---
title: "Existentialism · Library · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/existentialism
description: "Existentialism is a tradition about freedom, responsibility and making your own meaning in a world with no given purpose."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

## Ethics & metaphysics

# Existentialism

Definition

Existentialism is a tradition about freedom, responsibility and making your own meaning in a world with no given purpose. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and de Beauvoir are tied to it.

On this site

The Exist. column. It favours Genuinely free will and real stakes, and treats engineered bliss as bad faith.

Role in the model

The Exist. column favours real freedom and real stakes, and treats engineered bliss as bad faith. It’s the one school whose approval goes up as the scenario gets less comfortable.

Related

[Free will](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/free-will)[Eternal return](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/eternal-return)

In the trees

[Existence before essence · Ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics?n=g-sartre)[Live without a given meaning · Ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics?n=g-camus)

## The people behind the terms

14 short pages, one per thinker, each with its matching dial. See also the [reading list](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/reading).

[Plato’s cave](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/plato)[Zhuangzi’s butterfly](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/zhuangzi)[Vasubandhu’s dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/vasubandhu)[Shankara’s māyā](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/shankara)[al-Ghazali’s doubt](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ghazali)[Ibn Arabi’s imagination](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ibn-arabi)[Calderón’s life is a dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/calderon)[Descartes’ demon](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/descartes)[Berkeley’s perceiver](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/berkeley)[Borges’ circular ruins](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/borges)[Nozick’s experience machine](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/nozick)[Putnam’s brain in a vat](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/putnam)[Bostrom’s trilemma](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/bostrom)[Chalmers: virtual worlds are real](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/chalmers)