Have you been wondering about the meaning of life or what do I do about this life? Is there some inherent purpose with which I am born with? What should I do to make this life worth living?
Then you are not the first one to delve into this question that has pestered humankind from time immemorial. The very first philosophers like Aristotle and Plato attempted to answer it through the philosophy called Essentialism. It implies that everything in this world has an essence or a pre-determined purpose that has to be served or fulfilled. Just as a knife is supposed to have a sharp blade for being a knife; a house has to shelter people for that is it's the purpose; humans too have an essence which was there even before he was born that is to be a good human and virtues like justice and good faith.
This line of philosophy existed till the 1800s when the philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre and Kirkegard understood the problems of modern humans and came up with Existentialism theory.
This is quite interesting as it completely rejects the concept of essence and instead says that humans are born without a purpose and it is during his life he seeks to find the essence of life i.e. Existence precedes essence. Humans can create their own meaning and purpose of life through the choices we make.
This theory also emphasized that a man is free to make his own choices in life, but to evade the burden and regret of choices that go wrong, humans hardly exercise any choices and instead continue to live the way they are at the same time complaining that they really didn't have a choice. This resulted in a famous sentence called “Man is condemned to be free.” Despite having all the freedom to make choices in life we choose to complain about not having the choice to protect ourselves. That's what Sartre calls the Bad Faith. For instance, a housewife will keep telling herself that she has no choice but to be what she is whereas she has all the choices to do anything she wants. But since she is afraid that she'll blame herself for the choice gone wrong, she says that never had a choice as a way to protect herself.
We might end up thinking that we do have a purpose in life when watching our favorite movies, games, or have amazing food or get to travel around places, but another existentialist Albert Camus says that nothing in life can be meaningful to it. This is the concept of Absurdity which says that though it is natural to find the meaning of life the universe is devoid of any meaning and the only way is to accept reality. He says that the literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself. Therefore he suggests choosing one of the following-
Camus's explains it through the story of Sisyphus, a man, who angered the Gods and was, therefore, was punished to push a boulder to the top of a mountain, and then it would roll down which he has to carry up again and this had to be done till eternity. He explained how modern life has become alike to doing the same tasks over and over again and also to accept that this absurdity of life is the real truth of life which had to be accepted.
Let me know your thoughts on it.
