The bourgeois mind rejects the laws of the present epoch. It does not regard them as valid or, so to speak, rational. Therefore the problem of the absurd has recently been gaining ever increasing attention in contemporary bourgeois ideology. It is dealt with in the most diverse fields, to wit: philosophy of history , esthetics ; as the principle of a relativist axiology ; finally, as a conception in philosophical anthropology . It is, specifically, the last-named, anthropological interpretation of this (...) problem that underlies all its other aspects, inasmuch as the individual personality is regarded by bourgeois ideologists as the creator of cultural values, as the active subject in the process of cultural history and the active subject in all history whatsoever, so that the understanding of the behavior of the personality and all its activity depends upon the conception of that personality. (shrink)