This presentation addresses the tenets of nihilism by examining, from a philosophical perspective, a selection of absurdist plays by such major Western playwrights as Luigi Pirandello (Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921/25), Eugène Ionesco (The Bald Soprano, 1950), Samuel Beckett (Endgame, 1956), and Harold Pinter (The Dumb Waiter, 1960).
In general terms, my inquiry into these plays aims to shed a light on the identity crisis of contemporary Western civilization – which nowadays appears to be devoid of meaning, essentially exhausted by scientific rationales, and nihilistically defined by the effects of its globally dominant technology. More specifically, I contend that the ‘performative power’ of such theatrical works can provide insight into the impasse of twentieth-century and contemporary thought (in its oscillation between a skeptical descent and a post-philosophical, techno-scientific attitude).