Existentialism

Existentialism arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in thinkers as different as the Christian Søren Kierkegaard and the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre. It starts with the concrete individual: a person existing, choosing, anxious, and aware of death.

Ultimate Reality

Existentialists disagree about God — some are theists, many are atheists — but they agree the world does not come with a ready-made script. Atheist versions find no cosmic purpose; theist versions meet God in a leap of faith, not by proof.

The Human Condition

The human condition is freedom, and freedom is a burden. We are, in Sartre's phrase, condemned to be free: unable to escape choosing, and without excuses. Anxiety and the awareness of death expose bad faith: pretending we are determined by our roles.

Knowledge and Truth

Abstract systems and detached facts cannot tell a person how to live. Truth that matters is lived truth — Kierkegaard called it subjectivity — found in commitment and risk. The deepest questions are answered by a life, not an argument.

Right and Wrong

With no given essence or external code, values are created by our choices — which makes us wholly responsible for them. Authenticity is the central virtue: owning one's choices honestly. Inauthenticity — hiding behind the crowd or the role — is the central failure.

Human Destiny

Death is certain, and it gives life urgency: my possibilities end, and no one can die my death for me. Atheist existentialists accept extinction and create meaning defiantly; theist existentialists look through death to a God met by faith.

The Conversation

Existentialism takes seriously things Christianity also takes seriously: death, anxiety, guilt, and the demand to decide rather than drift. We differ over whether the universe is silent. Christianity confesses that meaning is not only made but given — that in Jesus, God addresses us personally — while honoring its warning that no one can believe in our place.