What is Absurdism in philosophy - short definition and explanation

Absurdism is a philosophical position that argues that life is essentially meaningless, that it is impossible to rationally explain why life exists, and that any attempt to unravel the essence of the universe is doomed to failure. This is not necessarily a bad thing since it liberates the human capacity to courageously live against its absurd existence. The concept of absurd is related to existential nihilism. 

According to absurdists, human suffering is the result of vain attempts by individuals to find reason or meaning in the absurd stream of existence. Absurdism as a theme of thought first appears in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, and its main proponent is Albert Camus.

 

Meaning of Absurdism for Kierkegaard

For Søren Kierkegaard the absurd (which appears for example in his Fear and Trembling) is the fact that we can never really know what we are to chose in life. The term for him is closely associated with Paradox. Kierkegaard writes in his Journals: 

"What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act and yet here is where I have to act. 

 For an extended explanation see Kierkegaard's concept of absurd. 

 

Absurdism in Camus' Sisyphus 

For Albert Camus absurdism was exemplified by The Myth of Sisyphus who continues to push his rock up the hill even though it is bound to fall back again. The absurd of his action is what gives their lack of meaning over to human freedom. Camus does not want to argue that life is pointless. What he wishes is to be at peace with the idea that life has no real meaning and to live through it, pushing the rock up the hill. 

 

Meaning of Facticity in Phenomenology - short explanation and definition

In philosophical phenomeoloyg, "facticity" is the character of "factuality" and "contingency" of exsitence. Facticity can be understood as related to the "thusness" of everything which exists.

The term "facticity" was coined by Fichte to designate anything given without the possibility of rational justification, The term was later taken up by both existentialist and phenomenological philosophy (Sartre, Heidegger, Camus). The facticity of existence expresses the fact that our existence is unjustifiable, incomprehensible in itself. In phenomenological terms is states that the fact of us existing cannot be reduced nor fully grasped. 

Characteristics and examples of facticity

Our existence is a fact that is true long before we recognise it. We are born before becoming aware of ourselves, we discover our existence as a fact that we can only observe and not explain. Our own existence eluds our full seeing and understanding of it like an object that cannot be viewed from all directions at once.

Facticty as Heidegger's throwness

Martin Heidegger calls facticity "thrownness" in which the individual is thrown into the world without any prior consent or explanation. The fact of our existence is for Heidegger, as many othe phenomenologists, the one thing that can never be deduced as "fact". Our existence is of-course an undeniable fact, yet it is one that is undeniably impossible to fully explain.  

Heidegger's throwness means that we are always already alive within a certain historical status and within a certain horizon of possibilities.

See also: Meaning of facticity in existentialism 

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Husserl's Ideas I - summary

Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, also known as Ideas I, is Edmund Husserl's second major work after Logical Investigations. Husserl's  Ideas I presents  a philosophy whose task is to clarify the meaning that the world has for us in our daily lives. This is because the very life that the phenomenologist reflects on has an intentional character that coincides with an expanded notion of meaning that Husserl calls 'meaning' (Sinn). According to him, the world is what our experience refers to and at the same time the context in which we live. As a context the world is always something implicit. So, in order to explain the meaning of this implicitness, it is first necessary to stop supposing it as the foundation of the experience and recover it as the objective term to which it refers. This is what the transcendental reduction aims at.

 

 

Transcendental reduction and epoché in Idead I

In Ideas I is Husserl first introduces the subject of the transcendental reduction and epoché. This reduction is a method through which Husserl proposes to access transcendental subjectivity or pure consciousness through a series of steps or reductions. One of these reductions is the eidetic reduction, which consists of taking objects that are presented to consciousness as mere examples of essences that are obtained by eidetic variation similar to his notions in the Logical Investigations).

 

One on the key ideas of Ideas I is that of transcendental reduction as the suspension or bracketing of the belief in the reality of the world.  For Husserl, this reduction radically discovers the world as a world lived in, because with the disconnection of the belief in the reality of the world, the phenomenologist necessarily concentrates on the field of lived consciousness in which it appears and even acquires its character of reality. In other words, reduction leads us to awareness of our own lived relation to things. Only by Bracketing the world as a real world is it possible to pay attention to the world as it is lived by us. While the transcendental reduction opens the field of pure consciousness, the eidetic reduction allows us to capture what appears there in terms of essences and essential relationships. The attitude in which we live daily when we do not do philosophy is referred to by Husserl as natural attitude as opposed to a transcendental attitude.

 

Noesis and Noema

Husserl observes that after the transcendental reduction all intentional experience continues to have a double structure: a noetic side and a noematic side. While noesis refers to the way in which something is experienced, noema refers to what the experience points to as its object.​ In the intentional correlation between noesis and noema, experiences are interwoven in synthetic structures. In response to this, we can speak of a syntax of experiences that is analogous to that of language, but much more fundamental. Husserl called the study of this assigning of meaning Constitution. 

 

 

Impact of Ideas I

In later works after Ideas I Husserl will propose various ways of carrying out the various reductions that lead to transcendental subjectivity. From this work onwards it will be clear to Husserl that the task of philosophy understood in this way is to explain the origin and meaning of the world by reflecting on intentional experience. 

Husserl planned his Ideas Relating to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy in three volumes. The only finished volume was the first, which we have referred to in this section. The second and third volumes were published posthumously.

 

 

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Husserl's Logical Investigations - Summary

Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, published in two volumes in 1900 and 1901, presents for the first time his ideas about transcendental phenomenology. In it Husserl presents a sharp critique of psychologism and develops some concepts such as intentionality which will occupy a central place in phenomenology. Intentionality is described there as the property of experiences as referring to something.  Consciousness for Husserl is necessarily intentional, that is, all experiences necessarily refer to objects. 

 

Phenomenology appears in Logical Investigations as a science of essences that must proceed according to a strict scientific method. One of the methods Husserl offers is the eidetic variation, which consists of comparing several intentional objects to highlight a common essence and to study it as a mere possibility. Another methodical element is called a mereology, or theory of wholes and parts, from which it is necessary to distinguish between independent and non-independent parts of the essences of intentional objects. 

Finally, the method advanced by Husserl in Logical Investigations also assumes a theory of intentional experiences. .According to this theory, the question about the intentional meaning is answered from the perceptual experiences in which real or ideal objects are captured.  Husserl distinguishes between experiences that present their objects and experiences that are "empty". For him it is possible to think of the experiences in which ideas are grasped or intuited as experiences analogous to those in which a real object is perceived. From this point of view, objects are inconceivable without their reference to the experiences in which they are shown: the postulate of a thing in itself, independent of the life of consciousness, is absurd.

 

Thus, in summary, Husserl's Logical Investigations conceives phenomenology as a science that studies the essential structures of experiences and intentional objects, as well as essential relationships between types of experiences and intentional objects. On the other hand, the purpose of phenomenology as proposed in this work would consist of the epistemological clarification of pure logic, which would also include mathematics, based on the fulfillment of the intentional experiences of logical objectivities. Husserl’s later work on phenomenology would take a different direction, not to mention other future phenomenologists. 

 

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