Existentialism: Do We Have A Greater Purpose?

The first time I actually questioned mankind’s purpose was when I was speaking with a fellow atheist, such as myself. We were just conversing on many philosophical topics when the idea of destiny and fate came up. This soon led to us debating whether or not mankind has a greater purpose. My stance on the topic was that only a creator could give a product a purpose, and because we do not believe that there is an infinite divine substance, we as an entire species could not have been given a purpose. Rather, we can use knowledge to create our own individual purposes (Most choose purposes that will benefit society), while still acknowledging that there is no greater purpose for mankind. So as to the statement “The whole point of knowledge is to

Because Existentialists believe that there is no divine creator of the cosmos, they do not see purpose in our existence. To counter this nothingness, Existentialists embrace existence, hence the name Existentialism. It claims that the only way to overcome to condition of not having a purpose is by exercising our personal freedom and choice. Existentialists also believe that people truly make decisions based on what has meaning to them, rather than by rationality. Unlike Descartes, who believed in the supremacy of the human mind and consciousness, Existentialists believe that we are born into a concrete universe and cannot simply “think away” the world. Therefore, existence precedes consciousness and is the only true reality, in Existentialistic views. By having this freedom and choice, we as existent beings create our own purpose in life by using the knowledge we have obtained from the outside world, and due to the fact that Existentialists lean heavily on reasoning, sense perception, and memory, they tend not to lean so heavily on faith or intuition as a way of

Nihilism argues that beings exist without any objective purpose, truth, or value. Similar to Existentialism above, Nihilism lacks the belief of a divine infinite being that would give us a purpose, truth, and value. Because of this, they do not believe in morality and reason that no one action is objectively preferable to another. For example, a Nihilist would not view a murder as wrong, but would not view it as right either, rather they would see it as just another action by another meaningless human. In contrast to this, Existentialists would probably have differing opinions on this murder because each of them can have a different meaning for life, though generally these meanings align with what is beneficial to the survival of the human race, of which, murder of an innocent person is not. Similar to Existentialism, knowledge must have been obtained in order to reach these conclusions. These to philosophies would not support an idea of an innate knowledge because that would disprove most of their point. Instead, they believe that all knowledge is gained by oneself. Not unlike Existentialism and Nihilism, Absurdism, the last of the philosophies on this topic that will be analyzed, uses knowledge to make a case that there is no purpose for