Existentialism: Meaning in a Meaningless World

Existentialism: Meaning in a Meaningless World is a Philosophy course that examines how human beings create purpose when certainty, tradition, and easy answers fall away. Through major thinkers and literary works, students gain a practical introduction to freedom, anxiety, authenticity, absurdity, and the responsibility of making a life.

Explore Philosophy Through Existential Freedom And Meaning

• Understand the central questions of Existentialism, from crisis and doubt to choice and responsibility.
• Study Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus in a clear, accessible sequence.
• Connect Philosophy to everyday concerns such as work, love, identity, ethics, anxiety, and self-deception.
• Learn how existential ideas can help you think more honestly about meaning without relying on false certainty.

A practical introduction to freedom, anxiety, authenticity, absurdity, and the responsibility of making a life.

This course introduces Existentialism as one of the most urgent movements in modern Philosophy: a response to the loss of certainty and the demand to live meaningfully anyway. You will begin with the foundations of existential thought, exploring why questions of meaning become so intense in the modern world and how freedom can feel both empowering and unsettling.

Across the course, you will examine religious and secular approaches to existence, including Kierkegaard on anxiety, despair, and faith; Nietzsche on the death of God, value creation, nihilism, and self-overcoming; and literary treatments of freedom, guilt, alienation, and responsibility in Dostoevsky and Kafka. You will also study Heidegger on being and mortality, Sartre on bad faith and choice, Simone de Beauvoir on ambiguity and oppression, and Camus on absurdity, revolt, freedom, and solidarity.

Existentialism: Meaning in a Meaningless World also brings these ideas into practical life. By the end of the course, you will be able to use Philosophy to think more clearly about identity, relationships, work, ethics, culture, politics, and the challenge of creating meaning without illusions. You will leave with a sharper understanding of your freedom, a more honest relationship to anxiety and uncertainty, and a stronger sense of what it means to take responsibility for making a life.