In other words， our existence, our birth, happens first, and then it's up to each of us to determine who we are. We have to write our own essence through the way we choose to live.
But we have no actual predetermined purpose, there is no set path that we're supposed to follow. It's hard to express how radical this idea was at the time. Because for thousands of years before this, you didn't have to choose a path or find your purpose God did it for you. But it's important to note that existentialism is not synonymous with atheism.
Plenty of existentialist are atheist, but some are theorists like Kierkegaard. What theistic existentialist deny is any sort of teleology, that is, they refute the notion that God made the universe, or our world, or us, with any particular purpose in mind, so God may exist, but instilling you or your life or the cosmos with meaning? That's just not in his job description.
As a result, we are each born into a universe in which we and our world and our actions lack any real inherent. Importance. This is a fundamental component of existentialism, and its adherents refer to it as the absurd. You and I think of absurdity as something that's just silly, or preposterous. But for existentialist, absurdity is a technical term. It is how they describe the search for answers in an answerless world.
We are creatures who need meaning, but we are abandoned in a universe full of meaninglessness, so we cry into the wilderness, and get no response, but we keep crying anyway. That for an existentialist, is the definition of absurd.
for:阅读练习生
乙亥年七月初四
