It’s a good idea to save your work regularly.
Saving your work regularly is a good idea. he
Existentialism is not your typical branch of philosophy, but it does exude a certain sexual energy. This school of thought, cooked up by French folks in hip cafes, throws away logic to explore ideas of radical freedom, responsibility, and a world without God. This makes it attractive to those of us who prefer cafe life to library life, and it’s why it has been explored in so much of our favorite media. But, this love of French philosophy risks ignoring the fact that existentialism also has a lot of problems and critics, especially those who are suspicious of the idea of radical freedom. Existentialists themselves have been the harshest critics of their own school of thought.
So, does existentialism still have a use in 2023? To answer this question, we need to go back to its roots, which lies in the idealism and rationalism of thinkers like Descartes. Idealism and rationalism both argue that reality is knowable through reason, and that the objective and subjective worlds can be reconciled. But, Kierkegaard, influenced by idealism, argued that life, existence, and individual subjectivity can’t be understood in logical terms, and that we need to take risks and leaps of faith in creating our own subjectivity. His work was the 19th century blueprint for what would follow, and is an important part of understanding existentialism.