DE Weekly: Purpose, Complete Responsibility, & the Meaning of Life
Below is an archived email originally sent on August 10, 2026.
Purpose, Complete Responsibility, & the Meaning of Life
Perhaps the biggest question the philosophy of Existentialism aims to solve is, “What is the meaning of life?” Indeed, this question has been tried by all major philosophies and religions in one way or another. But, has it ever been truly answered?
Aristotle’s writings on the “human function” as it relates to aligning our souls with their highest capacity, St. Thomas Aquinas’s writings on working to achieve the beatific vision of Christ, and Immanuel Kant’s rationalism aiming for the highest good are just some answers posited to this question on the meaning of life.
When we examine each of those propositions, however, we eventually come to the conclusion that many such ideas like them are our way of reasoning ourselves into a worldview that makes our lives matter to us.
Much of the time, we end up where Arthur Schopenhauer found himself after reaching a goal he longed for, only to discover “how vain and empty it is.”
Now, I believe that the philosophers who contributed to Existentialism––like other philosophers both before and after them––did, in fact, reason themselves into a satisfactory answer to this age-old question.
But they did it unconventionally, by shifting the focus to a slightly different question.
Instead of asking, “What is the meaning of life?”, I believe the existentialists asked themselves something closer to, “What is the meaning of my life?”
It may not seem like much of a difference, but in reality, it changes the entire conversation. Instead of thinking about the universe and all of Creation, one is disposed to think instead of one’s Self.
And, instead of seeking to uncover some secret, all present universal meaning that applies to every human being, one has the liberty of asking themselves if their life is in fact meaningful, if their life has meaning.
I find it necessary to always distinguish the existentialist view of the human condition from that of the nihilist; where nihilism argues that the conditions for a meaningful life are not present and not obtainable for any of us, Existentialism argues the counterpoint that these conditions are obtainable if we simply know how to act on them.
In Existentialism, the game is this: there is no prewritten meaning to life, no ultimate underlying inherent purpose for any one person.
Instead, we are first born (into existence) and then invent our own purpose and meaning through our choices and actions, taking hold of our personal responsibility and radical freedom to find meaning (our essence).
We define who we are and how meaningful our lives are through the way we live. In other words, it is actually our own Self that is tasked with assigning value to our life––through work, through creating art, through child rearing, through love, and through personal achievement.
As long as we are living authentically, in Good Faith (not in Bad Faith), we can face the Absurd. The Absurd, that is, the notion that the universe provides us with no answers to the question of meaning.
It was Albert Camus who illustrated the Absurd through stories such as The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, describing how we can accept the incongruence between our desire for meaning and a universe that offers it none.
For him, this is achieved through living defiantly, rebelling against the Absurd: passion and freedom are our best friends. So what if the universe has no inherent meaning? We can choose to stay alive and conscious, to refuse to give up and to choose a life that is meaningful and valuable.
All of this sounds great, but it is always in practice that we must actually employ this attitude to be successful. Camus believed that, no matter our circumstances, we can still choose to live every day on its own, enjoying the small, everyday pleasures that make us feel as though we are living a valuable existence.
Relaxing in the sun, enjoying a good meal, spending time with friends. Even if we were bound to the existence of the mythical Sisyphus, he famously argued, we should think ourselves happy.
Even if we are destined to push a boulder up a hill forever only to have to retrieve it and undertake the task once more, there is happiness in that; there is purpose and meaning in that.
For Jean-Paul Sartre, there was also no such thing as a built-in meaning to life that we could all uncover and live happily ever after. He, too, believed it was only through accepting our complete responsibility for our own lives and our own essence that we could invent a meaningful life.
For him, every action and every choice that we make is not simply limited to one’s Self, but a powerful statement of what one believes a human being ought to be.
That is why living authentically, in Good Faith, is the suremost method of giving life something that resembles value and meaning to one’s Self.
There is a quote of Franz Kafka’s that is no less poignant now than it was when we wrote it: “The meaning of life is that it stops.”
That is to say, the fact that we are all mortal and will all die one day, either when we are ready, before we are ready, when we are at peace or regardless of if we are ever at peace, should be enough to make us realize that this short, fleeting existence we have is meaningful in itself.
Perhaps that is where we should be investing our attention. That’s why I like to take that quote a step further, in my own fashion:
The meaning of life is life itself.
“You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” –– Albert Camus
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
This is by no means an original recommendation, but if you have not yet read Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, it does a great job of neatly encapsulating much of what I wrote about today, and much of what encompasses Existentialism.
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