Editing Absurdism (section)

== Components ==
=== Practical and theoretical ===
An important component of the absurd on the practical level concerns the seriousness people bring toward life. This seriousness is reflected in many different attitudes and areas, for example, concerning fame, [[pleasure]], [[justice]], knowledge, or survival, both in regard to ourselves as well as in regard to others.<ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Bertman1971"/><ref name="Hamer2020"/> But there seems to be a discrepancy between how seriously we take our lives and the lives of others on the one hand, and how arbitrary they and the world at large seem to be on the other hand. This can be understood in terms of [[Importance#Nihilism, absurdism, and existential crisis|importance]] and caring: it is absurd that people continue to care about these matters even though they seem to lack importance on an objective level.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Benbaji |first1=Yitzhak |title=The Moral, the Personal, and the Importance of What We Care about |journal=Philosophy |date=2001 |volume=76 |issue=297 |pages=415–433 |doi=10.1017/S0031819101000365 |jstor=3751779 |s2cid=143737564 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751779 |issn=0031-8191|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kahane |first1=Guy |title=If Nothing Matters |journal=Noûs |date=2017 |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=327–353 |doi=10.1111/nous.12146 |s2cid=146890471 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/KAHINM|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The collision between these two sides can be defined as the absurd. This is perhaps best exemplified when the agent is seriously engaged in choosing between arbitrary options, none of which truly matters.<ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Pölzler2014"/>

Some theorists characterize the [[ethical]] sides of absurdism and nihilism in the same way as the view that it does not matter how we act or that "everything is permitted."<ref name="Bertman1971"/> On this view, an important aspect of the absurd is that whatever higher end or purpose we choose to pursue, it can also be put into doubt since, in the last step, it always lacks a higher-order justification.<ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Gordon1984"/> But usually, a distinction between absurdism and nihilism is made since absurdism involves the additional component that there is a conflict between man's desire for meaning and the absence of meaning.<ref name="Pölzler2018">{{cite journal |last1=Pölzler |first1=Thomas |title=Camus' Feeling of the Absurd |journal=The Journal of Value Inquiry |date=1 December 2018 |volume=52 |issue=4 |pages=477–490 |doi=10.1007/s10790-018-9633-1 |s2cid=171870246 |language=en |issn=1573-0492|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="Hamer2020"/>

On a more theoretical view, absurdism is the [[belief]] that the world is, at its core, indifferent and impenetrable toward human attempts to uncover its deeper reason or that it cannot be known.<ref name="Baltzer-Jaray2014"/><ref name="Blomme2013"/> According to this theoretical component, it involves the [[epistemological]] problem of the human limitations of knowing the world.<ref name="Baltzer-Jaray2014"/> This includes the thesis that the world is in critical ways ungraspable to humans, both in relation to what to believe and how to act.<ref name="Baltzer-Jaray2014">{{cite book |last1=Baltzer-Jaray |first1=Kimberly |title=Journal of Camus Studies 2013 |date=14 August 2014 |publisher=Camus Society |isbn=978-1-291-98484-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1RIYBwAAQBAJ |language=en |chapter=1. Absurdism: The Second Truth of Philosophy}}</ref><ref name="Blomme2013">{{cite journal |last1=Blomme |first1=Robert J. |title=Absurdism as a Fundamental Value: Camusian Thoughts on Moral Development in Organisations |journal=International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy |date=2013 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=116 |doi=10.1504/IJMCP.2013.055720 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BLOAAA|url-access=subscription }}</ref> This is reflected in the chaos and irrationality of the universe, which acts according to its own laws in a manner indifferent to human concerns and aspirations. It is closely related to the idea that the world remains silent when we ask why things are the way they are. This silence arises from the impression that, on the most fundamental level, all things exist without a reason: they are simply there.<ref name="Baltzer-Jaray2014"/><ref name="Vörös2017">{{cite journal |last1=Vörös |first1=Sebastjan |title=Wrestling with the Absurd: Enaction Meets Non-Sense |journal=The Journal of Mind and Behavior |date=2017 |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=155–165 |jstor=44631535 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44631535 |issn=0271-0137}}</ref><ref name="Aronson2011"/> An important aspect of these limitations to knowing the world is that they are essential to [[human cognition]], i.e. they are not due to following false principles or accidental weaknesses but are inherent in the human cognitive faculties themselves.<ref name="Baltzer-Jaray2014"/>

Some theorists also link this problem to the [[Münchhausen trilemma|circularity of human reason]], which is very skilled at producing chains of justification linking one thing to another while trying and failing to do the same for the chain of justification as a whole when taking a reflective step backward.<ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Hamer2020"/> This implies that human reason is not just too limited to grasp life as a whole but that, if one seriously tried to do so anyway, its ungrounded circularity might collapse and lead to madness.<ref name="Nagel2012"/>

=== Internal and external ===
An important disagreement within the academic literature about the nature of absurdism and the absurd focuses specifically on whether the components responsible for the conflict are internal or external.<ref name="Gordon1984"/><ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Pölzler2014"/><ref name="Fox2019">{{cite journal |last1=Fox |first1=Jacob |title=Absurd Relations |journal=Human Affairs |date=2019 |volume=29 |issue=4 |pages=387–394 |doi=10.1515/humaff-2019-0033 |s2cid=204963858 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/FOXAR|doi-access=free }}</ref> According to the traditional position, the absurd has both internal and external components: it is due to the discrepancy between man's internal desire to lead a [[Meaning of life|meaningful life]] and the external meaninglessness of the world. In this view, humans have, among their desires, some transcendent aspirations that seek a higher form of meaning in life. The absurd arises since these aspirations are ignored by the world, which is indifferent to our "need for validation of the importance of our concerns."<ref name="Gordon1984"/><ref name="Pölzler2014"/> This implies that the absurd "is not in man ... nor in the world, but in their presence together. " This position has been rejected by some later theorists, who hold that the absurd is purely internal because it "derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision within ourselves".<ref name="Gordon1984"/><ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Fox2019"/><ref name="Belliotti2019Introduction"/>

The distinction is important since, on the latter view, the absurd is built into human nature and would prevail no matter what the world was like. So, it is not just that absurdism is true in the actual world. Instead, any [[possible world]], even one that was designed by a divine god and guided by them according to their higher purpose, would still be equally absurd to man. In this sense, absurdity is the product of the power of our [[consciousness]] to take a step back from whatever it is considering and reflect on the reason of its object. When this process is applied to the world as a whole including God, it is bound to fail its search for a reason or an explanation, no matter what the world is like.<ref name="Gordon1984"/><ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Hamer2020"/> In this sense, absurdity arises from the conflict between features of ourselves: "our capacity to recognize the arbitrariness of our ultimate concerns and our simultaneous incapacity to relinquish our commitment to them".<ref name="Fox2019"/> This view has the side-effect that the absurd depends on the fact that the affected person recognizes it. For example, people who fail to apprehend the arbitrariness or the conflict would not be affected.<ref name="Gordon1984"/><ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Hamer2020"/>

=== Metacognitive ===
According to some researchers, a central aspect of the absurd is that the agent is [[Awareness|aware]] of the existence of the corresponding conflict. This means that the person is conscious both of the seriousness they invest and of how it seems misplaced in an arbitrary world.<ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Hamer2020"/> It also implies that other entities that lack this form of consciousness, like non-organic matter or lower life forms, are not absurd and are not faced with this particular problem.<ref name="Nagel2012"/> Some theorists also emphasize that the conflict remains despite the individual's awareness of it, i.e. that the individual continues to care about their everyday concerns despite their impression that, on the large scale, these concerns are meaningless.<ref name="Fox2019"/> Defenders of the [[Metacognition|metacognitive]] component have argued that it manages to explain why absurdity is primarily ascribed to human aspirations but not to lower animals: because they lack this metacognitive awareness. However, other researchers reject the metacognitive requirement based on the fact that it would severely limit the scope of the absurd to only those possibly few individuals who clearly recognize the contradiction while sparing the rest. Thus, opponents have argued that not recognizing the conflict is just as absurd as consciously living through it.<ref name="Gordon1984"/><ref name="Nagel2012"/><ref name="Hamer2020"/>