It was called existentialism. It argued—put roughly—that life’s only meaning is the one we bring to it, that its purpose is for us to determine, each for ourselves. And most importantly, it argued that in this absurd universe without purpose, meaning, or objective morality, in a world where nothing matters, the only principled alternative to suicid

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All the programmes, all the slogans and principles have been utterly discredited as a result of these last few years. Nothing was able to survive, so it should not be a surprise if contemporary philosophy perceives the world as though it has no substance. But through this nihilism, through the pessimism and scepticism, through the soberness of ‘new

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Before the modern period, it was perhaps clearer that even an ordinary life can’t be fully conceived. Major events often bore neither a signature nor a sensible explanation. People met plague, famine, and war and didn’t have full information about what was going on. They might think that plague had something to do with rats or was related to an unf

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