New post on EäBlog: Medicine as an Absurdist Quest in Albert Camus’ The Plague, by Robert Bonk
"When we he
ar the word “absurd”, we typically think of something irrational or impossible, something fully out of kilter with our own experiences and expectations. So to consider the field of medicine as “absurd” immediately strikes us as strange. What we need to remember, though, is that this word has a special denotation in philosophy—separate from connotations with which it is more often associated.
Absurdism, in philosophical terms, refers to a way of viewing our world as incomprehensible. It differs from the similar philosophy of existentialism. In the latter, the world has no meaning before or after our lives. That is, life has meaning (at least to us) only during our own lives; no divine being, inescapable fate, or heroic path exists. Thus, an existentialist like Jean-Paul Sartre sees life strictly in terms of his current existence—hence, existentialism...." -- Read the full post on EäBlog
Author: Robert J. Bonk, Ph.D • Widener University
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. • www2.widener.edu/~rjbonk
Original article:
Bonk, R. (2010). Medicine as an Absurdist Quest in Albert Camus’ The Plague. Eä – Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology, vol. 2 (1).
Full text available online at http://www.ea-journal.com/art2.1/Medicine-as-an-Absurdist-Quest.pdf
