Absurdity

An absurdity is a thing that is extremely unreasonable, so as to be foolish or not taken seriously, or the state of being so. 'Absurd' is an adjective used to describe an absurdity, e.g., 'Tyler and the boys laughed at the absurdity of the situation.' It derives from the Latin absurdum meaning 'out of tune', hence irrational. The Latin surdus means 'deaf', implying stupidity.Absurdity is contrasted with seriousness in reasoning. In general usage, absurdity may be synonymous with ridiculousness and nonsense. In specialized usage, absurdity is related to extremes in bad reasoning or pointlessness in reasoning; ridiculousness is related to extremes of incongruous juxtaposition, laughter, and ridicule; and nonsense is related to a lack of meaningfulness. Absurdism is a concept in philosophy related to the notion of absurdity.'I can see nothing' – Alice in Wonderland'The common sense of man approves the judgment mentioned by Pufendorf , that the Bolognian law which enacted 'that whoever drew blood in the streets should be punished with the utmost severity', did not extend to the surgeon who opened the vein of a person that fell down in the street in a fit. The same common sense accepts the ruling, cited by Plowden, that the statute of 1st Edward II, which enacts that a prisoner who breaks prison shall be guilty of a felony, does not extend to a prisoner who breaks out when the prison is on fire – 'for he is not to be hanged because he would not stay to be burnt'.''Theater should be a bloody and inhuman spectacle designed to exercise (sic. exorcise) the spectator's repressed criminal and erotic obsessions.I believe because it is absurd An absurdity is a thing that is extremely unreasonable, so as to be foolish or not taken seriously, or the state of being so. 'Absurd' is an adjective used to describe an absurdity, e.g., 'Tyler and the boys laughed at the absurdity of the situation.' It derives from the Latin absurdum meaning 'out of tune', hence irrational. The Latin surdus means 'deaf', implying stupidity.Absurdity is contrasted with seriousness in reasoning. In general usage, absurdity may be synonymous with ridiculousness and nonsense. In specialized usage, absurdity is related to extremes in bad reasoning or pointlessness in reasoning; ridiculousness is related to extremes of incongruous juxtaposition, laughter, and ridicule; and nonsense is related to a lack of meaningfulness. Absurdism is a concept in philosophy related to the notion of absurdity. Absurdity has been used throughout western history regarding foolishness and extremely poor reasoning to form belief. In Aristophanes' 5th century BC comedy The Wasps, his protagonist Philocleon learned the 'absurdities' of Aesop's Fables, considered to be unreasonable fantasy, and not true. Plato often used 'absurdity' to describe very poor reasoning, or the conclusion from adopting a position that is false and reasoning to a false conclusion, called an 'absurdity' (argument by reductio ad absurdum). Plato describes himself as not using absurd argumentation against himself in Parmenides. In Gorgias, Plato refers to an 'inevitable absurdity' as the outcome of reasoning from a false assumption. Aristotle rectified an irrational absurdity in reasoning with empiricism using likelihood, 'once the irrational has been introduced and an air of likelihood imparted to it, we must accept it in spite of the absurdity. He claimed that absurdity in reasoning being veiled by charming language in poetry, 'As it is, the absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which the poet invests it… But in the Epic poem the absurdity passes unnoticed.' Michel de Montaigne, father of the essay and modern skepticism, argued that the process of abridgement is foolish and produces absurdity, 'Every abridgement of a good book is a foolish abridgement… absurdity not to be cured… satisfied with itself than any reason, can reasonably be.' Francis Bacon, an early promoter of empiricism and the scientific method, argued that absurdity should not always be laughed at, since it is a necessary component of scientific progress, where bold new ways of thinking and bold hypotheses often led to absurdity, 'For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.' Thomas Hobbes distinguished absurdity from errors, including basic linguistic errors as when a word is simply used to refer to something which does not have that name. According to Aloysius Martinich: 'What Hobbes is worried about is absurdity. Only human beings can embrace an absurdity, because only human beings have language, and philosophers are more susceptible to it than others'. Hobbes wrote that 'words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound, are those we call absurd, insignificant, and nonsense. And therefore if a man should talk to me of a round quadrangle; or, accidents of bread in cheese; or, immaterial substances; or of a free subject; a free will; or any free, but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say he were in an error, but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd'. He distinguished seven types of absurdity. Below is the summary of Martinich, based on what he describes as Hobbes' 'mature account' found in 'De Corpore' 5., which all use examples that could be found in Aristotelian or scholastic philosophy, and all reflect 'Hobbes' commitment to the new science of Galileo and Harvey'. This is known as 'Hobbes' Table of Absurdity'. According to Martinich, Gilbert Ryle discussed the types of problem Hobbes refers to as absurdities under the term 'category error'.