What Does Exintentialism Say About The Meaning Of Life
Most conversations about existentialism and the meaning of life are still stuck in clichés. Even among those of us who’ve read Being and Nothingness or The Myth of Sisyphus more times than we’d care to admit, there’s a tendency to flatten things.
We say things like “Sartre thought you make your own meaning” or “Camus said life is absurd, but you rebel anyway,” and then we move on.
But the truth is, these thinkers were wrestling with far more nuanced problems—and their ideas don’t always line up as neatly as we pretend. In this post, I want to push past the surface-level interpretations. I’m not here to summarize.
I’m here to pick a fight with some common assumptions—even the ones we as so-called experts hold. Let’s start with Sartre, because I think we’ve misunderstood what he’s really asking of us.
Sartre Didn’t Say “You Can Just Choose Your Meaning.” Not Really.
Sartre’s often portrayed as the guy who handed us radical freedom like some kind of philosophical gift bag: “Life’s meaningless, congrats—you’re free to do whatever you want.”
But if you’ve actually sat with Being and Nothingness, you know that’s a pretty cheap reading. Sartre’s concept of freedom isn’t liberating in the casual, self-help-book sense. It’s crushing. And that’s where things get interesting.
Freedom Isn’t Choice—It’s Condemnation
That infamous line—“Man is condemned to be free”—gets quoted a lot, but its full weight rarely lands. Sartre means that once you realize there’s no external source of meaning—no God, no essence, no cosmic plan—you can’t not choose.
Every action becomes a declaration of value. There’s no opting out. That’s what he means by condemned.
But here’s the kicker: Sartre doesn’t think we’re floating in some pure space of choice. He acknowledges facticity—our thrownness into a world we didn’t choose. You’re born into a particular history, language, socioeconomic situation, body.
That’s not freedom; that’s the stuff freedom has to work with. And it limits what you can do, or at least what feels possible.
So freedom is never absolute. It’s always freedom within—within a context, within constraints, within a body and a culture and a history. That’s where things get real.
Bad Faith Is Way More Common Than We Admit
Let’s talk about mauvaise foi, or bad faith. Sartre describes it as the lie we tell ourselves to avoid owning our freedom. The classic example is the waiter who over-identifies with his role, performing “waiter-ness” with exaggerated precision to avoid confronting the fact that he’s more than that role. He hides in his function.
But I think we need to extend this idea. Bad faith isn’t just for clueless waiters or bourgeois posers. It’s existential camouflage. And it shows up in us, too. Every time we say, “I had no choice,” “that’s just who I am,” or even “this is what people like me are supposed to do”—we’re slipping into it. Not always consciously, but consistently.
In a world without given meanings, everything we do becomes a performance we have to take responsibility for. Sartre isn’t giving us permission to invent meaning however we like. He’s reminding us that we’re always doing that already—and usually trying to pretend we’re not.
The Self Is a Project, Not a Given
Another crucial point that’s often glossed over: for Sartre, the self isn’t some core identity waiting to be “authentic.” There is no authentic self beneath the performance. You’re not uncovering a truth—you’re constantly creating it, and always incomplete. You’re a project, not a product.
This is where Sartre gets deeply uncomfortable for anyone looking for stability. You can’t rest on who you were yesterday. Your past doesn’t determine you, but your present reinterprets that past constantly. So meaning isn’t just something you “choose”—it’s something you do, over and over.
But Can You Ground Meaning Without Grounding Value?
Here’s where I think the tension in Sartre becomes the most fruitful—and most under-explored.
If all values are self-created, how do we judge one project as better than another? Sartre tries to dodge relativism by introducing the idea of “universalizing the project,” but he never really nails down how that works in practice. His ethics in Existentialism Is a Humanism are often seen as a later attempt to salvage this, but many of us find it unsatisfying—philosophically thin, even apologetic.
Still, the challenge is fascinating: Can you have ethics—real ethics—without any foundational source of value?
Sartre’s answer is: you must. That’s where his concept of anguish comes in.
The anguish isn’t just over freedom; it’s over the realization that our choices matter not just for ourselves but for humanity. Every time I choose, I’m saying this is what a human being ought to do.
That’s a terrifying claim. And it’s one we rarely sit with long enough.
Camus Didn’t Just Say “Rebel Against the Absurd” — He Was Building an Ethics Without a God
If Sartre gives us the unbearable weight of freedom, Camus gives us silence—the cold, indifferent silence of the universe.
And he doesn’t flinch from it. But here’s what I think we often miss about Camus: he wasn’t just making peace with the absurd; he was carving out a moral framework in its shadow. And it’s more demanding than it looks at first glance.
Absurdity Isn’t Despair. It’s the Beginning.
Camus starts The Myth of Sisyphus with what’s probably the most provocative sentence in 20th-century philosophy: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
Now, we’ve all read this. We quote it. But have we really let it hit?
Camus isn’t glorifying despair. He’s saying: If life has no ultimate meaning—if the universe is mute—then why go on?
That’s the raw, honest place he starts from. But his answer is anything but nihilistic. He insists: We go on because revolt is a form of meaning-making that doesn’t lie to itself.
Here’s where I think Camus goes deeper than people give him credit for. He doesn’t resolve the absurd. He refuses to. He doesn’t leap to God, or essence, or even metaphysical freedom like Sartre. He just stares straight into the void and says yes anyway.
Revolt Isn’t About Rage—It’s About Dignity
Revolt, for Camus, isn’t about raging against fate. It’s about standing up—lucidly, stubbornly—without pretending things are different than they are. Sisyphus doesn’t win, and he knows it. But he also doesn’t bow to the absurdity of his condition.
Camus writes: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” That line gets tossed around a lot. But let’s underline something crucial here: he’s talking about a kind of ethical integrity—not happiness, not spiritual transcendence. This is about clarity, resistance, and choosing to act without appeal to a higher justification.
This leads directly into The Rebel, where Camus tries to build a secular ethics rooted in the logic of revolt. And I’ll say it: this is where Camus deserves way more attention in existentialist circles.
Axiology Without Metaphysics
Camus sees revolt not just as a personal stance, but as the foundation of collective ethics. If one human being can say “no” to suffering—if a single person can say “this is unjust”—then we already have the beginning of value. Not metaphysical value. Human value, grounded in experience.
Here’s a passage from The Rebel that stopped me cold the first time I read it (and still does):
“I rebel—therefore we exist.”
That line reverses Descartes and denies Sartre in a single breath. Meaning isn’t in the “I.” It’s in the “we.” Camus argues that even in rebellion, you’re pointing to something shared: a limit, a principle, a refusal to allow certain things to be done to human beings. You rebel because you believe in the dignity of others. Even without God.
Camus Isn’t a Reluctant Existentialist—He’s a Radical One
There’s a tendency to treat Camus as the outlier. He rejected the label “existentialist.” He hated Hegel. He fought with Sartre. But read carefully, and you’ll see: he’s not soft-pedaling the absurd—he’s taking it further. He doesn’t just say, “life is meaningless.” He asks, “what does it mean to live ethically in a meaningless world?”
That’s the hard question. And he doesn’t dodge it.
Frankl Wasn’t Just “Meaning-Lite” — He Changed the Terms of the Entire Conversation
Viktor Frankl tends to get left out of the existentialist canon—or at best, given a polite nod from the sidelines. He’s often dismissed as too spiritual, too optimistic, or just too therapeutic. But I want to make a different case: Frankl didn’t water down existentialism. He redefined it. And in doing so, he raised questions that Sartre and Camus never fully answered.
Meaning Isn’t Chosen—It’s Discovered
That right there puts Frankl in tension with Sartre immediately. For Sartre, we create meaning out of nothing. For Frankl, meaning is something latent in the world, waiting to be found. And not just any meaning—the meaning of a moment, of a relationship, of a suffering.
This is where people often accuse Frankl of sneaking metaphysics back in through the back door. And sure, maybe there’s some of that. But the real innovation is phenomenological. Frankl is saying: our experience of meaning isn’t arbitrary. It’s felt. It’s real. It calls to us.
He’s not arguing for universal truths. He’s arguing that your life has a specific task, and only you can fulfill it. That’s not essentialism. That’s existential specificity.
Logotherapy: Existentialism for the Traumatized
Frankl’s idea of logotherapy—“therapy through meaning”—wasn’t just a clever branding trick. It was born in Auschwitz.
Literally. Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning out of his experience in concentration camps, where he noticed something profound: those who could hold on to a sense of purpose—even just imaginatively—were more likely to survive.
But here’s what makes this philosophically compelling: Frankl isn’t saying meaning erases suffering. He’s saying suffering becomes bearable when it can be integrated into a personal narrative. That’s a big shift from Sartre’s emphasis on action or Camus’s emphasis on revolt. Frankl is after something more interior—more narrative.
Meaning, for Frankl, is not a luxury. It’s a survival tool.
Responsibility Over Freedom
Another core shift Frankl makes: he reverses Sartre’s focus on freedom. For Frankl, what matters is responsibility. You’re not free from things—you’re free for something. That’s a subtle but profound difference.
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked.”
That’s not a Hallmark quote. That’s a call to ethical accountability in the face of absurdity. It’s not just about meaning—it’s about answering meaning.
And unlike Sartre, who never quite works out how to move from radical freedom to moral obligation, Frankl puts responsibility front and center. You owe something to the world—even in suffering. Maybe especially then.
Bridging Existentialism and Spirituality Without Cheating
Let’s be real—Frankl’s the only one of the three who talks about the soul without apology. But he doesn’t demand you believe in God. He only asks you to take seriously the possibility that life might be asking something of you. That maybe meaning is something you respond to, not just make up.
And honestly?
That might be the most radical existential move of all.
Final Thoughts
So what do we do with all this?
Sartre says you create meaning, Camus says you revolt in the face of the absurd, and Frankl says you discover meaning in what life demands of you. They don’t agree. That’s the point. They’re wrestling with the same silence and coming away with different answers.
But they all refuse to give up on the possibility that meaning can exist—even without a God, without a master plan, without guarantees. And maybe that’s what still matters most: not that they gave us answers, but that they gave us better questions.