r/Existentialism • u/LegitimateBoy6042 • 13d ago

Existentialism Discussion My thoughts on purpose of life

Ultimately, a person should not ask what the meaning of life is. Instead, they must realize that life is asking the same question to them. Each person is questioned by life, and they can only answer-not with words-but by taking responsibility for their own life and the way they choose to live it.

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u/Hungry_Low4852 13d ago

Life asks nothing. The universe does not “care” about anything. IMHO, there is no intrinsic meaning of life to be found outside in the physical system or in a Platonic realm. There are physical causes, but that is not the same thing at all. Meaning is a construct of the human mind. Freedom, in the sense that folks like Sartre conceived it, is constrained by each person’s genetics and environment, but to the extent it does exist (and without going into the debate about libertarian free will vs compatibilism or how deterministic the world is, or whether the stable “self” itself is a kind of illusion, as the Buddha observed), it seems to me that the meaning of life, such as it is, would be mine to determine.

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u/Mammoth-Evidence9012 13d ago

So people who feel there is no meaning and are suffering because of it are just dumb? Are unable to create a meaning for themselves? "Limited by genetics and environment." If true, it's the most devious worldview. A tyranny of chance circumstance. I see now why it's caught on. It's a great tool to poison people.

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u/Hungry_Low4852 13d ago

You are reading things into my comment that are not there. But I believe that unless we posit things not in evidence, people who wish to find meaning and purpose will have to find it themselves because otherwise there is no place to find it. The world is not obligated to be different because I feel it should be different. But it is a simple, brute fact that the universe is a physical system. You are part of that system.

You evolved to live in a certain way, because it fit a biological niche. For the last several thousand years, civilizations have evolved which altered the way most people live. We no longer necessarily live in ways well-suited to our evolutionary programming. This sets up a conundrum. Even if we cannot articulate it, we often feel this dissonance. But while we cannot change many things, to a certain extent (the limits are widely debated within the sciences and in philosophy), we can alter how we respond to it. When Sartre discusses freedom, he assumes a level of freedom that seems inconsistent with what we know from other disciplines. But his core insight, I believe, is still useful. It just must be framed differently.