• Existence precedes essence. Man first exists without purpose or definition, finds himself in the world and only then, as a reaction to experience, defines the meaning to life. Since there is no God or designer pulling the strings of fate, it is up to the individual to choose the life they think best. Even a belief in God or fate is a personal choice - it is a life and purpose chosen. The belief in a deity can never be forced upon a person. Even if one were to have the miraculous visions of Abraham, it is still up to the individual to interpret those visions: the voice of the divine or lunatic hallucinations? Only the individual can make that interpretation.

    Indeed, a wider tenet of existentialism is that man is never compelled; he is faced with a choice at every turn. Even if a man is imprisoned or a gun held to his head, it is his choice whether to comply or defy - the consequences do not exempt one from making that choice.

    This radical freedom has weighty consequences. We are responsible for everything we do. We cannot make excuses or defer responsibility to either a divine being or human nature: to do so would constitute a self-deception, or "bad-faith".

    The consequences of this are clearly burdensome but unavoidable. We are condemned to be free. But this should not give cause for any kind of pessimism. Existentialism exhibits a sternness of optimism, as Sartre tells us. Its optimistic message is that the destiny of man is placed within himself.

    It may be said, however, that nihilism and existentialism are common bedfellows. Nihilists believe that life and all existence is meaningless; similar to existentialists. But where existentialism encourages the individual to form their own meanings, nihilists insist that there is no point; mortality will claim us all. Nothing lasts, and so nothing has lasting value. If followed through to conclusion, these philosophies will end up with the philosopher “putting a gun to their head”, as one so eloquently put it.

    But suicide is not an option for an existentialist. First, one admits that the world is meaningless beyond what meaning humans place in it, the absurd, as Camus calls it. But one must not, as they have done in their philosophies, make any attempt to resolve it. It is irresolvable because it is a given of human existence. But to kill oneself is an attempt at resolution, which denies the very phenomenon you began with. Of course, this is where existentialism backs us into a corner. To accept absurdity is to accept death. To refuse it is to accept a life on the precipice, where one cannot leap to comfort, but only live “on the dizzying crest - that is integrity, the rest subterfuge”. The dizzying crest described by Camus is the fully conscious experience of being alive in the face of death and the pointless toils of one's life. In the face of the absurd, we must attain an awareness of a crushing fate, doomed to freedom and doomed to meaninglessness, but without the resignation that ought to accompany it. Like Sisyphos and his boulder, the lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. We must be happy, for being aware of one's life and to the maximum is living, and to the maximum. Suicide is not a viable path. We cannot solve the problem of the absurd by negating its existence. It is a necessary condition of the confrontation between man and world. Suicide, as a resolution and termination of the absurd, would be a defeat and a denial of the very condition of man's existence.