DE Weekly: 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.
DE Weekly: Camus, Absurdism, & Revolt
One of the first names mentioned when one discusses the great philosophers of Existentialism is Albert Camus. There are those, however, who say that Camus was neither a real philosopher nor an Existentialist. One such person who claimed to believe both of those things was Camus himself.
“Why am I an artist and not a philosopher?” Camus wrote in his Notebooks, 1942–1951. “Because I think according to words and not according to ideas.”
DE Weekly: Amor Fati, Nietzsche, & Sisyphus
Although existentialism didn’t roll around to officially cement itself as a bona fide philosophy until the twentieth century, earlier philosophies explored proto-existentialist ideas and laid the foundation upon which it would one day sprout from.
One philosophy that has quite a bit in common with existentialism, at least insofar as it seeks to answer many of the same questions, is the ancient philosophy of Stoicism.