The A-Z of isms... existentialism.
There they are, the quintessential existentialists,
lounging in a Parisian left-bank café
discussing the meaninglessness of life.
There is some truth behind every detail of this stereotype
but in its totality it’s a misleading caricature.
It owes much to Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus,
both philosophers, writers and famous public intellectuals in France,
from the Second World War until Sartre's death in 1980.
Sartre argued that the fundamental principle of existentialism
is that "existence precedes essence".
In other words, we have to create our own lives,
our own selves, our own values.
God does not exist.
We are born without a destiny, it's all up to us.
We are therefore condemned to be free,
condemned because our freedom is far from that of the carefree,
hedonistic consumer on a shopping spree.
We have an absolute responsibility for ourselves,
which can lead to despair and anguish,
even questioning the point of living -
the classic "existential crisis"!
This existential angst has not gone away -
it's the human condition, as real today as ever.
Political freedom and material prosperity
end the struggle for basic existence and survival,
but only increase the struggle
to find genuine meaning for our existence.
Why are we here? How can we make a difference?
How should we really live?
Sartre took our freedom as given,
but his partner and fellow philosopher Simone de Beauvoir,
pointed out that it's not always that simple.
In her seminal book, The Second Sex,
she argued that society and political structures often conspire
to hold women back.
Camus argued that, yes we are free, but the world itself is absurd.
He retold the classical myth of Sisyphus,
condemned forever to push a rock up a hill,
only to see it roll back down for him to start all over again.
Like Sisyphus, our task is to accept our own absurd lives cheerfully.
Wonderful though life can be, it has no ultimate purpose,
and we all end as dust.
However, not all existentialists believe we live in a godless,
senseless universe.
The father of existentialism,
the 19th Century Dane Soren Kierkegaard,
believed in the Christian God,
but argued reason and evidence can never prove that he exists.
We have to take a non-rational leap of faith.
At its heart then, existentialism is not really all about meaninglessness.
It's about the responsibility we all have
to make the right choices in life,
both for ourselves and for others.
A heavy responsibility indeed,
and just as important now as in post-war Paris.
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