Opening — The Secret of the Letter Opener
Imagine a letter opener. Before it was forged, a craftsman already held a design in mind: a tool for slitting envelopes. The object comes into the world according to that design, its essence. The essence exists first, and only then does the thing exist.
Now consider a human being. We do not arrive in the world clutching a perfect blueprint that says "become this kind of person." We first simply exist, thrown into the world, and only as we live do we make ourselves into who we are.
This single idea became the launching point for one of the twentieth century's most provocative philosophies.
> Existence precedes essence.
Jean-Paul Sartre's declaration is no mere wordplay. It is a free and frightening claim: who you are is not decided in advance; your choices make you. In this essay we follow the voices of the existentialists to see how, in the middle of a seemingly meaningless world, human beings nonetheless shape meaning for themselves.
What Is Existentialism — The Trap of the One-Line Definition
Existentialism resists a tidy definition. The label gathers together people who often disagreed sharply with one another. Sartre and Camus, famously, broke off their friendship.
Even so, their shared starting point is reasonably clear. It can be summarized like this.
- Human beings have no predetermined purpose or essence.
- Therefore human beings are radically free.
- That freedom carries heavy responsibility and anxiety.
- Meaning is not discovered but created.
The crucial move is to focus not on "humanity in the abstract" but on "the concrete me living here and now." Existentialism is a philosophy born not at the desk but at sleepless nights and forks in the road.
Sartre — Freedom as a Sentence
A Philosophy Born in a Café
Early-twentieth-century Paris, a café. Sartre and his friend Raymond Aron sat before apricot cocktails. Aron said something to the effect of: if you are a phenomenologist, you can make philosophy out of this very cocktail. The thought that philosophy could be drawn from an ordinary object reportedly struck Sartre deeply. His turn toward the concreteness of daily life had moments like these behind it.
For Sartre, the defining feature of human existence is its emptiness. A human is not a full essence like a stone or a letter opener, but a possibility forever reaching beyond itself toward what it might become. He called this "being-for-itself."
Condemned to Be Free
Sartre's best-known phrase is this.
> Man is condemned to be free.
It sounds like a contradiction. Freedom is good, so why "condemned"? Sartre's answer: we never chose freedom. We were simply thrown into the world, and once thrown, we cannot avoid choosing at every moment. Even choosing not to choose is a choice. A freedom we cannot escape can feel like a punishment.
Bad Faith — How We Flee from Freedom
Sartre called the ways people flee this heavy freedom "bad faith" (mauvaise foi). His famous example is the café waiter. He moves with exaggerated precision, gestures in an exaggeratedly "waiterly" way. He performs as if he were, from the start, a thing called "a waiter." He looks away from the fact that he is a free being who could quit at any moment, who could live otherwise.
We do this too. "That's just who I am," we say, or "I had no choice," dodging responsibility for our choices. Sartre insists this is a lie. We can always choose differently, and so we are always responsible.
Camus — The Absurd and the Smile of Sisyphus
What the Absurd Means
Albert Camus disliked being called an existentialist, yet he is usually discussed within the movement. His central concept is the "absurd."
The absurd does not mean the world is comical. It arises from the mismatch between a human being who craves meaning and a universe that stays silent. We ask "why?" and the universe does not answer. When the two meet, the absurd is born.
The Myth of Sisyphus
In his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus takes up a figure from Greek mythology. Punished by the gods, Sisyphus must push a great boulder up a hill. The moment it reaches the top, it rolls back down, and he descends to begin again. Forever.
Is there any labor that looks more meaningless? Yet Camus reaches a startling conclusion. Look, he says, at Sisyphus in the moment after the boulder falls, as he walks back down the mountain. In that moment he is fully aware of his fate. And he embraces that fate as his own, not with contempt but with ownership.
> One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Camus's message: even without any guarantee of meaning, there is a revolt in choosing to live while staring the absurd in the face. In that revolt, the human being wins dignity. Neither fleeing into suicide nor closing one's eyes with false consolation, but living awake alongside the absurd. That was Camus's answer.
Two Forerunners in Brief
Kierkegaard — The Vertigo of Anxiety
Often called the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard was a nineteenth-century Danish thinker. He saw anxiety as central to human existence.
He offers a famous image. Standing at the edge of a cliff, we fear falling. But at the same time, the realization that we could throw ourselves off if we chose to produces a strange vertigo. Kierkegaard called this "the dizziness of freedom." Anxiety comes not from the danger but from the very possibility that we can choose, infinitely.
Heidegger — Being Toward Death
Martin Heidegger called the human being Dasein, "being-there," a peculiar being for whom its own existence is at issue.
Take a single weighty insight. He says the human is a "being toward death." Only when we squarely face the fact that we will one day die do we live a life that is genuinely our own rather than a borrowed one. Awareness of death, paradoxically, brings life into focus. (One must add that Heidegger's political record is a separate and serious controversy.)
Freedom, Anxiety, and Authenticity
Let us gather the core concepts of existentialism in one place.
Freedom : with no preset essence, the human cannot help but choose
Responsibility : every choice is mine, and so are its consequences
Anxiety : the vertigo felt before infinite possibility
Bad faith : the false posture of fleeing freedom and responsibility
Authenticity : living while squarely embracing freedom and responsibility
The absurd : the mismatch between a meaning-seeking human and a silent world
"Authenticity" is worth dwelling on. It is the posture of living not according to others' expectations or society's script, but with awareness that one is a free and responsible being. It is less a command to be impressive than an invitation to become the author of one's own life.
Correcting Common Misunderstandings
Existentialism is often misread. A few points.
- "Existentialism is nihilism?" The opposite, really. It admits there is no preset meaning, and precisely for that reason urges us to make meaning.
- "It means do whatever you want?" It stresses freedom, but stresses heavy responsibility in equal measure. It is not license without responsibility.
- "It is gloomy and pessimistic?" It treats dark themes, but its conclusion leans toward affirmation: live anyway.
Sartre gave a lecture titled "Existentialism Is a Humanism" precisely to clear up such misunderstandings.
A Quick Quiz — What Is Your Intuition?
Three light questions to mull over. None has a fixed answer.
1. What does Sartre's "waiter" symbolize? Bad faith fleeing freedom, or simply a diligent professional?
2. If Sisyphus can be happy, his happiness comes not from finishing the boulder but from what?
3. If everything were to repeat exactly tomorrow, and you would still choose the life you have now, why?
To refuse to force an answer on these questions is itself an existentialist attitude.
For Our Lives Today — Modern Applications
Existentialism is not a museum piece. It sits surprisingly close to us today.
- At a career crossroads: it presses us to ask not for "the path others praise" but for "the path I choose and take responsibility for."
- Facing burnout and a sense of meaninglessness: it reminds us that meaning is not handed over for free by a company or a metric, but bestowed by us.
- In an age where algorithms decide our tastes: it makes us ask again about the difference between a life pulled along by recommendations and a life of one's own choosing.
Existentialism has its limits, of course. By overemphasizing individual freedom, it is criticized for treating conditions outside choice, such as poverty, illness, and discrimination, too lightly. This is part of why Simone de Beauvoir's extension of this philosophy of freedom into the concrete situation of women matters so much. Freedom is exercised not in a vacuum but under the weight of reality.
A Balanced View
Whether one embraces existentialism or keeps a distance, the question it poses is hard for anyone to dodge: where does the meaning of my life come from?
Some find meaning in religion, some in the people they love, some in work or art. What existentialism says is simple: do not wait for that meaning to fall from the sky fully formed. Meaning is something we make, and the making itself is part of being human.
Closing — Before a Blank Page
Return to the letter opener. It was made according to a design, but a human begins like a blank page. What will be written is not yet set.
That blank page can feel frightening. At the same time, it means you can write a story that no one else could write for you. Existentialism places that pen in your hand. And it says, quietly, "Now it is your turn."
Things to Ponder
- When I say "that's just who I am," might it be bad faith?
- When was the moment I chose most authentically, most "like myself"?
- Was I trying to discover meaning, or to make it?
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Existentialism": https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Jean-Paul Sartre": https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Albert Camus": https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Søren Kierkegaard": https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Existentialism": https://www.britannica.com/topic/existentialism
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Jean-Paul Sartre": https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Paul-Sartre
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Imagine a letter opener. Before it was forged, a craftsman already held a design in mind: a tool for...