Evil, Absurdity, and Nonsense: Beckettian and Wittgensteinian Reflections

Abstract

This chapter deals with what Kivistö and Pihlström call Wittgensteinian antitheodicism, exemplified by D.Z. Phillips’s and other Wittgensteinian philosophers’ work, as well as the kind of absurdity of suffering explored by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot (1951). While the general topic of meaningless suffering is a theme running through the entire book, the Wittgensteinian focus on questions of meaning and the explorations of nonsensicality in absurd drama make their own contributions to understanding the nature of suffering. We propose a “Kantian” approach to Wittgensteinian antitheodicism as dealing with the conditions for the possibility of meaning and communication. Meaningful language-use in the context of religious forms of life itself breaks down in theodicies. Absurd literature can be seen as examining such situations of “breaking down” and offering reflexive challenges to the antitheodicist project itself.