# What is existentialism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 11, 2016, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412 "2016-08-11T04:56:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/41 "2016-08-12T04:57:51Z")
For the beginners I point to a graduate philosopher that used Rick and Morty to explain existentialism as Camus saw it: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/-JFA764oTZo/maxresdefault.jpg "Is Rick and Morty Existentialist? - Philosophy Tube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JFA764oTZo) > [@](#): > > In the Adventures of Rick and Morty a fourteen-year-old nervous wreck and his grandfather Rick who is a mega scientist and inter dimensional adventurer and a massive, massive asshole and the show is bleakly hilarious and funny and at times powerfully moving and weirdly addictive as well; I showed my girlfriend the pilot episode one morning and when I got home that evening she had watched the entire for this series. > > In that old video I said that the show can be read as a critique of Western attitudes towards science but it’s also a cool illustration of a particular variety of existentialism. Existentialism is a broad church but the show is a cool way to specifically understand the ideas of Albert Camus, Camus is concerned with what he called The Absurd, with a capital A, which he saw as the contradiction between people’s desire to find meaning in life and the universe and the universe itself which is completely meaningless and he compared human existence to Sisyphus, the character in the Greek myth who is condemned to roll a boulder up a hill every day and then watch it roll back down again. Pointlessly forever. And he thought that contradiction could make you sick, it can keep you up at night wondering what to do when faced with a meaningless universe that you can’t help but look for meaning in, and he thought there were three possible responses to the Absurd: > > Suicide, denial, or acceptance. In the end he advises that we accept the Absurd.\*\* Accept that life is meaningless but that’s not an acceptance that should get us down\*\*. It’s not like Vladimir’s acceptance at the end of _Waiting for Godot_ when he realizes it is all pointless, and he has a bit of a breakdown. Camus thought that accepting the absurd would be revolutionary literally an act of revolt. We realize that life is meaningless, we look at it square in the face and we keep going anyway, damn it! > > And if we can, we enjoy it. Sisyphus, you get your ass back to that rock and you own that pointless task, life is revolting in both senses of the word. > > Cool historical fact: a lot of that fighting revolutionary spirit came from the fact that Camus himself was part of the French resistance against the Nazi occupation and he wrote his book _The Myth of Sisyphus_ in Nazi-occupied France. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/42 "2016-08-12T06:16:47Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > It is a comforting lie, because the alternative is having no framework. False dichotomy - there are any number of alternative possible frameworks. > [@](#): > > And yes humans are entirely made up of everything around them. Are you including your own brain in “everything around” you? Because I’m not a mind-body dualist so this explanation doesn’t work for me. > [@](#): > > Any idea that we make ourselves just creates the illusion of free will. The “illusion” of free will you propose is _functionally_ no different from actual free will, since it is impossible for us to introspect all our influences, so it is no challenge to existentialism. We can act as though we have free will, so we do, in fact, have free will. We only have the “illusion” if you postulate some omniscient outside observer. But such doesn’t exist, and we do exist. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/43 "2016-08-12T06:32:12Z")
Existentialism is what you have left after you eliminate everything that isn’t existentialism. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/44 "2016-08-12T12:27:56Z")
Existentialism is what Existentialists believe. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/45 "2016-08-12T13:49:31Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > So what is the right thing? Go wash your bowl. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/46 "2016-08-12T16:38:05Z")
[QUOTE=kunilou] “Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.” – Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) [/Quote] > [@Machinaforce](#): > > So what is the right thing? > [@Machinaforce](#): > > If there is no one around the his ideas and values have no worth. Worth is based on the judgments of others, which is why the more widely held something is (getting closer to universal) the more value it has. Meaning and value to just one is the same as nothing. You’ve tied yourself into a tight little conundrum there. It seems to me you’re saying there are only values (and therefore, morality and ethics and the laws that come from them) if there is common agreement by a group. Aldo Leopold was a conservationist. He might ask, if you were a hermit, would you have a code of behavior? If you were hunting for food, would you kill an endangered species, or would you hunt longer knowing you could find something more plentiful? Would you dump your waste into a creek and let it flow downstream rather than digging and maintaining a latrine? Since you aren’t part of community, you aren’t part of its value system. What do you choose to do, and why? ---
**Author:** ![brujaja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/47 "2016-08-12T21:38:51Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I’d argue that you can’t be an existentialist and be a rationalist, positivist or nihilist, though. So … probably no existentialist animists then, eh? Guess I’m out. 🙂 But I do agree that ultimately, you can’t count on life to necessarily be good or satisfying \*\*\* for you\*\*\* simply because you have subscribed to society’s or some other person’s prescription for happiness and fulfillment. The kind of life that makes many people happy, or one that they tell you SHOULD make you happy, even so may not be the right kind of life for you. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/48 "2016-08-13T06:41:44Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > So … probably no existentialist animists then, eh? I think if you can be a Christian existentialist, you could definitely be an animist one. ---
**Author:** ![Fuji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/49 "2016-08-13T16:53:35Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > You’ve tied yourself into a tight little conundrum there. It seems to me you’re saying there are only values (and therefore, morality and ethics and the laws that come from them) if there is common agreement by a group. > > Aldo Leopold was a conservationist. He might ask, if you were a hermit, would you have a code of behavior? If you were hunting for food, would you kill an endangered species, or would you hunt longer knowing you could find something more plentiful? Would you dump your waste into a creek and let it flow downstream rather than digging and maintaining a latrine? > > Since you aren’t part of community, you aren’t part of its value system. What do you choose to do, and why? Not only that, it’s also self-contradictory. If “meaning and value to just one is the same as nothing”, then how can “the more widely held something is the more value it has” be true? 0 + 0 + 0, … = 0. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/50 "2016-08-13T19:46:52Z")
Ultimately it is this - > [@Neil Gaiman](#): > > Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don’t last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend… Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Quintas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@Quintas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quintas)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/51 "2016-08-14T04:45:51Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Ultimately it is this -Regards, > Shodan Also, the weather will change to autumn in about 6 weeks. And that feels nice. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/52 "2016-08-14T18:04:11Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > So … probably no existentialist animists then, eh? Guess I’m out. 🙂 > > But I do agree that ultimately, you can’t count on life to necessarily be good or satisfying \*\*\* for you\*\*\* simply because you have subscribed to society’s or some other person’s prescription for happiness and fulfillment. The kind of life that makes many people happy, or one that they tell you SHOULD make you happy, even so may not be the right kind of life for you. Except you exist in a world with many other individuals so living the life that you want isn’t going to happen often. Too many wills clashing with each other just causes disaster. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/53 "2016-08-14T18:05:58Z")
> [@Fuji](#): > > Not only that, it’s also self-contradictory. If “meaning and value to just one is the same as nothing”, then how can “the more widely held something is the more value it has” be true? 0 + 0 + 0, … = 0. That is actually not contradictory. I’m saying that if something has meaning to just you then it’s the same as being meaningless. It only has meaning of a group recognizes it as having meaning. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/54 "2016-08-14T18:12:33Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > Except you exist in a world with many other individuals so living the life that you want isn’t going to happen often. Too many wills clashing with each other just causes disaster. Isn’t that going to happen anyway? Regardless of whether I’m an existentialist, I _already_ live in a world where many other individuals have wills that clash with each other – and some of them are existentialists! So what’s the relevance? In what way would it affect my decision about whether to live life as an existentialist? > [@Machinaforce](#): > > That is actually not contradictory. I’m saying that if something has meaning to just you then it’s the same as being meaningless. It only has meaning of a group recognizes it as having meaning. You state that as if it’s just a known fact. Where did you come by this remarkable conclusion? ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/55 "2016-08-14T18:20:54Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Isn’t that going to happen anyway? > > Regardless of whether I’m an existentialist, I _already_ live in a world where many other individuals have wills that clash with each other – and some of them are existentialists! So what’s the relevance? In what way would it affect my decision about whether to live life as an existentialist? > > You state that as if it’s just a known fact. > > Where did you come by this remarkable conclusion? Because value only matters when other recognize it as well. As for the wills, that just reinforces my point. It’s proof that people can’t always get what they want and lack control there, and makes existentialism less workable. People have to learn that life isn’t about getting what you want. ---
**Author:** ![TipTapTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/34f0e0/32.png) [@TipTapTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TipTapTwo)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/56 "2016-08-14T18:36:06Z")
[QUOTE=Machinaforce] I’m saying that if something has meaning to just you then it’s the same as being meaningless. It only has meaning of a group recognizes it as having meaning. [/QUOTE] How large of a group does there need to be in order for something to gain meaning? If just one person finds meaning in something, that is meaningless. If only four people find meaning in something, is it still meaningless? What if that group of four was 1 family? Does this single family finding meaning in something, such as Christian faith, suddenly become meaningless if their entire state of a million people (all others are devout Muslims) think that faith in Christ is meaningless? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/57 "2016-08-14T18:41:06Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > Because value only matters when other recognize it as well. It matters _to me_ regardless of what some group opines. And whenever _I’m_ making a decision and acting accordingly, it’s hardly relevant _to me_ that some group would pop in to say “but we don’t recognize the value”: that’s not going to make me suddenly abandon what I’m doing, it’s not a factor. > [@](#): > > As for the wills, that just reinforces my point. It’s proof that people can’t always get what they want and lack control there, and makes existentialism less workable. People have to learn that life isn’t about getting what you want. Well, (a) by that logic, in a community of existentialists, I suppose you’d have to knuckle under and go with the flow, because there’d be oh-so-many wills in favor of existentialism and you’d just be the lone holdout with a ‘meaning and value to one is the same as nothing’ belief that you’d abandon, right? But (b) who cares that you can prove that people can’t always get what they want? Does existentialism say otherwise? I know Sartre said that people have to decide for themselves whether or not to, like, join the French Resistance – but I wasn’t aware that he said people also get to decide which side will _win_ a war. Maybe I missed it? Because, man, that _would_ be a silly philosophy, and one could disprove it by simply noting that people can’t always get what they want. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/58 "2016-08-14T19:43:13Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Because, man, that _would_ be a silly philosophy, and one could disprove it by simply noting that people can’t always get what they want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need. - Mick Jagger. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/59 "2016-08-14T21:04:03Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > It matters _to me_ regardless of what some group opines. And whenever _I’m_ making a decision and acting accordingly, it’s hardly relevant _to me_ that some group would pop in to say “but we don’t recognize the value”: that’s not going to make me suddenly abandon what I’m doing, it’s not a factor. > > Well, (a) by that logic, in a community of existentialists, I suppose you’d have to knuckle under and go with the flow, because there’d be oh-so-many wills in favor of existentialism and you’d just be the lone holdout with a ‘meaning and value to one is the same as nothing’ belief that you’d abandon, right? > > But (b) who cares that you can prove that people can’t always get what they want? Does existentialism say otherwise? I know Sartre said that people have to decide for themselves whether or not to, like, join the French Resistance – but I wasn’t aware that he said people also get to decide which side will _win_ a war. Maybe I missed it? Because, man, that _would_ be a silly philosophy, and one could disprove it by simply noting that people can’t always get what they want. It would actually not be possible to have a community of such people. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412/60 "2016-08-14T21:15:17Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > It would actually not be possible to have a community of such people. Another alleged fact! Instead of mentioning where you get the first one from, you just throw a second one right out there, huh? Thrilling stuff! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-existentialism/762412.md?page=4)