I am not a philosopher, but I will try to simplify
it.
Existentialism is the belief that life only
has meaning in relation to the individual person – his emotions and thoughts. Also, it
is the individual who is responsible for giving his life meaning in spite of all the
opposing forces that get in the way – boredom, alienation, etc. Most existentialists did
not believe in a higher power but those that did believed God may have created man, but
then he left man to his own devices. There are lots of varying degrees to this belief,
so this is a simplification.
Absurdism is a more extreme
philosophy. Absurdism is the belief that there is no meaning to life, or no meaning in
the universe, so that man’s attempts to search for such meaning are “absurd” because
that meaning does not exist. Some absurdists believe in a slightly different view, that
there IS meaning, but that man cannot find it, and the only thing that gives meaning to
life is absurdism itself and that man should embrace the fact that life is absurd if he
wants to survive. This was the view of Camus. He believed man should embrace the absurd
and live in spite of it. If man could do this, this was all he could hope for in
life.
Pretty grim stuff. This philosophy was in many ways
an outgrowth of the pessimism inflicted upon the world after two horrific world wars
that left footprints of hopelessness on the world.
If you
do some research, you can define these terms even further.
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