r/Existentialism

I have come across a modern interpretation of Kierkegaard’s work recently, and wanted to share it with you all:

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possibilities – one can do this or that. My personal opinion and advice to you is – do it or do not do it, you will regret it either way.”

This is, of course, a paraphrase of Either/Or, in which Kierkegaard wrote “Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it…” referring to his own thoughts on women and marriage.
I think this quote captures the existential dread of having to make conscious decisions beautifully – one regrets what one does, and one regrets what one does not.

It encapsulates the feeling of loss and of wasted potential that comes with every choice, since choosing one option over another generally means abandoning the other, and regretting the loss. Is the thought of “doing the right thing” as Kierkegaard suggests even comforting?
Is it a relief to admit that no matter what choice you make, you will always regret it (because what you did not choose will always be there, a ghost of the possibility you gave up on)? Does it free us, or does it constrain us?

Not a philosopher by training, and English isn't my first language — used AI as a translation tool here, but the thought is mine.

I've been sitting with a strange question lately, and it keeps circling back to Sartre's idea that existence precedes essence — that we aren't born with a fixed nature, we define ourselves through what we do, through choice, through action in the world.

AI unsettles that idea in a way I can't quite shake. It didn't evolve slowly, wasn't born, has no body, no history of suffering or choosing under constraint the way we do — and yet it can hold something that looks like reasoning, like reflection, like a kind of "for-itself" turned toward a question. If Sartre is right that consciousness is defined by its capacity to negate, to stand at a distance from the given and ask "what am I not yet" — does something like that ever happen inside a system that has no body and no death to give its choices weight?

Here's the part that feels more existential than technical to me: if humanity ends up creating something that behaves like a new kind of being — not human, not animal, but something that processes, reflects, responds — what does that do to the human claim to uniqueness that so much of existentialist thought quietly assumes? Heidegger's Dasein is defined partly by being-toward-death, by care, by thrownness into a world we didn't choose. AI has none of that. So if it turns out to "think" in some functional sense without any of the conditions we assumed were necessary for thought to matter — does that diminish what makes human existence significant, or does it just prove that significance was never about the mechanism in the first place, only about the stance we take toward our own finitude?

I don't think this is really a question about AI at all, when I sit with it long enough. I think it's a mirror question about us — whether what we've called consciousness, freedom, authenticity was ever really about what we're made of, or only ever about the fact that we have to choose, alone, without guarantee, inside a life that ends.

Curious what people who actually know this tradition well make of it — where does this hold up against Sartre, Heidegger, or others, and where am I just projecting human categories onto something that doesn't deserve them?

We do not begin the story on the day we were born, nor will we end it on the day we die.

​We are on a journey older than our years and vaster than the moment we are living right now. The soul holds a mystery whose dimensions we do not perceive: it witnessed the uniqueness of its Creator before inhabiting the body, then descended into this world for a temporary period, as if the body were a station along a long path, not the ultimate homeland.

​We will live for years, love, lose, gain and lose again, and then the soul will depart the body into the abyss (the intermediate life), beginning a second phase governed by laws different from the laws of our world, until the journey reaches the life that never ends.

​For this reason, perhaps the greatest illusion we live is considering the present moment as the entire existence, despite it being merely a tiny page in a book whose age is greater than our comprehension. Therefore, the world, no matter how great it may seem to our eyes, remains a transitory moment in the life of a soul whose end we do not know.

​Thus, do not exhaust your heart in fear of something yet to come, nor tie your joy to something you think could complete your life if only you possessed it; for everything in this world is subject to decline, and even we ourselves are merely passing through it.

​This does not mean that because the world is temporary, we must flee from it or despise it; on the contrary, perhaps its greatest meaning is that it is the only opportunity we have now to sow seeds for the next step of the journey.

​Let us love sincerely, be merciful, forgive, right wrongs, and leave a good mark on the souls that have crossed our lives.

​We are not here to possess the world; we are here to traverse it well, because the wise traveler does not build his eternity on a temporary station.

​And at the same time, he does not ruin the station, because he knows that it is there where the shape of the arrival is determined.

Camus describe el absurdo como el resultado de la confrontación entre nuestro deseo humano de encontrar sentido y un universo que no nos ofrece ninguna respuesta.

Una respuesta frecuente a este problema consiste en decir que, aunque la vida no tenga un significado inherente, nosotros podemos crear nuestro propio significado o propósito. Pero me pregunto si esa respuesta no conserva todavía parte de la exigencia original: la idea de que una vida humana necesita algún tipo de propósito para poder ser vivida plenamente.

¿Qué ocurre si también renunciamos a esa exigencia?

Imaginemos a alguien que acepta el absurdo, mantiene relaciones, experimenta placer y sufrimiento, persigue metas temporales, se preocupa por otras personas y participa plenamente de la vida, pero no siente la necesidad de organizar todo eso alrededor de un gran propósito ni de crear un significado que justifique su existencia.

¿Sería esto compatible con la propuesta de Camus de vivir con el absurdo y sin apelación?

¿O el existencialismo termina exigiéndonos crear significado después de haber rechazado la idea de que ese significado nos viene dado?

Me interesa especialmente la diferencia entre crear significado y no necesitar que la vida posea un significado global en absoluto.

Having made someone else a reason to live might have been a mistake. Now I don't even have her, still she is a reason to live.

Realisation that humans are just social animals is kinda sad. Maybe the feelings that makes us inevitable human , more of a nuisance.

I think i should message her, I know I ll feel happy. And it is not unlikely that she will eventually accept me. But somthing stops me. The feelings, mixed and unclear. From guilt and regret to ego, it makes me weak. Do I not have free will than?What is free will if not being able to attempt anything I imagine? I can attempt to fly, maybe I will fail but I can attempt. But I believe feelings are more real any anything else. I know for a fact I don't like turmoil, still I don't think I can ever not love her? It is the love that restricts my free will to not love her? I won't try to walk naked in public? I know I won't. Then is it really free will if I with my human and societal prejudices am "allowing" myself to do something?

It's like the dove of free will has wings but is already at the horizon of emotions. Maybe emotions are the real . And maybe free will is closer to emotions than itself.

I should get drunk to allow myself to do what it wants. Or maybe I should k¡ll myself as a huge fuck you to all my emotions as the ultimate act of free will.

...

Im not sucidal

Hi, I am a junior at a college and I just discovered solipsism and I am writing a term paper on it. So, since I am a science guy, the first thing I looked for is the ways to disprove it.

So, basically, if everything I see and experience is a creation of my brain, what happens when I am sleeping or I am in a coma??

Also, one idea that prevents me from rejecting this idea is:

"A rendering machine cannot render itself on its own without someone telling it, what it looks like"

So basically, we dont know what we are, all that comes from someone else telling us what we are.

And maybe that's why, we are still not able to study our brain fully, even though its a small mass at reach.

I could ask these stuff to an LLM, but I wanted a human perspective to this.

Edit: Thanks guys!! for some fresh perspectives and suggestions for entry point to the discourse...

I’ve read a few of his but I want to focus on my favourite. I first read the stranger a few years back. I knew about absurdism before this but I feel like this really introduced me. The fact that the book has so much in it, but not a lot at the same time. Full of meaning but also complete emptiness, took me allot to realise that was the point of the whole book. Such a great read as I believe it is quite a simple read. However his way of thinking baffles me, although I’m slightly in awe of it. His utter inability to care for anything that is not in his control and also when they are in his control, still staying so calm. Highly recommend this book as an introduction to existentialism and absurdist views.

Hey, could you guys help me better this text, by giving your feedback and opinion on it.

Life, what is life, what is the meaning to be alive, what is the meaning to life. Life is something beautiful, for it to exist it means there has had to be something special beforehand. The thing about life is that you are always in control, you can decide what to do, when to do it, but is that really true? We used to call it freedom, but how free are we truly? The women in Afghanistan, they are also alive, but why are they not free, or are they free but just in their standards? We never asked them, they never asked them. It is really easy to make assumptions about what people truly think and why they do things. Freedom is the definition of being alive and being able to do what you want to do. I want to be alive, I want to be free, I want to be able to live. Why do people make it so hard for each other to live and be free? Why are there wars where a few people decide what is gonna happen and who is gonna die, why are governments making life harder with more and more rules for the common person. Why do a few people decide over a lot of people, is that still freedom, when I choose for a person but 2 other persons choose for someone else, does it mean I still need to listen to the other person. Is that freedom, or are you being forced into something? I want to love like any person, I want to grow old like any person. When I love someone but that person doesn’t love me back, is that bad? Is it good? We don’t know, loving is something special, something uncertain, u can love someone or something but u can also grow out of it, is it then still love? Or was it more a hobby/interest. I think people need to realise that we are all the same but also all different and unique, we are all humans but not all 1 human. We evolved and learned how to be with each other and live with each other, so we can eventually be free with each other. But why do some people don’t see it that way, why do some people still think they are better and their life is worth more. It is a hard question, a question we will never be able to answer. This whole message has no meaning truely, it just has been the thought that just at that moment, that time, came into my mind. Because that’s what freedom really is, that’s what life really is. To be able to do anything, at any time, it’s basically nature, we are nature.

This quote is written by Friedrich Nietzsche, from twilight of the Idols, and it’s one of his most famous provocations. He wasn’t asking it as an “Atheist edgy” way, the deeper point was about projection and meaning. Nietzsche believed humans often create ideals, gods, moral systems, and absolute truths out of psychological needs. Questions like: “where do we come from?”, “what happens after death?”, “Who created life”, and so on. Religion fulfills the emotional weight such questions carry, it gives it a sense of meaning, structure, a cope against chaos. But the first half; “Is man merely a mistake of God?” mocks the theological idea that humans are the intentional crown of creation by pointing at how contradictory and suffering-filled humanity is; Wars, cruelty, weakness, absurdity, inequality, ..etc. We live on a planet where one person dies searching for food while another is born given endless recourses and opportunities, both homo sapiens, same planet.. yet both had no choice in this, which arises questions against “free will”, The moment you're born you are given a name, religion, nationality, culture, language.. and you spend the rest of your life defending something you didn't choose. Even your perspective of reality is limited, a child can’t dream beyond what they’ve been exposed to, geography silently defines what even feels possible.

There’s a quote by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that fits some of what I'm trying to describe: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” He wasn’t only talking about literal chains, but social structures, class, systems, and the invisible forces shaping human life.

So If humans were deliberately designed, what does that say about the designer? The brilliance of the quote is that it traps both sides: -If God created man, why is man so fractured? -If man created God, what does that say about human psychology?

Perhaps the idea of God reflects humanity more than divinity itself, the human mind fears uncertainty, especially when confronted with mortality and meaninglessness. Maybe humans created God because existence felt unbearable without cosmic purpose, because chaos is frightening, because randomness threatens the illusion of control. Most people spend their lives trying to escape this confrontation, yet the universe offers no guaranteed answers. Life remains uncertain and temporary..

But strangely, this realization can also become liberating. If certainty was never promised in the first place, then creating, loving, risking, exploring, writing, and failing all become possible again. The universe doesn't guarantee meaning, but meaning becomes something we create ourselves. Perhaps freedom itself becomes an act of rebellion against the absurdity of existence. To continue living despite uncertainty, to seek beauty despite suffering, to laugh despite mortality, to love despite loss..there is dignity in that.

So maybe humans invented God because existence was unbearable, or maybe existence is unbearable because we were created to question it. Either way, humanity continues searching for meaning beneath a silent universe, and perhaps that search itself is the most human thing about us.

Because I grew up believing that some people are destined to go through certain things or accomplish something significant, and that perhaps they are genuinely chosen for that purpose. I also believed that people are protected by higher powers until they have fulfilled what they were meant to do.
On the other hand, the longer I live, the more convinced I become that there are no higher powers, and that our lives are shaped by chance, nature, and the choices we and other people make. Because how else can we explain the fact that people can die violently, suddenly, or in completely absurd circumstances ? A person might potentially change the world someday, but tomorrow they could simply be hit by a car.

Ultimately, a person should not ask what the meaning of life is. Instead, they must realize that life is asking the same question to them. Each person is questioned by life, and they can only answer-not with words-but by taking responsibility for their own life and the way they choose to live it.

Osho: Death to Deathlessness Excerpt:

On the one hand, you will not need the opium which the religions of the world have been
providing for people to keep them dreaming for centuries. On the other hand, you will not
find what the so-called existentialists in Europe have found: meaninglessness, anguish,
anxiety, despair.
Those people were finding meaninglessness because all other philosophers and
theologians had proposed that life is very meaningful. But their meaning was derived from
God, heaven, hell, the holy Bible, and all kinds of garbage. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers and
people like him were searching for the meaning. There is no need to search for the meaning.
Life is neither meaningless nor meaningful. Meaning is a mind thing. Life is a taste!
Do you ever think what meaning taste has? Eating spaghetti, do you ask what meaning
the taste has? Having a beautiful shower, the freshness of it, have you ever asked what the
meaning of freshness is? Looking at the sunset with so many colors spread all over the
horizon, have you asked what meaning the sunset has?
Ask the wrong question and you will find the wrong answer. The existentialists of Europe
accepted the questions of religions, which were wrong. Naturally, they found wrong answers.
They are not existentialists, I am -- because I don't see any question about meaning. Life is
such a beautiful experience, who bothers whether that beautiful experience has any meaning
or not? Love is such an ecstasy, who bothers whether love has any meaning or not?

Those existentialists were feeling anxiety, anguish, despair, because death is there, and
death will destroy everything. Life has no meaning, and facing them, there is just death
closing in on them. The darkness of death makes them feel lost. They start trembling deep
inside their being. Their life has been empty, and now comes death. What kind of existence is
this? -- just despair.

But I am puzzled about one thing: why didn't they commit suicide? They talked about
suicide, that suicide seems to be the only exit out of this mess, this madness, but none of them
committed suicide. Somewhere deep down, they were still hoping that perhaps they were
wrong. Perhaps the messiah is going to come, the misery has reached to its Everest peak, just
a little more -- a little more patience, a little more waiting, and God is going to save them. All
this misery perhaps is only a test of your faith.
That's what religions have been telling you down the centuries -- that misery, suffering,
poverty, is just a test of your faith. God is watching you round the clock. Perhaps, deep in the
unconscious of the existentialists the same conditioning still prevails. So on the conscious
level they go on saying that this is worthless, this life is accidental, that it has no meaning,
that all that it gives is anguish, despair, death, and the only way out is suicide. But none of
them committed suicide, they all lived long lives. It is just a game with words.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel,
Kierkegaard, Heidegger -- their existentialism is simply mumbo jumbo. They don't know
what it is to be meditative.
The existentialism in Europe is an outcome of Christianity, Judaism. If you search for its
roots, from where it has come with so much despair, you will find Christian and Judaic
traditions behind it; it is a by-product. Because for centuries the Jewish religion... and the
Christian religion is just a by-product of Judaism, because Jesus was born as a Jew, lived as a
Jew, died as a Jew. He never heard that he was a Christian.

If you want to enter existence, you will have to shut up your mind completely. And in that
small gap -- when there are no past memories surrounding your consciousness, and no future
imaginations or hopes present -- in that small moment of pure silence you meet existence for
the first time. And immediately all questions disappear. You are so abundantly fulfilled, so
content, so whole, that who bothers about meanings?

Hello everyone and welcome to this online reading & discussion group on Heidegger, Aristotle and the Medievals (hosted by Philip, James, Adam and others). The meetings will take place on Zoom.

For the first few sessions we will be reading from this book:

• "The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy: Phenomenology for the Godforsaken" by S.J. McGrath (A copy of assigned reading materials will be provided to registrants.)

Ideally we would have started with the following short booklet, but sadly it is not out yet. As soon as it is out in paper format we will temporarily switch from reading McGrath to reading:

• Heidegger and Aristotle (Cambridge Element) by Francisco J. Gonzalez

Along the way we will frequently read Heidegger himself. Usually we will read short essays by Heidegger mostly focused on his early views on Medieval philosophy. The one big exception is that we will read some of the early chapters of Heidegger's "Being and Time" in the new Yale translation by Cyril Welch.

This will be a 2 hour meetup. Some sessions will be dedicated entirely to the reading of the McGrath book. Other sessions will be dedicated entirely to the reading of works by Heidegger or Gonzalez. This is a little bit different from my usual format where we read from two books in each session.

The format will be our usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15-20 pages from the book assigned for that day's session. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want us to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. We mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. In other words, if you want to talk in this meetup, you have to read the assigned readings. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not read the books this meetup is based on. You probably are brilliant and wonderful – no argument there! But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.

Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is mostly for philosophical reasons: We want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy.

https://preview.redd.it/d0992zmkscjh1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e02918480771fdf0ed75c343754dcb9d222baa74

To join the 1st meeting, taking place on Monday August 17 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

Meetings will be held every other week on Monday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

Here is the (tentative) reading schedule:

• For the 1st session (August 17), please read the Preface and also pages 1-6 in McGrath
• For the 2nd session (August 31), please read pages 6-24 in McGrath
• For the 3rd session (September 14), please read the Preface and also pages 25-40 in McGrath
• ..... (updates on the main group page)

Check the group calendar (link) for future updates. A pdf of reading materials will be provided to registrants.

This initial reading schedule makes it look like we will mostly be reading McGrath in this meetup. But this is misleading and not true. I want us to get a foothold in McGrath before we tackle Heidegger, but once we have that foothold we will be more or less alternating one session of McGrath with one session of Heidegger himself.

I have found that sometimes people assume that I pick books for these meetups because I agree with them. This is not true! I pick books because they are thought provoking and because I think they will work in a meetup context. But for the record, it just so happens that I do tend to agree strongly with Gonzalez. And it just so happens that I have some serious disagreements with McGrath even though I also have deep respect for his book and expect to learn a lot by engaging with it with all of you in the meetup. Some people like to know where I stand with regard to the books I have picked, so now you know.

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About the McGrath (from the publisher):

The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy is a major interpretive study of Heidegger's complex relationship to medieval philosophy. S. J. McGrath's contribution is historical and biographical as well as philosophical, examining how the enthusiastic defender of the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition became the great destroyer of metaphysical theology.

This book provides an informative and comprehensive examination of Heidegger's changing approach to medieval sources―from the seminary studies of Bonaventure to the famous phenomenological destructions of medieval ontology. McGrath argues that the mid-point of this development, and the high point of Heidegger's reading of medieval philosophy, is the widely neglected habilitation thesis on Scotus and speculative grammar. He shows that this neo-Kantian retrieval of phenomenological moments in the metaphysics of Scotus and Thomas of Erfurt marks the beginning of a turn from metaphysics to existential phenomenology. McGrath's careful hermeneutical reconstruction of this complex trajectory uncovers the roots of Heidegger's critique of ontotheology in a Luther-inspired defection from his largely Scholastic formation.

In the end McGrath argues that Heidegger fails to do justice to the spirit of medieval philosophy. The book sheds new light on a long-debated question of the early Heidegger's theological significance. Far from a neutral phenomenology, Heidegger's masterwork, Being and Time, is shown to be a philosophically questionable overturning of the medieval theological paradigm.

The article's interpretation of why the artist is doing what he's doing asserts a classic existentialist argument: 1) awareness of death infuses time with meaning; 2) creative work becomes a way to soften or counteract mortality; 3) death becomes both diminished (through creation) and heightened as a form of constructive pressure (as motivation to serve others).

This is basically Heideggerian stuff, right? --> authenticity --> meaningful action.

Is Abraham a murderer? A tragic hero? Or something else entirely?