Philosophical Dictionary

The Sartre quote all over Pinterest, "we are our choices," has no confirmed source in his writing. What he actually argued is heavier: we're "condemned to be free," stuck owning every choice with no rules or luck to blame. Sartre later admitted he'd pushed that idea too far, and this piece explains where it broke.

Explore Kierkegaard's profound analysis of despair as an existential condition rather than mere emotion. Learn how balancing your finite and infinite selves can overcome both forms of despair, and discover why the "leap of faith" offers a path to authentic existence in modern life.

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?

Kierkegaard is famous for the leap of faith and for saying truth is subjectivity. One phrase never appears in his published works, and the other belongs to a pseudonym who writes about Christian faith without claiming it. What did Kierkegaard mean by faith, and why does the knight of faith look like a tax collector?

Absurdism, existentialism and nihilism start from the same uncomfortable silence: the universe does not answer our questions about meaning. Nihilism shrugs, existentialism builds its own meaning, and Camus called the believers’ leap philosophical suicide. So is absurdism just existentialism with good vibes?