artilleryman himself is behaving.

This comment shows that in ordinary language a completely meaningful statement can also be called meaningless. 3.

SYNTAX VIOLATIONS

Each language has certain rules for constructing complex expressions from simple ones, syntax rules. Like all rules, they can be broken, and this leads to the simplest and, it seems, the most transparent type of nonsense.

For example, the expression "If table, then chair" is meaningless, because the syntax requires that in the phrase with "if ... then ..." some statements, not names, should stand in place of the ellipsis. The sentence "Red is a color" is built according to the rules. The expression "there is a color", considered as a complete statement, is syntactically incorrect and, therefore, meaningless.

In artificial languages ​​of logic, syntax rules are formulated in such a way that they automatically exclude meaningless character sequences.

In natural languages, the situation is more complicated. Their syntax is also geared towards excluding the meaningless. Its rules define the circle of the syntactically possible and in most cases make it possible to discover what, breaking the rules, leaves this circle.

In most cases, but not always. In all such languages, the syntax rules are very vague and indefinite, and sometimes it is simply impossible to decide what is still on the verge of complying with them, and what has already gone beyond it.

Suppose the statement "The moon is made of green cheese" is physically impossible and therefore false. But syntactically it is flawless. As for the statements "The rose is red and at the same time blue" or "The sound of the trombone is yellow" it is difficult to say with certainty whether they remain within the framework of the syntactically possible or not.

In addition, even following the rules of syntax does not always guarantee meaningfulness.

The sentence "Squareness drinks the imagination" is, apparently, meaningless, although it does not violate any rule of the syntax of the Russian language.

In ordinary communication, much is not expressed explicitly. There is no need to say out loud what the interlocutor will understand without words. The meaning of the said phrase is clear from the context in which it is used. The same incomplete expression in one situation sounds meaningful, and in another it turns out to be meaningless. Hearing someone say: "More than four", you can not always be sure that this is some kind of nonsense. For example, as an answer to the question: "What time is it?" - This expression makes perfect sense. And in the general case, it will always be meaningful, if it is possible to restore its missing links.

Context is always a known uncertainty. The judgment of syntactic correctness based on him is as vague as he himself.

The poet V. Shershenevich considered syntactic violations to be a good means of overcoming the stiffness, necrosis of the language and constructed statements like "He walks."

Outwardly, this is a clear violation of the rules of syntax. But only the context is able to show whether there is no meaning in this construction and whether it is so incomprehensible to the interlocutor. After all, it can be an expression of dissatisfaction with the restrictive framework of syntax. It can emphasize some unusual or unnatural gait of the one who "walks", or, on the contrary, its similarity with the manner of walking of the speaker himself ("He walks like I walk"), etc. If a deviation from the rules is not a simple negligence, but carries some meaning that is captured by the listener, then even this syntactically obviously impossible combination cannot be unconditionally classified as meaningless.

And then, there are no rules without breaking. Syntactic rules are important, without them a language is impossible. However, the communication of people is not at all a demonstration of the omnipotence and unconditional usefulness of these rules. Small, involuntary deviations from them in the practice of live speech is a common phenomenon.

Sometimes the syntax is violated quite deliberately, with the intention of achieving some interesting effect.

Here is a quote from a contemporary French philosopher: “What is religious mythology if not an absurd dream of an ideal society? If every apology for unbridled desire leads to repression? " With a purely formal approach, the syntax here is incorrect. Three times the conditional statement breaks off on its basis and remains without a consequence. But in reality this is only a rhetorical device, using for greater expressiveness the appearance of deviation from the syntactic rules.

Known to everyone since school years, A. Radishchev’s “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” is written in a language that is unusual for modern hearing: “One night, when this fearless lover went through the ramparts to the sight of his beloved, the wind in the midst of his way. All his strength was weak to overcome the furious waters.

This strange sound is not connected with the fact that we have before us the prose of the distant 18th century. “Philosophers and moralists,” we read from D. Fonvizin, who lived at the same time, “wrote many reams of paper about the science of living happily; but it is clear that they did not know the direct path to happiness, for they themselves lived almost in poverty, that is, unhappily” . This is very close to our modern language. In Journey, the language is often deliberately "estranged" (from the word "strange"), in a peculiar way parodying the lofty style and the archaic. And one of the means of this "estrangement" of the language is the free use of the rules of the syntax of the Russian language of the XVIII century. not particularly, however, different from the current rules. Obviously, the violation of syntax does not lead here to any ambiguity of meaning.

Especially often the rules of the language suffer when faced with humor, for which each cliché is a serious threat. “So it happened a long time ago,” one feuilletonist regrets, “that you can’t blame anyone properly.” “Scientists are grappling,” another states, “on the problem of “predator-prey.” “The occurrence of fur products is becoming less and less”, “there is a break for the young”, “the hunter says coldly, delving into turning the saw”, “what severity will erupt”, “ the hunter, having demolished the amateur performance of his shoes, runs barefoot over the rocks and the devil after the hunting object", "the lock on the stall and the texture: "Closed" - all these expressions, taken from feuilletons, are in conflict with the rules of the language. But it is a conscious, creative conflict designed to make the phrase sound fresh and new. And what is important, the rules are broken, but the meaning and the understanding based on it remain. 4.

(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 "transfer arrows" if that's the best way to get away from an 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"

Philosophical ethical theories have a rich history that goes back to the philosophical maxim Socrates: "Know yourself". All religious teachings are, first of all, ethical teachings, as they solve the question of the meaning of human existence. This question, in one form or another, is also posed in the works of Western European existentialist philosophers. Analyzing philosophical ethical theories, we get to know the people who are their bearers.

The purpose of this report is an attempt to analyze the philosophical system Albert Camus presented in his work: philosophical essay "The Myth of Sisyphus", from the standpoint of the theory of ethnogenesis Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov. This work was not chosen by chance, for it is the first philosophical work of the famous French writer and thinker. It was written by a very young man, under the age of thirty. Therefore, the subsequent rich socio-political experience of the author has not yet left an imprint on it. It presents the worldview origins of Western European existentialism in the most refined form, which was largely facilitated by the writing talent of Albert Camus.
1. The feeling of absurdity is the source of philosophical research by A. Camus
The phrase that opens the “Myth of Sisyphus” is significant: “On the following pages we will talk about the feeling of the absurd, which is found everywhere in our age, about the feeling, and not about the philosophy of the absurd, in fact, unknown to our time.”
Indeed, this work is generated by a feeling that in our time has many representatives of the European intelligentsia, a feeling of discord between the surrounding world and the human mind, "discord between a person and his life." But Camus is clearly being modest when he says that his essay is not devoted to the philosophy that stems from this feeling. The light and at the same time capacious form of a philosophical essay allows not only to convey shades of feelings and moods, but also to present a logically coherent system of views, although, perhaps, not fully consistent with the strict canons of philosophical categories. But these are the features of the essay genre.
The depth of the feeling of absurdity makes Camus from the first pages raise the question of the meaning of human existence in the most categorical form: “There is only one really serious problem - the problem of suicide. To decide whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy. Everything else - whether the world has three dimensions, whether the mind is guided by nine or twelve categories - is secondary. In this production, Camus understands suicide not as a social phenomenon, not as the result of painful reflection, but as a way out of the philosophical awareness of the insignificance of human existence. Thus, we are not talking about psychophysiological or social pathology, but about a radical resolution of the philosophical problem of the meaning of human existence at the individual level.
What makes up the feeling of the absurdity of existence in a prosperous normal person, a contemporary of Camus? With the skill of a talented artist, Camus describes the origins of this feeling: “The lineage of the absurd world goes back to a beggarly birth. The answer “about nothing” to the question of what we think about, in some situations there is a pretense .... But if the answer is sincere, if it conveys that state of mind when emptiness becomes eloquent, when the chain of everyday actions breaks and the heart searches in vain for the lost link, then the first sign of absurdity appears here. It happens that the usual decorations collapse. Rise, tram four hours in the office or at the factory, lunch, tram, four hours of work, dinner, sleep; monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, all in the same rhythm - this is the path that is easy to follow day after day. But one day the question arises “why?”. It all starts with bewilderment-tinged boredom. “Starting” is what matters. Boredom is the result of a mechanical life, but it sets the mind in motion. Boredom awakens him and provokes further, either an unconscious return to the usual rut, or a final awakening. And after awakening, sooner or later, there are consequences: either suicide, or the restoration of the course of life.
“The elementality and certainty of what is happening are, according to Camus, the content of an absurd feeling.” This feeling intensifies in the face of death: “From day to day we are carried by the time of a bleak life, but there comes a moment when we have to take its burden on our own shoulders. We live in the future: “tomorrow”, “later”, “when you have a position”, “with age you will understand”. This sequence is delightful - after all, in the end, death comes .... In the deathly light of fate, the futility of all our efforts becomes apparent.
The feeling of the absurd becomes the source of absurdity in Camus's philosophy, as the initial ontological concept in his philosophical system, although the author nowhere speaks directly about the ontology of the absurd. Let us follow how Camus arrives at the concept of the absurd.
2. From feeling absurd to absurd


Turning to the question of knowledge of the surrounding world, Camus with passionate bitterness states its unknowability. But his conclusion is not the classical agnosticism of idealism. His conclusion, refracted through the prism of the emotional desire of an individual living with a sense of absurdity to understand “himself”, is very “humanized” in nature. Camus immediately notes two “vicious circles” that the human mind falls into in an attempt to know itself. The first circle is generated by the contradictions of reflective thinking, known since the Aristotle. These contradictions arise when the system, using the apparatus of two-valued classical logic, tries to define itself. The simplest example of such a contradiction is the statement: "All my statements are false", which leads to logical uncertainty or self-contradiction. For the reflective existential mind, such logical contradictions become yet another nightmare that deepens the sense of absurdity. Camus writes: “This vicious circle is only the first in a series that brings the mind, which has sunk into itself, into a dizzying whirlpool. The very simplicity of these paradoxes makes them inevitable.”
Camus is very categorical in his demands for knowledge of the world: “to understand means, first of all, to unify”, and at the same time, humanly selfish in them: “To understand the world, a person must reduce it to a human one, put his seal on it ". This striving for the Absolute, well understood and perceived, pushes Camus away from the rational metaphysics of Parmenides: contradictions. Reason asserts unity, but by this assertion it proves the existence of difference and diversity, which it tries to overcome. Thus a second vicious circle begins. It is quite enough to extinguish our hopes.”
In matters of cognition, the existential mind proceeds from the human “unconscious feeling, the desire for clarity”, which, combined with the same nostalgic desire for the Absolute, naturally leads to the conclusion that the world is unknowable, thereby aggravating the feeling of absurdity: “Nostalgia for the One, the desire for the Absolute express essence of the human drama.
So, all attempts at rational knowledge of the world are futile, since human thinking itself is contradictory! And again, the writer's talented pen gives a brilliant description of the internal state of a reflective individual, brilliant in its emotional fullness, who tried to soar above the absurdity of everyday existence with its inevitable terrible end - death: “In the hopeless inconsistency of the mind, we catch a split that separates us from our own creations. While the mind is silent, plunging into the world of hopes, everything is reflected and ordered in the unity of its nostalgia. But at the very first movement, this world cracks and disintegrates: knowledge remains in front of an infinite number of brilliant fragments. It can be frustrating trying to reassemble them, restoring the original unity that brought peace to our hearts.”
The conclusions of the author about the possibilities of science in its explanation of the surrounding world are also disappointing: “How many centuries of research, how many self-denials of thinkers, and as a result, all our knowledge turns out to be in vain. Except professional rationalists, everyone knows today that true knowledge is hopelessly lost. The only meaningful history of human thought is the history of successive repentances and confessions of one's own impotence.
Camus contrasts the reality of the existing, perceived world with the inability of science to explain and present the whole world to man: “The smell of grass and stars, other nights and evenings from which the heart stops — can I deny this world, the omnipotence of which I constantly feel? But all terrestrial sciences cannot convince me that this world is mine… with the help of science it is possible to catch and enumerate phenomena, thereby not at all approaching the understanding of the world…. In psychology, as in logic, there are numerous truths, but there is no Truth.”
But if thinking is contradictory, and science cannot cognize the world as a whole, then it would be necessary to admit that human thinking is defective. But the existential consciousness does not recognize this, but makes a dizzying logical somersault: "The world itself is simply unreasonable, and that's all that can be said about it"! Thus, from the unknowability of the world follows its unreasonableness. Thus, Camus transfers the epistemological contradiction between consciousness and the world to the ontological depth. It is psychologically clear what caused such a step. In the existential approach of Camus, the human “I” is primary with its feelings, reflection, pride and misunderstanding of the world around. He writes: “Alienated from myself and from the world, armed for every occasion with thinking that denies itself at the very moment of its own affirmation—what kind of lot is this if I can reconcile myself to it only by renouncing knowledge and life, if my desire hits an insurmountable wall?”
Now it is not difficult for the author of the essay to come to the conclusion that the desire for clarity, the desire for the Absolute and the original irrationality of the world is a really existing absurdity: “The clash between the irrationality of the world and the frenzied desire for clarity, the call of which resounds in the very depths of the human soul, is absurd. Absurdity equally depends on the person and on the world. For now, he's the only link between them. The absurd holds them together as firmly as only hatred can chain one living being to another.” Let us note this emotionally colored metaphor for further analysis. Man and the world are held together only by hatred!
So, the initial premises are defined, the absurdity has become an objectively existing attribute of human life: "Irrationality, human nostalgia and the absurdity generated by their meeting - these are the three characters of the drama that must be traced from beginning to end with all the logic that existence is capable of."
3 . Rebellion, freedom and passion are the consequences of the absurd


If the world is unreasonable, thinking is contradictory, then for an individual demanding clarity, trying to free himself from the sense of the meaninglessness of his existence, there seems to be one way out of this nightmare: life-denial and suicide. But Camus offers another way, outwardly courageous and honest: to live in the conditions of absurdity, without hope, without a future, but still live: “A person who has realized the absurdity is now attached to it forever. A man without hope, having realized himself as such, no longer belongs to the future. But the author emphasizes that this is not an acceptance of the absurd - this is a rebellion, this is "confrontation and continuous struggle." “Carrying out the absurd logic to the end, I must admit,” writes Camus, “that this struggle involves a complete lack of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), invariable rejection (not to be confused with renunciation) and conscious dissatisfaction (which should not be likened to youthful anxiety). Everything that destroys, hides these requirements or goes against them ... destroys and devalues ​​the proposed setting of consciousness. Absurdity makes sense when it is disagreed with .... From now on, man enters this world with his rebellion, his clarity of vision. He has learned to hope. Hell became his kingdom." Involuntarily, a remark begs. How far this is from the understanding of the word rebellion by a Russian person! Rather, it is a sabotage of life, not a rebellion.
Rebellion in Camus is a challenge that a person throws to the absurd, the pathos of the existence of a person in the absurd: “This rebellion gives life a price. Becoming equal in duration to all existence, rebellion restores its greatness. For a person without blinders, there is no more beautiful sight than the struggle of the intellect with a reality that surpasses it. The spectacle of human pride is incomparable to anything; all self-abasement can do nothing here.” It is human pride that makes Camus initially reject Christian attitudes, referring them to a “humiliated consciousness”, “impoverishing reality”. "Absurdity is a sin without God"- proudly proclaims the writer.
In connection with the absurdity of human existence in the ethical and ontological sense, Camus uniquely solves the problem of freedom. The problem of “freedom in general” does not make sense for him, “because it is connected in one way or another with the problem of God,” but “in the presence of God, this is no longer so much a problem of freedom as a problem of evil.” The writer admits: “I am not interested in whether a person is free at all, I can only feel my own freedom, ... about freedom I have no other concepts than those that a prisoner or a modern individual in the bosom of the state has. The only freedom available to my knowledge is freedom of mind and action. So if absurdity destroys the chances of eternal freedom, then it gives me freedom of action, even increasing it.
Absurdity saves a person who has realized it from the illusions of tomorrow, from calculations for the future, from faith in the future: “The absurdity has dispelled my illusions: there is no tomorrow. And from now on, this has become the basis of my freedom ... The awakening of consciousness, the escape from the dreams of everyday life - these are the first steps of absurd freedom. This intoxicating feeling of freedom in today's day for a person of absurdity is exacerbated by the fact that the final, inevitable outcome of life is death. It gives the absurd man an independence similar to the "divine detachment of a man sentenced to death." Camus writes: “The man of the absurd, face to face with death, feels freed from everything except that passionate attention that crystallizes in him. In relation to all general rules, he is completely free.
In addition to conscious rebellion and freedom, the third conclusion that the author draws from the absurdity is passion: “So, I deduce from the absurdity three consequences, which are my rebellion, my freedom and my passion.” The third consequence is not as obvious and not as justified as the first two, because the passion, understood by Camus as the desire "for the maximum amount of experience" can only be explained by the extraordinary tension of the existence of the absurd man in his absurd universe. “To live your life, your rebellion and your freedom as fully as possible,” writes Camus, “is to live, and to the fullest.”
4. Interim summary


So, we summarize the results of our consideration of the main provisions of the philosophy of the absurd.
The feeling of absurdity is due to the fact that the world is inherently absurd. Therefore, attempts to know it and reconcile the proud human “I” with it are futile. The discord between the world and man is so significant that only hatred binds them. How to live in this hell? Camus does not call to leave this world or destroy it. He offers to live proudly and passionately in this world, remaining internally free from it. Therefore, morality, ethics, duty become purely subjective concepts divorced from reality.
The content of ethical philosophical doctrines is often not related to the personal moral attitudes of their authors. Philosophical ethical teachings are in many ways a reflection of the attitudes of contemporaries. Therefore, it would be absurd to accuse the great writer and humanist, member of the French resistance movement Albert Camus, that his philosophy of the absurd was for many of his contemporaries an ethical theory that justifies permissiveness. The steady interest in the philosophy of the absurd and the ongoing fashion for “Absurdism” in France can only characterize the state of the French ethnos.
5. Philosophy of the absurd from the standpoint of the theory of ethnogenesis


As you know, one of the main characteristics of the phases of ethnogenesis is the imperative of behavior, that is, some ideal principle of the behavior of an individual in an ethnic group, which this group dictates to him. It is generated by the feelings of the majority of the members of the ethnos, their attitude to the surrounding world, and therefore, in our opinion, cannot but influence the philosophical doctrines that arise in the ethnos in the corresponding period. The imperative of behavior should also determine the degree of popularity of this or that system of philosophical views.
The question of a possible connection between philosophical systems and the age and state of an ethnos is rather subtle. We see the fundamental possibility of solving this issue in the use of LN Gumilyov's theory of ethnogenesis.
The full cycle of ethnogenesis of the superethnos is 1200-1500 years. If the time of the birth of the Western European superethnos (the system of Western European ethnic groups) is dated to the middle of the 9th century, then it should be recognized that at the moment it is in the phase of obscuration. To the reader unfamiliar with the theory of ethnogenesis, the term “obscuration”, which refers to the ethnic groups of Western Europe, may cut the ear. This term does not detract from the cultural, economic or technical achievements of Western European civilization, whose influence on world socio-political processes is indisputable. In this context, it characterizes only the age of the ethnos, i.e., it states the scientific fact revealed to us by the theory of ethnogenesis of LN Gumilyov.
Let's pay attention to the behavioral imperative of the obscuration phase: "My day, yes." How well this fits the behavioral attitudes of the man of the absurd. An absurd person lives in the present and has lost touch with the future. Let us turn to the psychologically precise formulations of Camus.

  • "The real is the ideal of the absurd man."
  • “Being convinced of the finiteness of his freedom, the absence of a future for his rebellion and the frailty of consciousness, he is ready to continue his deeds in the time that life has given him.”
  • “He belongs to time and is horrified to realize that time is his worst enemy. He dreamed of tomorrow, and now he knows that he should have been renounced.”

The phase of obscuration is characterized not only by a sense of the momentary nature of life, but also by the erosion of the ethnic values ​​of the ethnos, a sense of the frailty of being and the cult of pleasures. All this is directly or indirectly reflected in the philosophy of the absurd. On this one could put an end to the preliminary analysis of the philosophy of the absurd, as a reflection of the ethnic worldview of the phase of obscuration. But a number of provisions of the philosophy of the absurd remain outside the framework of the analysis and encourage us to continue it.
6 . A chimeric worldview is the basis of anti-systemicideologies


In the theory of LN Gumilyov, when characterizing the contact of ethnic groups, such important concepts as chimera and anti-system are introduced. These concepts are important for modern Russian social and scientific thought, for a correct understanding of the processes of ethnogenesis, including those currently underway. Let us turn to the dictionary of concepts and terms of the theory of ethnogenesis.
“Chimera is a form of contact between incompatible ethnic groups of different super-ethnic systems, in which their originality disappears. People who grew up in the contact zone do not belong to any of the contacting superethnoi, each of which is distinguished by original ethnic traditions and mentality. The chimera is dominated by an unsystematic combination of behavioral traits that are incompatible with each other; instead of a single mentality, there comes a complete chaos of tastes, views and ideas that reign in society. In such an environment, anti-systemic ideologies flourish…”
“An anti-system is a systemic integrity of people with a negative worldview, which has developed a common worldview for its members. All anti-systemic ideologies and teachings are united by one central setting: they deny the real world in its complexity and diversity in the name of certain abstract goals. The conclusion from this is twofold: either such teachings call for a radical change in the world, in fact destroying it, or they require a person to break out of the shackles of reality, destroying himself. Both in the limit give the same result - non-existence ... Anti-systems are formed in the zones of contact of incompatible super-ethnoi - chimeras, due to which their ideologies oppose themselves to any ethnic tradition. Anti-systems spread far beyond the boundaries of those contact zones where they appear…”.
In monographs devoted to the theory of ethnogenesis, Lev Nikolayevich gives many historical examples of anti-systemic ideologies and chimeras: the teachings of the Ismailis in the Arab Caliphate of the 10th century, Bogumilism in the Bulgarian kingdom, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, etc.
We will leave aside the interesting question about the conditions for the emergence of antisystems in chimeras and focus our attention on the worldview of a chimera man. How is it characterized? Regardless of whether the attitude of the representatives of the chimera has developed into a system of worldview or not, it has the following features:

  1. misunderstanding and painful rejection of the world around;
  2. feeling like exiles, both in the outside world and in the fatherland;
  3. the absence of a scale of ethnic values, since such a scale is always associated with ethnic traditions.

Let us analyze from these positions the attitude of the man of the absurd, referring again to the quotations from the Myth of Sisyphus, citing appropriate examples for each of the three listed traits.
1. — “It is worth descending one step lower, and we find ourselves in a world alien to us. We notice its “density”, we see how alien in its independence the stone is for us, with what intensity nature denies us.”
- "Through the millennia, the primitive hostility of the world ascends to us."

2. – “... if the universe is suddenly deprived of both illusions and knowledge, a person becomes an outsider in it. A person is banished forever, because he is deprived of the memory of the lost fatherland and hope for the promised land.
3. — “Faith in the meaning of life always presupposes a scale of values, a choice, a preference. Belief in the absurd teaches us just the opposite.”
— “Absurdity is not the permission of any actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden. Absurdity shows only the equivalence of the consequences of all actions. He does not recommend committing crimes, but reveals the futility of remorse. If all kinds of experience are of equal value, then the experience of duty is no more legitimate than any other.”

There is no need for additional arguments for the obvious conclusions. A detailed analysis of the essay and the last cited quotes fully characterize the philosophy of the absurd by A. Camus not only as a doctrine characteristic of the phase of obscuration, but also as a system of views generated by a chimeric worldview. However, the same can be said about many other European existential theories that have “unfortunate consciousness” as their starting point. Now let's pose a question. Is the philosophy of the absurd an anti-system doctrine? Most likely no. The fact is that in the later stages of ethnogenesis, the creation of stable anti-systems is difficult. The anti-system is a disease of young ethnic groups. To create a stable anti-system in an ethnos, a sufficiently high passionarity of its members is necessary, who are able to perceive the ideological attitudes that destroy the ethnos as a guide to energetic actions. Perhaps that is why Albert Camus offers a “soft” way out for the man of the absurd: to continue existing in the absurd world, and not to destroy it.
For Russia, as a younger super-ethnic entity that is under the powerful influence of neighboring super-ethnoi and has all the signs of chimera, the analysis of philosophical and ideological doctrines from the standpoint of the theory of ethnogenesis is relevant. Moreover, Russia cannot endure yet another “destruction to the ground of the whole world of violence” like at the beginning of the last century, in the name of abstract “universal values”.
Literature

  1. A. Camus. The myth of Sisyphus\\ A rebellious man. M., Publishing house of political literature, 1990.
  2. L.N. Gumilyov. Ethnogenesis and biosphere of the earth. L. Gidrometeoizdat, 1990.
  3. L.N. Gumilyov. Ethnosphere: the history of people and the history of nature. M., Ekopros, 1993.

A. V. Norin

Proceedings of the international conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of L.N. Gumilyov “The Teachings of L.N.

"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 a 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?”), It needs 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 struggle presupposes a complete lack of hope, but not despair, a constant rejection, 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».