LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

The need experienced by modern philosophy to approach a being as it is felt from within has resulted in the union of existentialism and absurdism in literature which has left a profound impression on the attitudes of the common reader and hence is continuing to be active. John Wild, writing on the need of philosophy stated that –

Every phase of human existence also can be regarded from the outside, even human thinking and action once it is finished, in its deposits and results. This is the act as it is proceeding, as lived and experienced from within.

Existential literature is linked to philosophy and its writers represent a contemporary situation in allegorical form. The existential philosophers differ in their answer to the question, ‘What am I?’ Therefore, this makes the existence of the singular person as the primary concern of existentialism (and not existence in its totality, its universality) which is too often overlooked in the quest for a philosophy of the world. Hence, the probing by existentialists into the uneasiness of the modern consciousness and found within it the core of anguish. Existentialists make their appeal to the readers’ awareness of the situation that the individual himself is responsible for what he is and the more he seeks to explore the uncertainty of relationships of every kind the greater is the burden.