Philosophical Dictionary

Existentialism says you show up first and figure out what you are for later. No manual, no factory settings, and no one to blame for your choices. Here is what Sartre, Kierkegaard, Beauvoir, Heidegger and Camus actually meant, why an existential crisis is part of the deal, where the whole thing started (with an apricot cocktail), and how existentialism differs from nihilism and absurdism.

Join us as we discuss one of Jean-Paul Sartre's literary works, No Exit, and look into existentialist authenticity and freedom, and some of its drawbacks.

In which we discuss Karl Marx's criticisms of capitalism, us, the Labor Theory of Value, and freedom. With bonus thought experiment.

Albert Ellis said his core idea came from the Stoics, and Aaron Beck’s team traced cognitive therapy back to Zeno. Viktor Frankl developed logotherapy in Vienna and survived four camps; Irvin Yalom turned death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness into a clinical map. What did therapy borrow, and what did it drop?

It is the most famous formula in philosophy class, and Hegel never used it for his own method. We trace thesis, antithesis, synthesis back to Kant, Fichte and a forgotten popularizer, then show how Hegel’s dialectic actually works, from being and nothing to freedom and love. So why does the wrong version stick?