The Problem of Absurdity

A New Series from Embodying Philosophy

Lately, I’ve been feeling the results of living in an absurdly free society. The society that we’ve cultivated in the West is one of unbridled creativity and a level of individual freedom that hasn’t been cultivated before.

With all of this freedom comes new myths — new ways of living and modes of being that haven’t really existed in the past. Because of this, there must be a new kind of philosophy that emerges — one that is born out of the estrangement from ourselves that we feel.

I came to the realization that maybe a lot of philosophers were feeling this way in their own times of writing. I often wonder if philosophy, like art, is borne out of times of strife. It has been said that strife is the father of all things.

“War is the father of all and the king of all” — Heraclitus

The Goal

The point of this series is to examine different philosophers and philosophical schools and their answers to absurdity. Some may believe in different types of absurdity: for example, the Existentialist school (if one can call it that) may think the world and our existence is in-itself absurd: but the Stoics will believe that our existence and the world is a thing that emerges out of Nature, and is Divinely Ordered.

Similarly, we will take note of different mythologies that try to answer this question of human existence. The…