Understanding existentialism

 What is the purpose of a flower? Think for a minute.

The primary question is what is the meaning of your life? We will get different answers ranging from god or money or love or success and many more. We create our own sense of purpose of our life depending upon our own understanding. For the majority it is we believe or made to believe that we have been created by the god and assigned a particular purpose or essence as a human being. No one can wrong you if you decide to assign a meaning and a purpose of your life. It is in our nature to find a meaning in everything; it is as if we need those meanings in everything that is happening around us. We devote a lot of our time in finding the meaning and pursuing it otherwise we would feel a vacuum in us. That meaning can come from the religion you follow or by educating others or fighting for a cause or creating art or the meaning could be to raise the children well.

Existentialism says that all these can give meaning but it also says that none of them can.

Coming back to the flower, some might say the purpose of flower is to give color to nature or to give out the sweet smell or give nectar to the bees or to make us happy. I would say the purpose of the flower is to be a flower. For the rest, it is up to them whatever reason it may assign to the existence of the flower.

Aristotle and Plato believed that everything had an essence which can be defined as a certain set of core principles without which it would have no meaning. If those core principles are missing then it would lose its purpose and will be a different thing. For example a knife may have a wooden handle or an ivory handle but if it doesn’t have a sharp blade then it would not be a knife and would not be useful for the purpose it has been made. They went even further and said that our essence exists even before we are born.

We may or may not know what our purpose is and frankly speaking most of us don’t know about it and even less interested to do anything about it. But still it gives a purpose to you because we are made to believe it. These believe of a purpose flourished till the nineteenth century when certain philosophers started questioning it.

The said that it can the other way around, we come to exist and then we decide on a purpose. The purpose is not hardwired before we are born and only after we are born do we search for that purpose. This was quite a radical idea at that time as it challenged the existing belief that we did not have to find our purpose but god did that job for us. But existentialism is not same as atheism. Theistic existentialists do not belief in teleology – it means they do not believe that god made this universe for any reason or with a particular purpose. For them god may exist but it is not in his job description to assign any reason or purpose for you. Our life lacks any real inherent importance.

They call it the absurd. For you and me absurd has a different meaning. For the existentialist is means our effort to search for a meaning when there is none. We always need a meaning but actually we are just living in this meaningless universe. When there is no reason for everything then there are no absolute rules to abide to. There is no cosmic justice or fairness or unfairness or rules or order or chaos. Everything is just as it is.

During the World War 2 this concept of existentialism gained traction. The horrors of the war made many people lose hope in the ordered world and pulled towards this philosophy. The time was such then that if Nazi was possible then finding meaning became futile. The lack of meaning has another connotation; it is the abundance of freedom. Though freedom is what we crave for but it also means that we are free to design our own moral code to live by. We have been programmed by the society to look up to an authority for answers but all such authorities are fake and false. We look up to our parents or religion or political leaders but they are just people like us only. They themselves are unsure and are looking for answers.

So what can we do? They say that what we can do is to live authentically. By this they mean that we take the full responsibility of our freedom within the absurd and any meaning to life has to be given by you only. If you decide to follow a path decided by others then you have bad faith, a refusal to accept the absurd. It means that you are pretending to have found a meaning which you did not give.

A situation will make it clear. If you have to choose between your sick mother where you are required to stay with her and go to the war which is which your country is fighting- which one will you choose? There are no right and wrong answer to it until the one which he chooses to be authentic as per him.

The bottom line is that there is no inherent god or society given purpose to our life and it is for us to decide to give a purpose by choosing authentically. No one can dictate you anything. This is applicable both at the individual level and world level.