"...man is condemned to be free. condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."
"despair... it means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible... the moment the possibilities i am considering are not rigorously involved by my action, i ought to disengage myself from them, because no god, no scheme, can adapt the world and its possibilities to my will. when descartes said, " conquer yourself rather than the world," he meant essentially the same thing."
"a man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing... reality alone is what counts that dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations. you are nothing else than your life."
Guidance (divine or human) is irrelevant. Because no matter what it is, you still have to interpret what is said to you through your own experience. You will not necessarily know what the right answer is. You still have to interpret/filter it. You’re in control of the action that results. Religion is irrelevant of Existencialism. In either case, you are responsible for your actions (can’t say god made me do it)
“Existential anxiety” will happen. Has to do with 1) even if you try to be a good person all the time, you will make mistakes and those mistakes will cause regrets. The recognition that mistakes will happen. 2) recognizing that whatever advice is given to you, you still have to interpret it according to your own personal experience. You accept that there will be existential anxiety ( e.g. in the way that our mainstream culture accepts death. As a culture, we are not very good at untangling that anxiety. We’re not given a social structure to deal with it) when the big issues come in to someone’s personal experience, the anxiety will be significant. In existentialism, you face it .
