(This is my second post about freedom by the way)

I think everyone on earth searches for some sort of meaning. What’s the meaning of life, what’s my destiny, etc. A lot of people look for their meaning in their religion, and what they’re looking for is their essence. Plato and Aristotle said everything has an essence. An essence is the defining quality of something. A knife can be a knife as long as it has a blade and if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a knife. A mug may hold liquid but if it’s lopsided and my drink always spills out of it, it’s not good at being a mug. It’s not good at living up to its essence. Just like how objects have an essence, the philosophers believed humans do too. That essence, determines your purpose, and it explains why your existence is meaningful. They believed this purpose was put into you by God before you were born. Essentialism was wildly popular until the late 1800’s.

Life became pretty bad for the people living at that time period, so it became harder to believe in everything having a purpose put on them by God. Nihilism, the belief in the total meaningless of the world, became popular around that time. Then Jean-Paul Sartre took another look at essentialism. Existentialism is like a mix between nihilism and essentialism. Existentialists believe that anything in life can give meaning, whether that’s dogs, books, traveling, your relationships, or clothes, but at the same time they believe that none of them can. So basically existentialists agree that the world can have meaning and people can have essence, they just don’t believe that essence came first. They believe that existence precedes essence. So you don’t have something predestined in you since before you were born, you were born and then you can decide what your essence is.

There’s a term in existentialism called “The Absurd”. The absurd is when humans look for answers in an answerless world. Humans are meaning seeking creatures but there is no meaning to be found anywhere, at least besides the meaning you give the world. So existentialists suggest that you live “Authentically”. Living authentically means you accept the fate of the meaninglessness of the world. To have bad faith is to not accept this fate and to look for your answers somewhere that’s not within you. So if you look for answers in your church, family, or public leaders, you have bad faith. Because the people in your church don’t have answers either. They’re just trying to do what’s best based on their own values. There are some existentialists who believe in God, by the way. They’re not all atheists. They just don’t believe in Teleology, the notion that God made us with a particular purpose in mind. So they believe he made us, just not to carry out a specific function.

There’s this anecdote Sartre had about a choice his student had to make. The student was a young man who didn’t know whether to join the army or stay home. If he joined the army, he’d be fighting for a cause he believed in and he’d be supporting his country. Joining the army seemed right to him. But he had an elderly mother at home who depended on him to get along, if he went to the army he’d probably never see her again, and this seemed wrong. So should he leave and have a very small part in a cause that affects millions or should he stay and play a very big role in just one person’s life. The point of the anecdote was that no one could tell him what he should do, because there was no answer until the young man decided what it was. No ethical theory or advice could help him live authentically. The answer he chose would be the only true choice as long as he was authentic when choosing it, and what makes the choice authentic is what values he chooses to accept.

This is in my freedom series after all, so I should probably talk about that. The fate of meaninglessness that many people can’t accept is freedom. Existentialists say we have a terrifying amount of freedom. There is no good or bad, no right way to live, no inherent meaning, and no one else on earth who knows the answers. At a time when God gave the world meaning, this idea was pretty radical. Your own life and the choices you make are up to you. Even though this may be scary to some, to others it’s great. You get to make up your own meaning so other people’s opinions of your life mean nothing. If someone says your life has no meaning, they can be wrong as long as you disagree. Like contractarianism, the responsibility of making morality, laws, and peace are up to us in existentialism. So things like justice, fairness, stability, and peace exist because we made them exist.

I see myself kinda as an existentialist. I think the world can have meaning and it’s wonderful when it does. I also think that people, to some extent, do have purpose. What makes me an existentialist is I don’t think anyone can determine what your purpose or destiny is. If there is purpose or destiny, I believe you decide what it is and whether you accomplish your goals. Humans are kinda a fluke. There was a pretty much zero percent chance I’d be alive right now, so the fact that I am makes me think I should have a purpose. I should do something with my life. Luckily, I already know what I want to do when I’m older. I think many people do what’s expected of them, if they were called dumb as a child maybe they won’t try as hard in school. So maybe most people like them assume they’re not supposed to be successful and because they believe that, they’re not. But they’re a plenty of people who were underdogs and worked hard despite adversity. Essentialism is comforting in the way that your life can and does have a purpose, and existentialism is comforting in the way that your purpose, destiny, or whatever isn’t set. You have the power to change your own life.

Thank you for reading, next week we’ll talk about determinism vs. freewill.