Existentialism is the philosophical belief we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives. Our individual purpose and meaning is not given to us by Gods, governments, teachers or other authorities. In order to fully understand the thinking that underpins existentialism, we must first explore the idea it contradicts — essentialism.
Essentialism was founded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle who posited everything had an essence, including us. It could have pictures or words or be blank, be paperback or hardcover, tell a fictional story or provide factual information.
Without pages though, it would cease to be a book. Aristotle claimed essence is created prior to existence. This idea seems to imply, whether you are aware of it or not, your purpose in life has been gifted to you prior to your birth. And as you live your life, the decisions you make on a daily basis are contributing to your ultimate purpose, whatever that happens to be.
This was an immensely popular belief for thousands of years and gave considerable weight to religious thought that placed emphasis on an omnipotent God who created each being with a predetermined plan in mind. Your God already provided it for you.
As people questioned how something as catastrophically terrible as the Holocaust could have a predetermined purpose, existentialism provided a possible answer that perhaps it is the individual who determines their essence, not an omnipotent being.
While not necessarily atheist, existentialists believed there is no divine intervention, fate or outside forces actively pushing you in particular directions. Every decision you make is yours.
You create your own purpose through your actions. Many of us experience the so called existential crisis where we find ourselves questioning our choices, career, relationships and the point of it all. This contemporary angst arises from the growing body of knowledge that shows the existence we experience is a result of neural processes. Along with this understanding of ourselves as animals governed by natural laws and physical mechanisms comes another loss—the sense of agency or free will.
Scientists conceive of us as organic, biological machines—a conception based on evidence—and this creates a new postmodern angst. Scientific findings are undermining many traditional notions that previously gave people a sense of specialness, a feeling that who they are matters, and that the self is real.
Meanwhile , suicide, depression, and anxiety are on the rise. We are a species that strives not just for survival, but also for significance. We want lives that matter. It is when people are not able to maintain meaning that they are most psychologically vulnerable.
The old ideas are difficult to abandon because they have been around for thousands of years. Within the struggle, we gain a purpose, and feel sometimes something like happiness.
And therein lies the beauty. He still thinks that something in his life can be directed. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. There is no more human need than to feel loved.
Yet the silence of the world is most deafening when it comes to love. We pursue partnerships and companionships with people who are indifferent to us and ignore those who want us most. We roll the rock up the hill, meet, anguish, fight, break up, and are smashed by the rolling boulder on the way down.
Like Sisyphus, those who seek love must return to the beginning and continue on again, perpetually engaging in a struggle and knowing that all their best intentions and calculations are futile against the whims and unpredictability of romance.
What is more Sisyphean than downloading a dating app, uploading a photo, and then perpetually swiping through face after face, engaging in an utterly mundane task over and over, in the hope of one day, perhaps, finding a connection and meaning. Then there are the dates themselves: A charade of bad-faith inauthenticity, where you ask the same questions and hear the same boring answers, on seemingly never-ending repeat.
And even if it does end, if you meet someone and delete all the apps, the repetitive searching of online dating only emphasizes the futility of all romantic quests. But engaging in the dating rituals at a quicker pace, and on repeat, highlights the absurdity of relationships: You meet someone, date, break up, or stay together, and at the end, of course, you die.
If you are lucky enough to fall in love, of course, the intense moments of authenticity that accompany the experience are worthy of celebrating, even to the cynical existentialist. And if not, then for Camus at least, the absurd journey itself is worthwhile, as long as you are conscious of its absurdity.
Like Sisyphus, we must acknowledge the meaningless of our quests even while embarking on them. Now, you might think you want to play host. But what if that desire reflects an unquestioning need to fit in with the rest of society, rather than a true individual want?
We may or may not — we are free to choose return to the institutions that have traditionally given mankind meaning: Art, Love and Family, even Hope, Faith and Religion, but we do so thru Free Will and Choice.
We will meaning into existence through choice, action and creativity. To will something into meaning and yet to accept that it is meaningless is, of course, absurd. It makes no logical sense. Existential heroes -- be they Sisyphus, Achilles, Beowulf, Guido etc. Existentialism is the attempt to confront and deal with meaninglessness For Camus, the entire purpose of Existential philosophy is to overcome absurdity, or, more accurately, for man to triumph over the absurdity of existence.
So Existentialism is the opposite of nihilism : the nihilist says "There is no god, no heaven or hell, so screw it: there can be no right or wrong. Let's party! Or the Christian or other theistic Existentialist says something essentially identical; more on that later. The great, early "Existentialist Authors" like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy argued that the only means to battle modernist Nihilism is to return to tradition and faith in their case, Christianity; Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is essentially built around this argument.
TS Eliot argues the same in his case, the Anglican Church. French Existentialists such as Camus and Sartre, however, explicitly set out to directly refute Dostoyevsky especially and Tolstoy. We cannot blame God for the Holocaust; thus, we must blame ourselves when horror or "the horror, the horror More on: Christian And Theological Existentialism.
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert.
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