A third existentialist theme is that of absurdity. Granted, says the existentialist, I am my own existence, but this existence is absurd. To exist as a human being is inexplicable, and wholly absurd. Each of us is simply here, thrown into this time and place---but why now? Why here? Kierkegaard asked. For no reason, without necessary connection, only contingently, and so my life is an absurd contingent fact. Expressive of absurdity are these words by Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher of Descarte's time, who was also an early forerunner of existentialism. Pascal says:"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, and the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, why now rather than then."
The fourth theme which pervades existentialism is that of nothingness or the void. If no essences define me, and if, then, as an existentialist, I reject all of the philosophies, sciences, political theories, and religions which fail to reflect my existence as conscious being and attempt to impose a specific essentialist structure upon me and my world, then there is nothing that structures my world. I have followed Kierkegaard's lead. I have stripped myself of all unacceptable structure, the structures of knowledge, moral value, and human relationship, and I stand in anguish at the edge of the abyss. I am my own existence, but my existence is a nothingness. I live then without anything to structure my being and my world, and I am looking into emptiness and the void, hovering over the abyss in fear and trembling and living the life of dread. --by T. Z. Lavine
