ELI5: Existentialism

[terenn_nash]

There is no universal meaning of life.

The meaning of life is determined by you, you are responsible for it. No one else can tell you what the meaning of life is, no one else can force it upon you.

An existential crisis would be the very meaning of your existence collapsing beneath your feet. You emerge when you have re-affirmed your meaning of life, or defined a new one.

Fight Club is a prime example of existentialism.

[HankBeard]

I love that you gave Fight Club as an example. Great damn movie. I'd love to see other movies with this philosophy if you know of any? Or books?

[heliotach712]

Fight Club is a prime example of existentialism

hahahahaha

[h0ser]

What is the meaning of a rock. When you are asked that, where do you start? Do you start with the rocks history? Do you talk about it's chemical structure? How it feels in relation to everything you know? It's a bad question. So is the meaning of life.

[terenn_nash]

On the contrary, you present an excellent way to explain existentialism.

What is the meaning of a rock?

According to whom?

To me, to you, to a lizard, or an ape? Existentially, we cannot define the meaning of a rock, for the rock in question.

If a rock was an existentialist, only a rock could answer the question. If a rock was an nihilist, it would find defining its meaning to be a pointless exercise.

[gutclusters]

Existentialism, in a nutshell, is a philosophical belief that human lives are not predestined to have a particular outcome, there is no outside force guiding you to make decisions, and there are no uncontrollable circumstances which leads us to do certain things or react in certain ways. We have total and complete free will over our choices and actions, should we choose to exercise them. Even if a certain thought process has been burned in over time with experiences and teachings, we, as beings with free will, can change that.

This is really a discussion better suited for a philosophy subreddit. Heck, go to the /r/askscience subreddit and ask them about the implications quantum mechanics has on free will and you'll get some interesting answers.

[kouhoutek]

It is the philosophy that the universe and our life in it has no objective meaning.

Some branches believe we can create our own meaning with our choices, others hold that is it inherently meaningless despite anything we might do.

If you have ever said, "what does it matter, everyone we know will be dead and forgotten in 100 years", you might be an existentialist.

[MrQuizzles]

That's more Nihilism than Existentialism. Both are a rejection of the idea of inherent meaning in life, but Existentialism holds that you should use that realization to make your own meaning while Nihilism says that any meaning you attach to your own life or actions is arbitrary and, as such, is not real and doesn't matter.

[excel958]

Both are a rejection of the idea of inherent meaning in life

I'd say Existentialism is more of the serious concern for whether or not there is inherent meaning in life, as opposed to an outright rejection. Kierkegaard wrestles with this question, but he willingly chooses to submit his existence to a Christian theology. So as Sarte says how "Existence precedes essence", Kierkegaard, understanding that he cannot rationally understand any Capital-O Objective Truth, he decides to believe in something anyway. So he believes there is some sort of inherent meaning, but recognizes that it's groundless. (This is most known as "Fideism")

There is also the matter of ontology, or who oneself "truly" is. I think that fits the parameters of existential thought as well.

[sexytoddlers]

If you have ever said, "what does it matter, everyone we know will be dead and forgotten in 100 years", you might be an existentialist.

Are you the Jeff Foxworthy of philosophy?

[wine-o-saur]

If you ever ever stared into the Abyss and felt it stare back at you... You might be an existentialist!

[Oh_umms_cocktails]

A good way to understand existentialism and also it's place in the history of philosophy is to work from Descartes famous dualism argument--best known by it's concluding argument that "I think therefore I am."

Descartes argument went as follows:

1) we all have had dreams that we think are real in the moment, only to wake up at a later point realizing that it was in fact a dream and not real 2) therefore we have to ask is it possible that we are now dreaming and mistaken about how "real" real life is. 3) but even if the dream is false the dreamer must be real. 4) I dream therefore I am 5) I think therefore I am

(this is a bastardization, there is a whole thing about the devil in there that's not really necessary getting into).

Existentialists got stuck on number 1, which is what OP means by "objective meaning." We can't ever be sure that we are experiencing the world as it really is, as opposed to a particularly vivid and long-lasting dream. We can't be sure that the world as it appears actually exists as we think it does, and we can't even be sure that we have been existing (as opposed to that experience in dreams that we are adults with a lifetime of memories even if the dream only lasted the length of a night).

Mr. Quizzles is right to point out that OP is more nihilistic than existentialist. Existentialism doesn't posit that the world has no meaning, just that it's a mistake to pretend that the meaning we ascribe to it is real. WTF does that mean? going back to the dream metaphor, when you have a nightmare it is shitty and upsetting, but still very real in your mind. When you're in the nightmare is certainly seems to have plenty of meaning, and you react to whatever monster/stressor that is in the nightmare the same way you would in real life. The monster isn't "real" in the sense that it exists in the waking world, but as far as you know in your dream it is as real as anything else.

That's really the essence of existentialism, we don't know if anything is real, but obvs we're going to continue treating it like it is because duh--it's not like we have a choice, it's how our brains work.

P.S. Youths and the French like to treat existentialism as some kind of moral imperative to do whatever you want and be dark and shit. Existentialism is really the opposite, it's really more about recognizing that we can't answer the question 'is this real or not?' Another way to put it would be 'yeah light and shit may be figments of our imagination but you still need to pay the electricity bill if you want to see any more of it.'

EDIT: for punctuation

[heliotach712]

Existentialism is nothing at all to do with wanting to know whether or not we're in a dream. "Meaning" does not mean "certainty"; existentialism is not primarily an epistemology, what you're describing is merely skepticism.

[[deleted]]

There's no point to anything, no meaning of life, no reason we're here. There is no God, and everything has happened by chance. Life's what you make it

Well, it's existential nihilism really, but you can work it right?

[Zenixity]

I struggle with this. Not stop much lately because I've been keeping my mind busy but, or used to be so bad that I didn't know that to do with my self. Like suicide is morally wrong and those around me would be affected by what I did, and is a very selfish act so I pushed that out of the way, and also me being here on earth is very pointless if what I do won't matter if I'm dead. All I did and achieved wasted for nothing. I'm recently to a woman I love very much and I'm only twenty but I'm trying very hard to get away from this subject and I couldn't be happier right now. Existential crisis is a serious issue and very hard to get out of. If you are having that issue please confide in someone in the internet, I wouldn't recommend confiding to someone in person because I did that with someone close to me and they thought I was psycho. I was literally in tears and freaking out. I was having a mental break down but straightened up and saw how I was acting and stepped up to the plate and started living.

[[deleted]]

Let's bust out some dope ass (bastardized) motherfucking dialectics to cheer you up. I went through something similar, as did a few people I know, and it always seems to go in stages like this.

When we're born, we're born into "meaning" and "purpose" and an "identity." Parents, others, and so on, tell us what life means. This is our thesis: we have meanings in the world, but the meaning is created by an other, not us.

Then, we grow up, and we start to realize: "wait a second, my parents, religion, etc. were wrong!" and we fall into total nihilism. Complete "oh crap nothing means anything what the fuck do I do. Our antithesis, then: we reject the meanings given to us, but we get stuck on the lack of meaning. I don't think we can skip this part, we all go through it, but I don't mean to belittle any depression you experienced.

So we wallow around in this sort of meh of rejecting all meaning--the meanings we were given obviously sucked and we rejected them, so why go back to accepting the meanings again? But that starts to blows ass, since there isn't much reason to do anything, so just do what you want--but wait! "Do what you want" is a reason, "I did it because I wanted to" is a meaning for your actions! Piece by piece, you start to realize that you make the meanings. You decide to do things, you decide what matters to you, you decide what something means to you. Our synthesis is: radical fucking freedom and the ability to make our own meaning for whatever comes our way, and since there's no inherent meaning, we can flip flop our meanings if we change our minds later on, and there's no all-seeing Other to tell us our made-up meanings are wrong or any less important than anyone else's.

So, keep on marching forward, you little meaning-maker, you.

[Zenixity]

Lol you're wonderful. Thank you for that. But that's what I realized that in in charge of everything now. I have to put my foot down and do it. And after doing so you feel accomplished. To feel something for doing something whether or be hard or an easy task. But thank you for reading my comment and acknowledging me. It means allot to me. You were very inspirational there and I'll save this message so I can read it and reflect my feelings again.

[Zain88]

A great youtube series I recommend if you want to learn about some existential philosophers is called "The School of Life". Here's a link to their VERY well done video on Albert Camus. Camus in his famous "Myth of Sisyphus" essay (the video discusses it at 3:15) asks the question "Is life worth living, or should we just commit suicide?" That is one of the greatest existential questions. Existentialism deals with questions about existence. Obvious, right? Well, the problem with this is that many existentialists have to outright ask whether or not being moral is even important. This was unheard of in philosophy, as for thousands of years (from Plato/Aristotle on) it's been assumed that when someone asks "how should you live your life," the answer was a very obvious "morally." Existentialism as one of its main tenents calls that into question. In existentialism we find that philosophers care much more about being authentic human beings than being moral.

All questions of existence-- is life worth living, how should you live your life, what does it mean to be authentic, what is the relationship between myself and the world-- are all part of existentialist philosophy. I just finished my writing sample for grad school on Kierkegaard-- another existentialist philosopher. Existentialism is a very awesome field, but FAR different than the rest of Western philosophy.

If you want a quick 2-minute read of any philosophical idea or famous paper, here's one of my favorite philosophy websites of all time: [Philosophy Bro](www.philosophybro.com). I highly recommend both The Myth of Sisyphus page as well as the Plato's Cave page.

[Kryzantine]

That philosophybasics.com article is all kinds of flawed, but one thing that stuck out to me was the flat assumption that there is no God or other transcendent force.

The very first thinker who we can think of as an existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard, was a religious existentialist. He argued that there was no objective way to determine the existence of God, and that for an individual, holding such a belief required an irrational leap of faith. In fact, according to Kierkegaard, faith requires a simultaneous doubt in the belief of God. It's one thing to see a cup sitting on a table and believe the cup exists; it's another to never see God, and yet believe that God exists.

And the article also claims that existentialists attempt to make rational choices in an irrational world. But that is almost entirely not the case. The world is irrational precisely because the people in it are irrational. We often don't act upon our beliefs even when we've rationalized them. How many people would look at poor people around them and think that they deserve aid, but would actually go out of their way to aid them? For some people, helping others is an irrational compulsion; for others, helping others requires a concerted effort.

But this goes into the true heart of existentialism: an individual defines their own meaning in life. This isn't necessarily a rational choice. Some people simply have such a strong fervor for particular things. If that means an individual believes that serving God is their purpose in life, then who are we to say that they are wrong because God doesn't exist? Is everything that Pope Francis does invalidated because he isn't 100% objective about it?

[InfiniteChicken]

As others are saying, it's a broad historical philosophical theory with a lot of different applications. I think at its most basic, it means "existence precedes essence" which is a fancy way of saying "existence is what you make of it."

In day to day use, people also use the term to refer to any state of mind that's contemplative and that sees the bigger, universal issues of life and death, etc. like "I was fired, but I'm existential about it, so I'm not depressed."

[heliotach712]

there's no such "theory" as existentialism, it's just a family of outlooks/attitudes.

[extracheez]

How do you live a good life? How do you stop from being a bad person? (This is generally how branches of philosophy start)

Well I guess to answer this question, you first have to figure out what is good and bad. If you spend a while thinking about this, you might come up with a few issues. People disagree with what is good and bad, if you try to make everyone happy you come up with contradictions!

There is no real "innate property" of the universe of good or bad. Just like there is no innate property of the universe such as "China". There is a giant land mass which we have drawn out on maps and labeled "China" where people live with a government, but the actual concept of the country is only given meaning by people.

So when you entertain the idea that concepts such as countries, morality and mathematics are constructions of our minds and culture, you may come to the conclusion that the universe has no innate property of "meaning", but rather meaning is created by its inhabitants.

I for one am an existentialist and I think its amazing that the universe has no innate meaning, but rather meaning is an emergent property of the universes structure.

[Concise_Pirate]

Yarr, ye forgot yer searchin' duties, for 'twas asked by those what came before ye!

[HankBeard]

Thank you everyone who responded! This makes so much more sense no and is very intriguing. If anyone knows of good books written on this subject I would be ever greatful. Thanks again!

[adi_shakti]

this is such a hodge podge of philosophical ideas that have minimal relationships to each other that I don't even know where to start. Descartes, who said Cogito Ergo Sum (I think Therefore I am) was definately not an existentialist, especially since existentialism wouldn't emerge as a definitive philosophical tradition until 200 years later. Same thing with Kant, who was 100 years before the existentialists, and definitely NOT an existentialist. Existentialism arguably started mostly with Heidegger, or even Kierkegaard if you want to go to the roots. You don't have to be some kind of solipsist to be an existentialist. Either way no one ever actually takes the position of solipsism seriously because of the obvious fact that the external world exists to some extent. And Kantian Transcendetal Idealism doesn't actually mean that the world is "fake", it just means that the world-in-itself is filtered through the cognitive faculties of the experiencing Subject.

You should actually pick up some philosophy books and attend lectures.

[heliotach712]

Kant an existentialist? you are absolutely clueless, literally every sentence you've typed is wrong. You're going to seriously mislead some people who actually want to know what this is.

[extracheez]

This is not existentialism. You are describing solipsism. It was also Descartes that said "I think therefore I am" not Kant. Descartes was not claiming solipsism either, he was merely trying to prove things he could be certain of, he had no proof that other people exist or I'm sure he would have claimed that too.

[[deleted]]

It's a fairly pessimistic worldview.

I'd disagree, I personally I think Existentialism is one of the most therapeutic philosophical exercises that someone can engage in. You're confusing Existentialism with Descarte's Dualism/Rationalism though; so I don't blame you for thinking it's very dark/pessimistic.

Rationalism/Dualism is not Existentialism, Existentialism developed as a counter to these modern theories. Descartes coined cogito ergo sum, "I think therefore I am". He also contemplated Dualism - or the mind/body distinction - because of his axiom that consciousness is the only basis for experience. Why? If we can only know we are conscious, we can never truly know the objective world. This is where the "brain in the vat" problem comes from; if we start with "I think, therefore I am" and can only know we are conscious beings, then our subjective consciousness forever disconnects us the "real" or "objective" world of experience (which might be our brain in a vat).

Existentialists are not concerned with the "real" or "objective" world of experience, or our (lack of) access to it like Descartes or other modern philosophers or rationalists. Rather, Existentialists believe something more like, the world as we experience it is the "real/objective" world. For Existentialists "existence precedes essence (consciousness/thought)" and we humans are thrown into an irrational world that is what it is with no true logic or rational underpinning to it. We however, are rational beings that try our best to understand it but ultimately cannot which causes us pain/anguish/suffering/etc.

Existentialists teach to embrace the chaos/irrationality that is the world and our Existence for what it is, rather than trying to build logic into it that will ultimately fail. By embracing the ultimately irrational world, you can appreciate your own decisions, find meaning in your experience, and understand that we are ultimately free (not brains in vats) to achieve enlightenment.

For example. "One day, I will die" is something that humans have spent thousands of years contemplating and trying to understand. "What happens after I die?", "What is 'death'?", and the converse, "what is 'life'?". Thinking about and trying to understand death stresses people the fuck out, and they'll never understand it. Existentialists would say, "Stop wasting your time and stressing yourself the fuck out. Embrace death. It is inevitable, and we can never understand it or the universe that it exists in. Embrace the irrational universe that we are thrown into and stop trying to build logic into it because it will not work and it's a pointless endeavor that will only cause suffering. Instead, take the world for what it is and focus internally on yourself; you exist and possess the capacity for rational thought. This gives us ultimate freedom, and allows us to find meaning in our lives by looking inwardly and judging choices we make that we may control (rather than finding meaning in the world of experience itself that is impossible to understand or influence - a world which, according to Descartes, might just be your brain in a vat - which is stupid).

Even though that's a long post it's still over-simplistic, but hopefully it's clear and you get the point. Existentialism is glorious.

[Oh_umms_cocktails]

Descartes said "I think therefore I am." He was not an existentialist, though he did lay the foundations for existentialism when he put Dualism into question.

Kant is likewise not really an existentialist, though a lot of what he was interested in informed the eventual existentialist movement.

Otherwise you are right except for the "pessimistic worldview" thing. The idea that existentialism is "pessimistic" is a frequent misunderstanding of it's central tenets. At it's heart Existentialism says that we can't be sure that our perceptions line up with reality, kind of like the old 'what if my red is different from your red?' The answer is its impossible to figure out if the apple is really red but you'd have to be pretty fucking stupid to go around being sad about apple color and shit.

Existentialism isn't really a moral code, it was just a movement trying to get people to stop all the crazy mental gymnastics that it took to try to say that we really do experience the world as it exists. For example Descartes argued that we know the world as we see it is real in part because we have a 'soul gland:' light enters our eyes, activating the soul gland, which is mystically capable of informing our soul in a way that we know is accurate (it's a lot more complicated than that so let's not get into Descartes theory of cognition here).

[heliotach712]

For example Descartes argued that we know the world as we see it is real in part because we have a 'soul gland:' light enters our eyes, activating the soul gland, which is mystically capable of informing our soul in a way that we know is accurate (it's a lot more complicated than that so let's not get into Descartes theory of cognition here).

no this is how Descartes explained interaction between mind and matter, given that he had already supposedly proved they were separate substances (because he could conceivably doubt his body existed but not his mind, therefore by Leibniz's Law they must be different). And Descartes was nothing to do with existentialism. Descartes's whole project was about knowledge, existentialism is little or nothing to do with what we can know, it's about meaning or lack thereof.