Existentialism Explained: Sartre, Meaning & the Absurd

Albert Camus is not an existentialist but an absurdist philosopher. He argues that humans have an inherent defect of seeking purpose in life, which is actually a flaw in human nature that should be accepted for a fuller life. For Camus, humans come with an inherent defect of seeking purpose in life. We demand purpose from the world and universe, but the universe is indifferent to us. This creates the 'absurd'—the conflict between our search for meaning and the universe's silence.

Camus differed fundamentally from existentialist philosophers who came before him. While existentialists argued that people should give life its own meaning despite its inherent meaninglessness, Camus rejected this approach as denial. He believed that creating personal meaning is an act of refusing to face the truth about life's actual meaninglessness. For Camus, the only authentic response to the Absurd is to accept it fully, recognizing that life ultimately has no meaning and that any attempt to impose meaning is a form of self-deception.

Albert Camus was associated with existentialist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre but deliberately distanced himself from the existentialist label. While both philosophers dealt with questions of meaning and freedom, Camus's absurdism differs fundamentally from existentialism. Existentialism typically emphasizes human freedom and choice in creating meaning, whereas Camus's absurdism accepts that no ultimate meaning exists and focuses on how individuals respond to this recognition. Camus believed that acknowledging life's inherent meaninglessness leads to a more authentic form of living than trying to impose artificial meaning on existence.

Albert Camus's philosophy of absurdism teaches that since the universe is silent and indifferent to human longing for meaning, we should not seek escape through religion, nihilism, or invented meaning, but instead embrace this confrontation with the absurd by living fully, loving fiercely, acting ethically, and creating passionately without illusions; this rebellion against the void represents a form of freedom and dignity rather than resignation.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) resisted the label of existentialist because his starting point differed from Sartre and Heidegger in important ways. The absurd is not the lack of meaning but a specific relationship—the relationship between the human demand for clarity and meaning and the complete and permanent failure of the world to provide it. Human beings seek explanations, a purpose, a rational explanation for the purpose of this life. The world responds with silence. The absurd is the confrontation between these two, the chasm between demand and response that cannot be bridged. Camus identified three responses: physical departure (abandonment), philosophical departure (leap of faith embracing transcendent meaning), and rebellion—refusal to accept either defeat or false consolation, the choice to live fully in awareness of the absurd without resolving it. 'You, Sisyphus, condemned to roll the stone up the hill forever and watch it roll back down. Must be imagined happy.'

Simone de Beauvoir, a key existentialist, consistently criticized oppression in her philosophy, unlike Sartre who developed his account later. She rejected rigid moral codes, instead developing an ethics of relation and action where ethics is ambiguous and we can never be totally sure if actions are right or wrong. We are embedded in a world of interconnected freedom, and our freedom is fundamentally connected to others' freedom because others' freedom broadens our possible futures and meaning. De Beauvoir described oppression as systematic negation of people's freedom to promote others' advantage, with violence sometimes justified to rescue individual freedom. In 'The Second Sex,' she described gender not as biological but as a social construction—a situation of becoming. Women are seen as secondary or other, whereas men are the neutral mode of being, creating unique oppression because gender division precedes human history.

Simone de Beauvoir's seminal 1949 work 'The Second Sex' argues that women's subordination is not biologically determined but socially constructed through historical, religious, and cultural mechanisms that define women as the 'Other' to male-dominated society; she contends that true gender equality requires recognizing women's humanity and autonomy rather than treating them as secondary beings.

Simone de Beauvoir argues in The Second Sex that traditional approaches to gender relations—framing women as either superior, inferior, or equal to men—are fundamentally flawed because they reduce human relationships to zero-sum competitions; instead, she proposes an existentialist ethics prioritizing individual freedom and transcendence over abstract notions of superiority or equality, emphasizing that women's fundamental problem lies not in class-based comparisons but in being treated as objects whose transcendence serves another's ego while simultaneously being denied genuine autonomy.

Beauvoir's ethics emerges from the tension between facticity (what we are given) and freedom (what we do with it). She rejects both absolute determinism and pure metaphysical freedom. Her famous phrase 'One is not born, but becomes a woman' diagnoses that femininity is socially constructed through education, not biologically determined. The body is the concrete form of existence, opening possibilities while imposing limits. For women, the body carries specific social meanings—interpreted, watched, eroticized, medicalized. Her critique of essences is not only political but philosophical: thinking in terms of essence is an elegant way of justifying what is convenient for the privileged. Her ethics demands that we want the freedom of others, because my freedom cannot be sustained if I use it to limit others'. In The Second Sex, she analyzes how marriage, domestic work, and romantic love function as mechanisms of female subordination. In 1971, she became a central figure in the Manifesto of the 343, which contributed to France's abortion legalization in 1975.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, and feminist who studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre at the University of Paris. Influenced by existentialism, which explores human existence and centers on lived experience, she published 'The Second Sex' (1949), the foundational text of second-wave feminism. Beauvoir argues that woman is 'the other' - men occupy the role of the subject while woman is the object. She critiques biological determinism (Plato, Hegel), Freudian psychoanalysis (which assumes women feel like damaged men), and Engels' historical materialism (which traps women in families as reproducers). Drawing from Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness,' she argues women must choose between values rather than being unconsciously acted upon. She traces male superiority from hunter-gatherers through contemporary times, finding no justification for female subordination.

Viktor Frankl was an author and professor of neurology who spent 3 years in concentration camps during World War II. He lost all members of his family and his wife but survived. He survived because from the beginning he considered this ordeal as a passing pain, an obstacle to overcome. To face it, he created his own refuge, considering this horrible experience as a case study for his psychiatric research. In 1945, upon his liberation, he wrote 'Man's Search for Meaning,' a book that recounts his daily life and observations in the camps and establishes the basis of his famous theory, logotherapy. Frankl's theory is based on a surprising observation: the prisoners who survived the longest were neither the most intelligent nor the most physically robust. They were those who maintained hope—those who even in the most atrocious conditions proved that their lives always had meaning. The most powerful factor according to Frankl was the discussions that prisoners held about the future. Even the weakest prisoners could survive for a long time as long as they still had the capacity to imagine what they would do once they left the camp. The resigned prisoners, in contrast, were condemned. Frankl describes this state as the worst of all—a sensation of deep disconnection from their own lives as if they had nothing to offer and as if they had nothing to offer their lives. He transposes this beyond the horror of concentration camps to ordinary days, well-filled but without any direction. One agitates, works, fills one's social role, but nothing connects the gestures. Frankl calls this the existential void. In this case, escape becomes dangerous. It anesthetizes for a few moments but upon return, the void enlarges. The solution does not require stopping this escape but rather giving it a direction. This is the basis of Frankl's philosophy: finding meaning in one's life. He does not claim to determine a meaning for human existence as a whole but rather to help people find their own purpose. Frankl proposes three axes for finding meaning. The first is work—in the sense of contribution. Producing something that exists outside oneself: writing a page, repairing a broken object, helping someone, completing a project. This can be anything. The smallest action that leaves a trace in the real world connects daily effort to an intelligible purpose and reduces the existential void. In the extreme situations Frankl observed, having a task that matters, such as caring for someone, giving a piece of bread, or telling a story, greatly sustained the will to live. Better a small real contribution than a grand project indefinitely postponed. Dispersion recreates the void.

The speaker explains that his research is based on Viktor Frankl's work. Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who, after the First World War, witnessed an epidemic of suicide in Europe and lost a close friend. He became a psychiatrist to help people connect with life, directing a ward for people who attempted suicide. During World War II, he was taken to Nazi concentration camps where he lost his wife, pregnant mother, father, and all his friends. He initially thought he would be a multimillionaire but was inspired by Frankl's story to pursue psychology instead. Frankl developed logotherapy, a school of thought that contributed to psychology, pedagogy, and management.

Logotherapy is a meaning-centered approach developed by Viktor Frankl, founder of the third Vienna School of psychotherapy. Frankl, a philosopher, psychologist, and neurologist, served three years in Nazi concentration camps (Dachau, Ravensbrück, Auschwitz). His book 'Man's Search for Meaning' is considered one of the ten best books in human history. The lecture explores how humans can find meaning and resilience when facing traumatic circumstances, distinguishing between personal trauma and collective human suffering throughout history.

Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived three years in four concentration camps during WWII, discovered that meaning in suffering is the key to human resilience. He identified three ways to find life's meaning: through creative work or doing good deeds, through experiencing something or encountering someone meaningful, and through adopting a positive attitude toward unavoidable suffering. Frankl concluded that while we cannot control external circumstances, we always retain the spiritual freedom to choose our attitude, and that having a purpose to live and die for transforms even the most hopeless existence into a meaningful one.

Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Jewish psychologist who survived multiple concentration camps, discovered that those who survived were not necessarily the physically strongest but those who found meaning in their suffering. The speaker connects this to the concept of 'doing what you are not forced to do' - finding purpose even in meaningless situations. In concentration camps, prisoners forced to perform meaningless tasks like moving stones or making bricks survived when they found meaning in their work, while those who saw only the pointlessness of their labor often perished.

If every precondition of your worldview is meaningless and arbitrary, then your worldview is meaningless and arbitrary. An existentialist cannot propose an objective universally binding moral law since any source they appeal to—biology, social cohesion, consequences—is itself arbitrarily chosen. The moral law doesn't actually exist; it's just a series of nominal principles one may or may not appeal to. Even if one claims moral axioms are necessary truths, humanistic systems lead to madness. Everyone has deep intuitions that certain activities are monstrous, which existentialism cannot explain.

Sartre argued morality is subjective with no universal standards - actions are moral if performed authentically and freely. However, he emphasized full responsibility for choices. Kierkegaard's three stages show progression from sensory pleasure to moral duties to religious faith. Nietzsche developed 'master-slave morality' - master morality values strength and self-affirmation, while slave morality (promoted by Christianity) values humility and compassion, representing a critique of traditional moral values. Three main criticisms of existentialism: (1) Pessimism - existentialists argue life is fundamentally meaningless, with Camus stating 'all healthy men have thought of their own suicide'; (2) Individualism - by emphasizing others objectify us and solitude is necessary for authenticity, existentialism can encourage isolation and neglect positive human connections; (3) Inability to address origins - by rejecting predetermined purpose, existentialism struggles to explain why humans exist at all and focuses on meaning rather than solving metaphysical problems like the problem of evil.

This section examines two positions that reject universal moral values. Nihilism (Nietzsche) argues that all existing values have lost their foundation and were created by 'weak people' as 'slave morality.' Only 'supermen' with their will to power can create new values. Existentialism (Sartre) holds that human existence precedes essence - humans first exist and then create their own essence. Since humans create their own values, no external authority can establish universal moral laws.

In existentialism, there is no universal morality because there is no God and no fixed human nature. Morality is not pre-existing but is created through our choices, like a work of art that is invented during the creative process. We cannot judge people based on traditional moral standards like right/wrong or good/bad, as these are relative to individual circumstances. Instead, we judge people based on whether they act in good faith (quest for freedom, embracing responsibility) or bad faith (hypocrisy, making excuses, hiding one's conscience). This provides a framework for ethical evaluation that relies on authenticity rather than universal moral laws.

Existentialists emphasized breaking with the crowd and being authentic, but this led to extreme subjectivism where anything chosen resolutely is acceptable regardless of consequences, pointing toward moral anarchy. They recognized this would be irresponsible but failed to establish criteria for distinguishing responsible from irresponsible choices. To escape this paralysis while maintaining authority, they employed 'exegetical thinking' - reading their ideas into authoritative texts. Kierkegaard read his ideas into Christian scriptures, Heidegger into presocratic philosophers, and Sartre into Marxism. This transformed personal subjective views into seemingly objective truths backed by institutional authority. However, this represented a form of self-deception where they sought authenticity while simultaneously relying on textual authority to avoid creating genuine ethical foundations.