The modern human condition, as Bacon famously said: Knowledge is power. Man prides himself on abstract reason, the power of concept and logic. With this power, man conquers nature, strives to outdo the creation of nature, and wraps the whole earth in a network composed of mechanical technology and information dissemination technology. Man saw his full triumph in the material realm, and lived the most material life in history. Of course, this material abundance is not equal between different peoples and different social classes, and there are still some people on Earth who are hungry. But overall, we have more freedom than ever in our access to the material goods of life. This unprecedented increase in material wealth has been accompanied by a loss of humility, a loss of reverence for something sacred, the basic cause of which is the widespread triumph of scientific reason. We finally realize that the universe in which we live is a universe of pure matter, a universe of matter that can be arranged and dealt with by scientific principles and laws. A material universe, however, is indifferent to human suffering and fate. In this abstract physical universe, one feels infinite loneliness, an experience that is most deeply expressed in the Western world today. In twentieth-century Western modernist art, many schools of art, such as theatre of the Absurd, are direct expressions of this experience. What are the roots of the theatre of the absurd? Let us use the words of Camus. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus wrote: "A world that can be explained by even inadequate reasons is a world that is familiar to all." This is a reference to the past, to the world explained, for example, by Christianity, not for very good reasons, of course, but the world explained in this way is a world that is spiritualized and familiar to the Europeans. Camus continued: "On the other hand, in a world suddenly deprived of light, one feels one is a stranger, a stranger. His exile is irreparable, for he is deprived of the memory of his native land and of the hope of a new land." Indeed, we cannot hope for a "hot earth" in a universe that has lost its light matter, which is quite fundamental. As a result, he said, "there is an absurd connection between the actor and his background, between man and his universe." That is to say, in a physical stage setting, the people on the stage still want to prove that they are not only material things, but also spiritual beings. This requirement to be a spiritual being is obviously in an absurd relationship with its material background, which is the origin of the theatre of the absurd. If we take Camus's meaning a step further, we may also say that every individual in the contemporary situation feels himself a lonely outsider in his own circumstances. This life should have been his own, but he felt like an outsider to his own life. His life path is not arranged by his ideal of life, his life is arranged by a powerful external force, so this life is not lived by himself. Is it not accurate for us to speak thus of the fundamental nature of the contemporary condition? You can think and feel. There is a striking contrast between contemporary society and the classical world. Today, if we open a humanistic book created in the past era, we will find that there is a disconnect between what is said in the book and the reality we live in. There is a huge difference between our life experience and the life experience conveyed by the humanistic works in the past, a deep gap. This, I think, is an important reason why the state of contemporary culture has to be criticized: its disconnection from history. Is history ending in our time? Without a deep sense of history, can we, the lonely outsiders in life, reweave the meaning of human life? This is a central problem in the contemporary cultural situation.

The modern human condition, as Bacon famously said: Knowledge is power. Man prides himself on abstract reason, the power of concept and logic. With this power, man conquers nature, strives to outdo the creation of nature, and wraps the whole earth in a network composed of mechanical technology and information dissemination technology. Man saw his full triumph in the material realm, and lived the most material life in history. Of course, this material abundance is not equal between different peoples and different social classes, and there are still some people on Earth who are hungry. But overall, we have more freedom than ever in our access to the material goods of life. This unprecedented increase in material wealth has been accompanied by a loss of humility, a loss of reverence for something sacred, the basic cause of which is the widespread triumph of scientific reason. We finally realize that the universe in which we live is a universe of pure matter, a universe of matter that can be arranged and dealt with by scientific principles and laws. A material universe, however, is indifferent to human suffering and fate. In this abstract physical universe, one feels infinite loneliness, an experience that is most deeply expressed in the Western world today. In twentieth-century Western modernist art, many schools of art, such as theatre of the Absurd, are direct expressions of this experience. What are the roots of the theatre of the absurd? Let us use the words of Camus. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus wrote: "A world that can be explained by even inadequate reasons is a world that is familiar to all." This is a reference to the past, to the world explained, for example, by Christianity, not for very good reasons, of course, but the world explained in this way is a world that is spiritualized and familiar to the Europeans. Camus continued: "On the other hand, in a world suddenly deprived of light, one feels one is a stranger, a stranger. His exile is irreparable, for he is deprived of the memory of his native land and of the hope of a new land." Indeed, we cannot hope for a "hot earth" in a universe that has lost its light matter, which is quite fundamental. As a result, he said, "there is an absurd connection between the actor and his background, between man and his universe." That is to say, in a physical stage setting, the people on the stage still want to prove that they are not only material things, but also spiritual beings. This requirement to be a spiritual being is obviously in an absurd relationship with its material background, which is the origin of the theatre of the absurd. If we take Camus's meaning a step further, we may also say that every individual in the contemporary situation feels himself a lonely outsider in his own circumstances. This life should have been his own, but he felt like an outsider to his own life. His life path is not arranged by his ideal of life, his life is arranged by a powerful external force, so this life is not lived by himself. Is it not accurate for us to speak thus of the fundamental nature of the contemporary condition? You can think and feel. There is a striking contrast between contemporary society and the classical world. Today, if we open a humanistic book created in the past era, we will find that there is a disconnect between what is said in the book and the reality we live in. There is a huge difference between our life experience and the life experience conveyed by the humanistic works in the past, a deep gap. This, I think, is an important reason why the state of contemporary culture has to be criticized: its disconnection from history. Is history ending in our time? Without a deep sense of history, can we, the lonely outsiders in life, reweave the meaning of human life? This is a central problem in the contemporary cultural situation.