Category: Absurdity
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Countering the Absurd with an Argument from Desire: Preliminaries
Vito Caiati comments: I have been thinking about your intriguing post in which you write: “For the absurd is not simply that which makes no sense; it is that which makes no sense, but ought to, or is supposed to. To say that life is absurd is not merely to say that it has no…
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A Minor Correction Anent ‘Absurd’ with a Little Help from Mark Rothko
In a Substack entry I distinguished four senses of 'absurd,' the logico-mathematical, the semantic, the existential, and the ordinary. About the existential sense I had this to say: 3) Existential. The absurd as the existentially meaningless, the groundless, the brute-factual, the intrinsically unintelligible. The absurdity of existence in this sense of 'absurd' is what elicited Jean-Paul Sartre's…
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Colander Girl
With apologies to Neil Sedaka, Calendar Girl. A 'pastafarian' idiot was allowed to wear a colander in an official DMV photo in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Bring on the hoodies, the sombreros, the ski masks . . . . Story here. Does this have anything to do with the decline of the West? Something. It is…
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Four Senses of ‘Absurd’
Clarity will be served if we distinguish at least the following senses of 'absurd.' The word is from the Latin surdus, meaning deaf, silent, or stupid. But etymology can take one only so far and is no substitute for close analysis. And beware the Dictionary Fallacy. 1) Logico-mathematical. The absurd is the logically contradictory or…