ABSTRACT
The limitations of Absurdity are, therefore, to a great extent inevitable. Joseph Chiari’s first point is that the notion of absurdity is untenable in a world where, statistically, more than half the population believes in a religion of some kind which ascribes order and purpose to life. This is a doubtful argument, raising the question not merely of what statistics show, but also what belief is, but it is a fact that more people feel, possibly vaguely, that life has a meaning than do not, though for many the notion could be described as either unthinking or Bad Faith. Chiari distinguishes between the various kinds of Absurdity–that of Beckett which, like Franz Kafka’s, is in the imagination and recognizes that the human condition, deprived of God, faces hopelessness, and that of Ionesco and Adamov, which is fantastic and can decide what it pleases.
