The year was 2009. I had just read Sartre’s Existentialism Is A Humanism as part of my Intro to Western Philosophy course. I proclaimed my infatuation with existentialism only for one of the grad students to laugh and tell me that it was just a phase.

Well, here we are, 11 years later. Sure, I guess existentialism was technically a phase for me, but it just led me to absurdism which is just even more absurd, tbh.

We have to give Kierkegaard his due, though. Afterall, he is considered the father of existentialism, and from existentialism, absurdism is born - or, it’s more like the detached cooler cousin or something, that’s also a little unhinged, probably.

The same way that #nihilism is meant as a stopover on the way to existentialism, existentialism was never my destination.

Oh Kierkegaard… if you ever have a chance to read about his life, it’s actually quite tragic, I think pretty much all of his siblings died before the age of 34… and Kierkegaard died at 42.

I don’t know all the details of his life, but he heavily criticized the church. He didn’t believe that Christianity should be about the regurgitation of dogma, but rather it was about an individual subjective passion.

When he died, his cousin actually protested Kierkegaard’s church burial, saying that Kierkegaard would never have wanted it, as he had denounced the institution.

You’re probably used to thinking of existentialists as atheists. And yeah, most are, but technically Christian existentialists can exist, and Kierkegaard would be one. Sartre and Heidegger would be atheistic existentialist (although someone once argued with me that Heidegger wasn't atheistic, so I may be wrong about that, I think he was religious? You can look it up if you really want to know).

I like to think that if it was socially acceptable to be an atheist or agnostic back then, Kiekergaard would have chosen to be an absurdist instead, but I suppose we’ll never know! If the issue was finding a refuge or way to reconcile or lessen the existential feelings of dread and despair, then why not just join us in embracing the absurd! I guess because the absurd wasn’t really a thing back then. Y’know, because of Camus or whatever.

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