EX
Existentialism school of thought
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
School of thought (Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus). Existence precedes essence; you are what you choose. Canonical summary, not a person.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Which comes closest to your actual position on God? | Probably no god, though I can't be certain | Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946). |
| Organized religion's overall effect on society has been: | Somewhat negative | Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) — religion as "philosophical suicide," a leap that evades the absurd; Sartre's critiques concur. |
| God exists | Probably false | Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) — the doctrine is framed from atheism: even if God existed, it would change nothing. |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Probably false | Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943) — death is final; no afterlife in the existentialist frame. |
| Prayer can change what happens in the world, beyond its effects on the people involved | Certainly false | Sartre (1946) — in the doctrine's godless frame, no one exists to answer prayer or alter events. |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Probably false | Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943) — consciousness (the for-itself) is a "nothingness" irreducible to material production. |
| With the past exactly the same, our choices could have gone otherwise | Certainly true | Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943) — man is "condemned to be free": radical freedom is the doctrine's core. |
| Some actions are wrong no matter what any person or culture believes | Certainly false | Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) — values are invented by the choosing subject; no moral order precedes choice. |
| Long-standing traditions usually contain wisdom we can't see | Probably false | Sartre (1946) — inherited values held without choice are bad faith; tradition as authority is the doctrine's target. |
| Human life has a purpose beyond the one we choose for it | Certainly false | Sartre (1946) — "existence precedes essence": no purpose exists before the one a person creates. |