Course 7 of 18
Existence & Meaning
After certainty cracks: freedom, meaning, absurdity, and becoming.
What this course covers
Existence & Meaning works through after certainty cracks: freedom, meaning, absurdity, and becoming. across 5 lessons. Each opens with a short teaching passage, then tests whether the idea actually landed — and explains every answer rather than just marking it.
The lessons are sequenced, not a menu. Nietzsche comes first because values, power, and the eternal return is what the rest of the course assumes; by the end you reach Bad Faith & Radical Freedom.
How it starts
Nietzsche saw that Europe had quietly stopped believing, and warned the old moral certainties would crumble with it-'God is dead.' Rather than despair, he urged us to create our own values, driven by the will to power, life's urge to grow and overcome. He even asked: could you love your life enough to will it repeated forever?
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
Who you will be reading
Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Søren Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre are the thinkers this course leans on. Each has a profile with their full set of passages in thinkr's library.
The 5 lessons
- 1. NietzscheValues, power, and the eternal return
- 2. Sartre, Camus & the AbsurdFreedom, bad faith, and revolt
- 3. Kierkegaard & the IndividualThe first existentialist
- 4. Simone de BeauvoirBecoming, the Other, and situated freedom
- 5. Bad Faith & Radical FreedomSartre on self-deception and total responsibility