Required Reading: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Existentialism

I've recently discovered the writings of Simone Weil - and they have deeply resonated with me.

I discovered her though Albert Camus - who deeply revered her and described her as 'the only great spirit of our time', and described her writings as an 'antidote to nihilism'. Camus helped publish a lot of her work after Weil's death and asked Weils mother if he could take a photo of her to his Nobel prize acceptance speech.

Weil lived out her philosophy with her life. I've found her views on compassion, beauty and attention very comforting, in our increasingly isolated and fractured world.

Has anyone engaged with her work before?

these have been my go-tos lately:

• "Tomorrow is Today" - Billy Joel

• "Come Back to Earth" and "Tomorrow Will Never Know" - Mac Miller

• "Older" - Lizzy McAlpine

• "Moment" - Jonny West

• "Funeral" - Phoebe Bridgers

• "Wondering - Julia Lester & Olivia Rodrigo (so surprised this is a disney song)

I have been struggling for the past couple of months regarding me, my thoughts and reality. I would spend my days almost constantly thinking about me, out of fear and great urgency. Which is to say I am near constantly anxious. Recently I think I've started to understand what I am. However, I am still very worried over this question as I feel like I've been going around chasing after my shadow.

What am I?

If I can observe my thoughts and create thoughts does that mean I am not my thoughts?

Granted, then I am an observer, anything which I observe is not me.

Then I am the observer and nothing I perceive is me.

So then I am something, and anything other than that something is not me?

Doesn't that mean I am nothing?

If I am nothing then why do I feel like I am something? A character, a human person?

If I am something, and anything that I observe is not me, what do I think, feel, desire?

Are my thoughts mine? My feelings mine? My understanding mine?

If I am everything doesn't that mean my feelings are me, my thoughts are me?

Then this character that exist in me is me.

I hate that, I don't want to be this character. I don't want to act according to the expectations of this character. I don't want to think only thoughts this character can have.

===

And so the loop repeats.

Please help me understand.

Thoughts?

When i get depressed i start to think deeply about all the existential questions, like how did humans get here, this isnt necessarily religious but more about the bigger paradox of reality which is even if god exists, who created god, then i apply that same logic to current problems in the world and i just start breaking things down, when im depressed/very anxious i feel so much smarter than usual like my brain is so much faster, i even tested my theory by playing chess and sure enough i was so much better than usual, does anyone relate? Depression to me is anguish but also kind of helpful because i start to understand things, anyway I struggle with 2 chronic health conditions that make it impossible to live my life, NDPH (chronic migraines) and SIBO (chronic stomach issues), also have social anxiety, general anxiety, panic attacks, depression/existential crisises and all of it makes it impossible to be happy, I've always been smart (120 iq) but I've never been able to use it because of my health issues

I'm feeling really strange, and I can't seem to put it into words. For the past three years, I’ve been desperately waiting to get a visa, hoping that once I leave this horrible country, things will finally feel right. But now that I have it, I don’t feel the happiness I thought I would. It doesn’t seem as fulfilling or worth it as I imagined. Instead, there's this emptiness, as if nothing has really changed inside me. Maybe my sadness is endless, something that will never truly go away. Or maybe I feel this way because I’m a nihilist—because deep down, I see no inherent meaning in anything. Or is it that I was just chasing an escape, thinking that leaving would somehow fix everything, only to realize that the weight I carry isn’t tied to a place? Maybe I built up this moment for so long that reality could never match my expectations. I don’t know. I just feel lost in a way that even words can’t fully capture.

So this morning I was drinking hot chocolate, and I added a little bit of espresso to help me wake up and while I was drinking I thought “damn the espresso really makes the chocolate taste prominent”. Now, 12 hours later, I was watching youtube shorts and saw a video of someone making chocolate chip cookies and she said that she’s adding some espresso to enhance the taste of chocolate… This felt super trippy because now I can’t stop thinking about the possibility that maybe it’s all in my imagination, and that we might not even be real or that we’re in a simulation of some sort, and that my consciousness is the thing that made me see this youtube short with this exact sentence included… I’ve always wondered if we were real and where everything came from, but for some reason it felt super trippy this time and I can’t stop thinking about it. Any similar experiences?

Hey r/Existentialism! I recently made a short video/trailer exploring a thought experiment: what if we actually return to Earth in future lifetimes—and how might that affect an existentialist perspective?

Existentialism generally emphasizes freedom, responsibility, and the idea that “existence precedes essence.” But suppose there’s a chance you’ll be back here—same planet, similar challenges, maybe even the same cosmic dilemmas. How would that alter your approach to creating meaning, shouldering responsibility, or grappling with life’s inherent absurdity?

In the video, I dive into #LiveLikeYouWillReturn to question whether viewing life as a repeating cycle could either conflict with or enrich the classic existential stance. If we’re repeatedly facing the same world, does it add a sense of continuity to our freedom—or does it clash with the “no future guarantees” we often assume in existential thinking?

I’d love to hear your takes on whether the concept of multiple Earth-bound lives is compatible with existentialist themes like personal authenticity, the Absurd, or our constant project of self-definition. Feel free to share your thoughts!

This will probably be short as I'm on mobile, and on a break, and I'm so goddamn tired.

I thought I found a way to work death acceptance into my life. It's done little for my motivation but I can tell myself that I will and can and way to do the thing anyway, so that I can face death without regrets. With equinamity and a sense of meaning.

Somewhere in my recent attempts to reaffirm this, I remembered Becker and all his writing about how everything is just "avoiding or denying death". Even though something in me loathes the reductionist view to make any one thing THE sole cause of human activity, I do see myself in some of the many interpretations I've been reading over the past few days.

I feel trapped.

There's little to no advice offered in Becker's analysis for how to actually live. And one of the biggest recurring thoughts I keep having is that the only answer is LIES. Lies, illusion, delusion, imagination, whatever you call it. "Just convince yourself of this or that,while also carrying the knowledge that it's completely false. Go through life with an ironic smile because you know what is and isn't real." The concept that personal meaning is impossible is literally more disturbing and unsurvivable to me than anything about death salience.

That DOING ANYHING AT ALL is just delusional "heroism", or a "vital lie"

Made worse in that I love self-anqlysis a bit too much. I like human stories and have been using my own fantasies to just try to break the rut. I have little personal projects I want to do, I long for meaningful work and relationships IRL. I'm lonely and crave love. I've wanted to go running to religion so I can feel assured that I live the "right way".

And all of these things are bad and things I shouldn't do, and I physically can't perceive a way out.

You hear those 2 words, "You're nothing." Although people use it as an insult, what is so insulting about being nothing if we were nothing before?

As the flair suggests I’m new to this, but from what I understand existentialism posits that life has no inherent meaning but we can create it ourselves. I’m struggling to understand what this means for a dead person (and if it means nothing for a dead person).

My dad died recently at 53 in a car accident. I never expected this, he lived a wonderful, happy life but it was cut shorter than most. I’m trying to grapple with the significance of length from different perspectives. If eternal nothingness follows life, then the length of our lives and the difference between 53 and 93 years seems entirely negligible. If creating meaning and purpose in your life is what’s most important, and you are able to do that at a young age, than living long also seems less important. But I can’t help but feeling like a short life is inherently a somewhat tragic one.

I just found a writing I did after I read The Stranger when I was 18, and I wanted to share it here. I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts as well.

After killing the Arab on the beach, he wasn’t remorseful nor did he feel any different than what he did when he was working a 9-5, coming home to fall asleep, then waking up only to perpetually do it all over again for the remainder of his life. He was able to find a common ground between life before prison and the solitude of his cell and continue living in the day to day accordingly. He only felt like crying when he was in the courtroom and realized that everyone in there hated him, or when he realized that although he cannot stop the machine in the sense that in the big picture it didn’t matter when or how he died even, that he still could effect the people around him and I think that for the first time in his life Meursault realized this in the courtroom. Due to paying more attention to/describing physical sensations in situations where more people would describe emotional sensations, Meursault seems to be a psychopath/sociopath, a man without morals and a weak conscience (I believe he still has one because A.) he felt emotional when he recognized that everyone in the courtroom hated him, and B.) because he still had relationships with people and the author seems to make it known that he wasn’t getting anything out of these relationships that he could really use to take advantage of somebody which is something that someone who lacks a conscience does, only has relationships to take advantage of people. Meursault even gives more than he takes in these relationships, as shown when he was writing the letter and witnessing for Raymond.) Overall, it seems that by living in his daily life Meursault naturally confronts the fact that the machine of life will always run regardless of who dies and when or how, all without even realizing it. However, after battling himself and resisting hope after he is sentenced to death in his cell, he comes to an agreement with it and finds comfort and kinship in the grueling machine that is life, which doesn’t stop or care for anybody and this seems to be the only thing close to a sense of peace and relation he knows. After all of this, his wish was for everyone who is spectating his death to feel the same thing.

You ever catch yourself staring at a wall for way too long, arriving at your destination with absolutely no memory of how you got there?

Maybe you were spiraling into an existential panic over the sheer absurdity of being alive on a casual Tuesday. Maybe you were just trying to drink your coffee in peace when — KER-SMACK!! — your brain suddenly delivers a five-finger wake-up call:

What if none of this actually means anything?

Or maybe — just maybe — you find yourself standing in the grocery store, gripping a jar of pickles, contemplating not just the pickles, but your entire existence. Clutching that damn jar like it holds the encoded instructions for surviving late-stage capitalism or, quite possibly, the last thread tethering you to reality.

You’re so unaware of your surroundings that a passerby might think this very jar holds the contents of your student loan forgiveness letter.

Like, why this moment?

Why this jar of imposter cucumbers?

Who even decided we should eat cucumbers with vinegar and call them pickles?

And why does it feel like some cosmic chuckle-fest that I am the one standing here thinking about them?

If any of this sounds familiar, congratulations! You are human, and this book was basically written for you.

Because let’s be honest — every single one of us has had a W-T-F am I doing here? moment. It might have hit you at 3 AM when you couldn’t sleep, or when you suddenly found yourself trapped in a job, relationship, or free-trial-turned-subscription that you swear you didn’t sign up for.

It slides in smoother than your ex after two drinks. One minute you’re vibing through life, and the next, you’re staring off into the black hole where hopes and dreams sometimes visit, questioning why we all agreed to participate in this weird emotional escape room with no exit sign.

Most people shove these thoughts away, drowning them out with Netflix, doomscrolling, or just hitting the continue button on life with full confidence, regardless of the plotline. But some of us? Some of us can’t let it go. We were built with a deep distrust for “just because.”

Let’s be real, we were probably the teenage hyenas that questioned authority a little too much. We need to know what the hell is going on here. And that’s why we’re here, in this book, together.

👉 Have you ever had an existential W-T-F moment like this? Tell me in the comments! We can take turns, I have many.

👉 If this chapter made you laugh, overthink, or aggressively nod in agreement, hit ‘Follow’ for more absurd truths about life.

👉 Want early access to more chapters when they are available? Drop your email!

I have to write a cause and essay, I need ideas and tips.

I initially thought writing something about philosophy, would like to write about existentialism. Is that a good idea, I need to fill 1000 words count.

What would be some causes and effects?

hello everyone!

i’m a psychology student, also studying religion (ethics intensive). i recently have been facing extreme existential dread (or it’s something completely different and i can’t quite explain what im feeling).

its not necessarily fear of the afterlife or fear of the vastness of the universe. i recently came to terms with what “the end” means and brings. im in a literature class where we analyze the book of revelation and i truly believe the end will just be the beginning of something new, and better.

i have always wanted to make a mark in the world, be one of those intellectuals that are in history books and get discussed in class. i feel like i feel so deeply and think so much it basically becomes a clusterfuck in my head. i have no efficient structure to put it down on a piece of paper like texts or art or anything. but i know i want to do and to be something.

are my motivations corrupt? i dont find any pleasure in the attention, i just feel like it is what will make my soul feel nourished and purposeful. i want to go into the end with the comfort that my ideas could bring more intellectual discussions or even possibly help someone.

i have a passion for helping others, my love language is acts of service. i especially want to disrupt a system that attacks the very people it is supposed to be helping (im american). i want to know what i can do..what more i can do to possibly feed my craving for doing something impactful in my life.

i want to be someone meaningful. i crave it. this dread and finding the meaning of existence, i found mine and i want to make a change. i want to end all unfairness and greed and help those i can. i know its a reach and it is impossible to do it all. but im also believe that in multiple lifetimes i can achieve this. just like Sumedha into bodhisattvas into Siddhartha.

am i sick? is this a mental illness? kierkegaard was so depressed in his life but we think of him still.

i would like any advice or assurance regarding this. i apologize for the long incoherent post but appreciate any traction it gets on thus subreddit.

Kierkegaard emphasized the "leap of faith," arguing that rationality alone could not solve the paradoxes and struggles of human existence. Instead, he saw faith as a deeply personal commitment to God that resolves life's existential anxieties and gives it purpose. In his view, embracing religion allows individuals to transcend despair and live authentically.

So was Sartre saying that external factors play no role in creation of our essence? I know the crux of this phrase is that we are not born with predetermined personalities as such, created by a greater power for a specific purpose. However when you read into it seems to imply that no matter what hand in life we're dealt we can choose our own essence. I'm not so sure. External factors can shape the person we become.

Ok, so a lot of subs are banning twitter because of their disagreement with Elon Musk and his distasteful gesture. Banning twitter, now known as X would be largely symbolic and a bit more political than what we usually do here, but it's your community so let's have a discussion of why we should or shouldn't make this move. I have a very libertarian view of free speech, but it only extends to speech limited by the government. I'd say if a plurality of subjectivists here want to ban the once in a blue moon tweet repost, that it's a good gesture. I couldn't fit these quotes in the poll, but here are some conversation starters:

Yes! "Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health." - Camus

No! "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." misattributed to Voltaire

Ambivalent! "I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing." Sartre

View Poll

I'm asking this cause I want to know, what possibly could be someone's lowest point of life, it can be mentally also. Cause I'm in a stage where I have literally no words to describe how I'm feeling, so i thought some words of experience could make me feel something

Anyone else get the absolute deepest primal otherworldly feeling when listening to the opening 30 seconds of this song? Like i’ve never heard anything like it. I want to be immersed into the beginning of it😭

I'm 31M. I've lived a more exciting life than most, though I'm sure less crazy than some. I still have a long way to go.

I am a child of double immigrants. Their countries collapsed around them not once, but twice. By the time they were my age; they were living in the west, having come up from a one bedroom apartment to a multi bedroom house in the suburbs. From relying on friends for food to working white collar jobs and running their own business. Second child on the way.

In the past 5 years I went from being a sales agent, to doubling my income working for the world's largest mining company as a consultant for their c-suite, being on track to being the youngest director in their history, to leaving it all out of my own volition, and now starting a business from scratch. From poverty, to riches, back to poverty once more, the future is yet to be written. Or perhaps it is written already, it remains to be lived.

I went from being a hard case with women in secondary school and university to experiencing incredible success, to working with and for one of the world's most knowledgeable dating coaches, to almost getting married to my last girlfriend yet leaving it all behind because I wanted children, and she didn't. I could have persuaded her, and she would have followed along out of love for me, but I didn't want to run the risk of her resenting me or, worse, our child. From scarcity to abundance, back to scarcity.

All I'm left with is the memories, experiences, and who I've become as a result.

And even though it feels like starting over, I feel more hopeful for what the future holds than ever. I have sacrificed greatly. I must live up to my decisions.

As I embark on the next part of my life, one thing strikes me. It never ends. Every moment is bleeding into the next moment in an infinite chain of cause and effect too great for my mind to comprehend. I will never come to a point in life when I get to resign myself. When I get to put up my hands and say, that's it. It's over. Not until the very end, that is.

Because as long as life is here, I have to keep living it. Though I have my suspicions, I can't say for certain if there is an afterlife. On one hand, all this living makes me yearn for it. For the moment of rest. On the other hand, it makes me appreciate life even more. This strange, bizarre, horrifying yet beautiful experience.

As a psychology student, I recently read Man’s Search for Meaning, and I was deeply moved by its exploration of existentialism. The ideas resonated with me so much that I’m eager to delve deeper into this philosophical perspective.

During my undergraduate studies, I took philosophy as a module, but at the time, I wasn’t particularly interested and, unfortunately, retained very little from it. Looking back, I regret not engaging with it more.

Now, I want to embark on this journey of rediscovery. I asked ChatGPT for guidance on where to start, and it provided some suggestions

Albert Camus

• Start with: The Myth of Sisyphus (essay) or The Stranger (novel).

• Why: Camus’ work is clear and approachable, and he explains key existential ideas like the absurd while offering relatable examples. The Stranger is a short novel that illustrates existential themes in a gripping story.

Jean-Paul Sartre

• Start with: Existentialism Is a Humanism (short lecture/essay).

• Why: It’s a concise introduction to Sartre’s core idea that “existence precedes essence” and his view on freedom and responsibility. It’s less dense than his major works like Being and Nothingness.

Simone de Beauvoir

• Start with: The Ethics of Ambiguity.

• Why: It’s a shorter, more practical exploration of existential ideas than her monumental The Second Sex, and it’s great for understanding how existentialism applies to moral and ethical questions.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Start with: Notes from Underground (which I have also read and absolutely loved!) or The Brothers Karamazov.

• Why: Dostoevsky’s novels aren’t purely philosophical, but they explore existential themes like freedom, morality, and faith through compelling, complex characters.

Søren Kierkegaard

• Start with: Fear and Trembling.

• Why: Kierkegaard’s focus on faith and the individual is foundational to existentialism, and this work introduces his concept of the “leap of faith” in an engaging way.

Do you agree with this layout and starting point? Or would you suggest something else? Ideally I’d like to start off easy with easy understandable/ digestible content and the base framework explaining existentialism

The thing that bothers me is how temporary it all feels. The bulb will burn out eventually, and then I’ll replace it with another, and another, in an endless cycle that seems to perfectly encapsulate the human experience. We keep striving, keep replacing what’s lost, but nothing ever feels truly permanent.

Even worse, when I turn the light off, the darkness feels equally symbolic. It’s not peaceful.

It’s oppressive, like the absence of purpose. I’ve started sitting in the dim glow of a desk lamp instead, which somehow feels like a compromise, though I can’t articulate why.

We, as humans, create meaning in artificial ways to ward off the void?

I recently started exploring Kafka’s works, beginning with “The Metamorphosis”. I must say, I’m enjoying it. The story relates deeply with me, as I find it surprisingly relatable to my own way of living. Kafka’s ability to capture complex emotions and convey profound themes through his words is truly remarkable, and I can genuinely feel the depth of what he intended to express in this book...

I find Satre's thoughts on existentialism fascinating, however after getting through the introduction and chapter on nothingness in B&N, I find the writing quite verbose. Is there another work by him that condenses his views to be more concise but still effectively conveys their essence?

3 frames of reference (probably way too esoteric, I know, but I'm goin' for it!):

• I ♥️ Huckabees (Russel, 2004)
• How I got here: 'Absurdist Existentialist' (à la The Myth of Sisyphus [Camus, 1942]) -> 'Nietzchean Nihilist' (esp. On the Genealogy of Morality [Nietzsche, 1887]) -> 'Madhyamaka and/or Secular Buddist' (à la Mūlamadhyamakakārikā [Nāgārjuna, ca. 150 BCE], After Buddhism [Batchelor, 2015]).
• I don't consider myself a 'Buddhist' without qualification: I don't believe in reincarnation (at least as anything other than matter), and I can't consistently keep all 5 of the damn precepts (I eat meat on occasion, and I'm a brewer by trade).

I've come to think of Nihilism, Existentialism, and Buddhism as 3 very similar perspectives on a common human experience and insight. My own path led from 'existence precedes essence, everything is absurd,' to 'there is no meaning, no teleology whatsoever,' to 'emptiness is form, form is emptiness.' I think there are a ton of interesting lines of intersection between these three, but I'm curious how other people think specifically about the following:

1. I find 'emptiness' a more coherent perspective than 'nothingness,' because I think there's a surplus and effulgence of 'meaning' in the world, not a complete absence of it. I think the classical Greek concept of Kháos is really profound in this regard.

2) I ♥️ Huckabees is genius in so many ways, but it kind of lays out a spectrum between French Post-structuralism and Nihilism on the one hand (the character of Caterine Vauban), and an 'everything-is-connected-existentialism,' on the other (the Existentialist detectives). The Buddhist concepts of Śūnyatā and Tathātā can bridge both sides of this spectrum depending on who's using them (c.f. The Diamond Sutra, [Mu Seong, 2000], or The Art of Living [Hạnh, 2017]), but I'm curious if anyone's familiar with non-Buddhist, analytical or philosophical approaches to the kind of 'everything is connected-existentialism' of the Detectives.

A disclaimer I want to make, since I am not that well at articulating myself and writing.

Since this was a reflection to myself about what I read, when I say He is the moral absolute, that was me coming to grips with my choice to believe in God and the Bible. Asserting to myself what I believe and the way for the me to draw closer to what God is for me.

I still struggle to fully accept it and I always have doubts. And I will always concede that God perhaps might not be real, but to me He is. Just wanted to share my experience and how I am navigating my path. Thank you once again.

Moral absolute.

Is God, the divine, the moral absolute, or is the moral absolute possible because of God?

Freedom in the existentialist viewpoint is an inescapable responsibility that we each have. Free will, gives us the ability to make our own choices, but these choices have no certainty to back them up. The certainty we may posses about God is the “leap of faith” that Kierkegaard speaks of. Belief in God transcends rational reasoning, God is a higher power, so choosing to believe in Him takes a higher essence or spirit than what a human being can understand or explain.

There’s a bravery in choosing to believe in God, despite the inability to rationalize it. For a while, I thought it was silly and simply people giving up their choice, an easy way out if you will, but now I realize how powerful of a choice it actually is to believe in God, and his divinely inspired word.

Because although I believe, and to me it is truth, there is still the possibility I may be wrong, it’s my subjective truth. But only doing things that I can rationalize and prove are right or true does not take courage, it’s simply following logic. And that is the free will choice we have, follow logic and reasoning, or follow God despite the inability to reason it with a system. It feels absurd because it is absurd.

He is the moral absolute and the moral absolute is possible because of Him. His guidance is in the Bible, nothing else outside of it is His guidance. He may use other methods, but if I study the Bible and follow it then I will know when He is using another method.

Thank you for reading. This is a thought I had at work while on break and after reading point 4. Freedom from the Existentialism article on Plato.Stanford.edu. I’m also in my journey of faith, figuring out what I believe in and why.