Existentialism: Crash Course Philosophy #16

Now that we’ve left behind the philosophy of religion, it’s time to start exploring what other ways might exist to find meaning in the world. Today we explore essentialism and its response: existentialism. We’ll also learn about Jean-Paul Sartre and his ideas about how to find meaning in a meaningless world.

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[KutWrite]

"To be is to do" - Plato
"To do is to be." - Sartre
"Do be do be do." - Sinatra

[stinkytofu]

"the meaning of life is whatever that is preventing you from killing yourself"

No truer words has been spoken.

[dppool]

"Do it or don't do it - you will regret both."-Soren Kierkegaard

[Tejmurthy]

Existentialism: choose your own adventure

[sujayshah]

"We are creatures who need meaning, but we're abandoned in a universe full of meaninglessness. So we cry into the wilderness and get no response. But we keep crying anyway."

[eagleeye]

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche.

[Karin_Allen]

This reminds me of one of the best lessons I was ever taught. I was seeing a therapist for depression and told him I felt like a flower that couldn't fully bloom: half its petals were still scrunched up. So he asked me, "What is the purpose of a flower?" I said I guessed it had something to do with enriching the earth or some such thing, but my therapist stopped me. "No, " he said, "the purpose of a flower is to be a flower." That changed my whole outlook on life. And now, after all these years, I know where he got that idea. ;-)

[coughdrop]

I went through a very deep depression after getting out of an abusive situation and my parents continually tried to offer comfort the only way they knew how: through religion, encouraging me to 'give it to God' as they say. The only thing that truly gave me comfort during this time was existentialism. It empowered me to accept what had happened to me and that as shitty as it was, I could learn from it. It empowered me to accept my depression instead of feeling guilty or shaming myself for feeling the way I did. It empowered me to go and find help because I realized I couldn't fix it myself. I didn't truly get the appeal of existentialism until I realized that it is not about meaninglessness but about one being in control of one's own life. Great video, guys.

[mannyverse]

I find it absurd that many people don't find this world absurd

[rakamazumder]

“The key to being happy isn’t a search for meaning. It’s to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you’ll be dead.” -Mr Peanutbutter

[philjamieson]

When I was a teenager, I thought I had landed on some amazing insights into life. Then I read Mark Twain and realised he'd already thought about those things, and much more about the world we live in.

[memyself]

"If you choose not to decide

You still have made a choice " - Rush

[Jejdjejbfjf]

Looks like I was an existentialist before I knew the term existed.

[AlexxxxPanda]

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”-Alan Watts

[humlakullen]

So, the meaning of life is to give life meaning...

[draculanova]

Nietzche didn't embrace nihilism, he loathed it. He was an existentialist.

[MissBlueEyeliner]

The idea that it’s all meaningless soothes me.
It means that the stakes are a whole lot lower.

[youthecat]

I'm a 59 y/o, somewhat uneducated woman who inadvertently landed on both agnosticism and existentialism at the time time in 1987; I had a serious illness followed by a devastating surgery that changed my life dramatically. I would never have had the intellectual capacity to glean much from books on these topics back then, but did find sufficient material to define for myself, closely enough, what I was feeling philosophically.

This video had me blurting out Omg, YES!" throughout, much to the dismay of the 5 cats in the same room as I. So much of what he said solidly hit home. Yet so much of it still confuses me. Like I was emphatically identifying with seemingly contradictory philosophies. Is that even possible? I need to pick up more books, I guess.

[soulure]

All of the vibrating air you forced out of your meat pipe really resonated with my electrical head sparks created from the sound receptors on the side of my view sockets.

[edspencer]

I gave up a long time ago. I get up in the morning, go about my day, enjoy what I can, be thankful, clean up and go to bed at the end of the day.