How to Be an Existentialist | 33 (Short) Rules for Life
Image: The Wood Sawyers by Jean-Francois Millet (1850–1852)
What does it mean to be an existentialist? In the short book — What is Existentialism?, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir described the challenges of defining existentialism. Beauvoir wrote, “I must say right away that even an article is not enough to give an account of existentialism.”
How to Be an Existentialist — 33 (Short) Rules for Life
Among the earliest figures associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. In the 20th century, prominent existentialist thinkers included Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir.
Although most philosophers conventionally grouped under this heading either never used, or actively disputed, the term ‘existentialist’. Even Sartre himself once said: “Existentialism? I don’t know what that is.”
In What is Existetialism?, Beauvoir suggested,
“Existentialism strives to hold both ends of the chain at the same time, surpassing the interior-exterior, subjective-objective opposition. It postulates the value of the individual as the source and reason for being of all significations, yet it admits that the individual has reality only through his engagement in the world.”
As you’ll see in this piece, existentialist thinkers explored issues related to meaning, purpose, anxiety and authenticity, freedom, absurdity, and the value of human existence.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855):
Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and cultural critic who influenced existentialism and Protestant theology in the 20th century. He attacked his day's literary, philosophical, and ecclesiastical establishments for misrepresenting the highest task of human existence — namely, becoming oneself in an ethical and religious sense.
(1) “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
(2) “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
(3) “There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”
(4) “It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand…”
(5) “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”
(6) “Leap of faith — yes, but only after reflection”
Notable works: Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and Either/Or.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900):
Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy profoundly affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, and novelists.
(7) “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
(8) “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross… but you yourself alone.”
(9) “Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier and simpler.”
(10) “A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something.”
(11) “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
(12) “Meaning and morality of one’s life come from within oneself.”
(13) “Amor Fati — ‘Love Your Fate,’ which is in fact your life.”
(14) “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
Notable works: Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Human, All too Human.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881):
Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. Dostoevsky is usually regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived.
(15) “To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
(16) “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.”
(17) “The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
(18) “The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
(19) “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
(20) “Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering…”
(21) “Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
(22) “Compassion is the chief law of human existence.”
Notable works: The Underground Man, Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980):
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, novelist, and playwright, best known as the leading exponent of existentialism in the 20th century. Gordon Marino writes in the Basic Writings of Existentialism, “Sartre held that consciousness brings nothingness into being by questioning being.”
(23) “We are our choices.”
(24) “There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”
(25) “Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
(26) “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
(27) “To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.”
(28) “Existence is an imperfection.”
Notable works: Being and Nothingness, Nausea, and Existentialism Is a Humanism.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986):
Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer and feminist, a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of existentialism. She is known primarily for her treatise The Second Sex, a scholarly and passionate plea for abolishing what she called the myth of the “eternal feminine.”
(29) “One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.”
(30) “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
(31) “Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it… can supply the courage to fight for it.”
(32) “Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.”
(33) “To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.”
Notable works: The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex.
Final Thoughts
In What is Existentialism?, Beauvoir described the first error as believing existentialism can be distilled to “one of two immediately efficient, simple expressions.” But, if one must, we could think of existentialism as a form of philosophical inquiry exploring the problems of human existence.
To quote Sartre in Existentialism Is a Humanism, “Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.”
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