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DANIEL MIESSLER

The Difference Between

Existentialism, Nihilism,
and Absurdism
Three different ways of approaching the
lack of intrinsic meaning.
By DANIEL MIESSLER in PHILOSOPHY

CREATED/UPDATED: NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Home / Philosophy / The Difference Between Existentialism,

Nihilism, and Absurdism

22 NOV 2016 · 8 MIN

The Difference Between
Existentialism, Nihilism, an… Explicit
Absurdism
Unsupervised Learning content

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For centuries there have been people who

believe there is no intrinsic meaning in the
universe. Here I’ll summarize the three
major branches of this belief, and how
each proposes we deal with the situation.

how absurdism applies in everyday

life

1. Existentialism is the belief that

through a combination of awareness,
free will, and personal responsibility,
one can construct their own meaning
within a world that intrinsically has
none of its own.
2. Nihilism is the belief that not only is
there no intrinsic meaning in the
universe, but that it’s pointless to try to
construct our own as a substitute.
3. Absurdism is the belief that a search
for meaning is inherently in conflict
with the actual lack of meaning, but
that one should both accept this and
simultaneously rebel against it by
embracing what life has to offer.

Intrinsic as opposed to created.

For those who come to accept that life is

without intrinsic meaning, there are three
main ways to react.

Philosophical Suicide, such as

completely embracing a religion or a
spirituality framework—because one
believes it’s too hard to sad or difficult
to live on without one
Physical Suicide, due to life being
ultimately meaningless and therefore
either too boring or too painful to
continue
Acceptance, which means continuing
on despite knowing that ultimate
meaning is not possible

I view camus’ absurdism as the most

satisfactory response, as it takes the third
option of acceptance and works from
there.

Related
free will and the absurdist chasm

free will’s absurdist paradox

Adopting a religion or some sort of nebu‐

lous “spirituality”—as someone who has
accepted the truth of intrinsic meaning‐
lessness—amounts to either intellectual
laziness, emotional weakness, or some
combination thereof. It is to say that the
truth is too difficult to consume and ac‐
cept, and that you’ve chosen to believe
something untrue because it is easier.

To commit suicide is to turn one’s back on

the beauty that life has to offer, which I
feel should only be explored in extreme
cases.

Resigning to truly believe something

you know isn’t true is a weak posi‐
tion, but it often looks identical to
Absurdism, which is not.

the difference between nihilism,

pessimism, and skepticism

Camus’ Absurdism is about working with‐

in our human limitations, but without
abandoning our respect for ourselves or
the truth. Absurdists often either adopt or
construct a belief structure that provides a
day-to-day reprieve from the crushing im‐
possibility of true meaning. Such con‐
structs allow us to trick our evolution-
soaked brains into extracting meaning
from the universe, while never forgetting
that the system itself is a trick.

Related
general absurdism, and how it
applies in everyday life

Perhaps the Hipster drive to obsess

over minutia is a form of Absurdism.

This awareness is the difference between

rebellion and surrender.

A construct could be existing or new, and either

structured or amorphous.

A person who has surrendered will say

that they believe in their construct com‐
pletely, and that it provides true meaning
in the universe, while someone who has
not surrendered may say they’ve adopted
a scaffolding for practical reasons, but
they know it’s artificial.

The barrier is delicate between embracing

a belief structure because not doing so is
too empty or painful, and only doing so
for practical purposes while still knowing
it’s false. Many start as one or the other
and then migrate, or exist day to day as
one and become the other when pressed.

Related
absurdism as a general approach

Examples of surrender vs. rebellion

True believers in mainstream religions

either never believed that the world
lacks inherent meaning or they chose to
stop believing it because it was too
empty and sad. You can’t really know
which a person is without deep
conversation, and significant honesty
on their part.
Many religious people become atheists
later in life, but after much
introspection decide to stay loosely tied
to the beliefs and the community
because of the social and meaning-
based benefits. Many in this situation
are not entirely sure day-to-day how
much they really believe vs. how much
they’re pretending for practical
reasons.
Conversely, many people brought up
without religion see later in life that all
their happy friends have a family and a
strong faith, and decide to adopt
religion to acquire its benefits.
Similarly, they might not know at any
given moment how much of their
participation is genuine vs. secular.

In my opinion, the defining characteristic

of Absurdism/Rebellion is the maintain‐
ing of extreme clarity between seeking the
benefits of belief in intrinsic meaning all
the while knowing it’s impossible. Such a
person can go to church with the family
and mentally pray in some sort of secular
but semi-spiritual way, while simultane‐
ously knowing (but not actively thinking
about) the fact that nobody is listening.

As humans, it’s virtually impossible to

exist in both modes simultaneously. We
either have faith in a system, a structure,
or a person, or we deconstruct that thing
into its parts and see its flaws, limitations,
and—perhaps—that it’s false. Trans‐
parency removes magic. And unfortunate‐
ly, our brains are most happy when the
magic is intact.

Summary

The religious believe that meaning was

imbued into the universe by a supreme
being, that this knowledge is available
to us via one or more texts, and that it’s
our responsibility to go learn about it.
Existentialists may or may not agree
that religions speak to real/discoverable
meaning, but they believe that people
can make their own meaning that
wouldn’t be any less real than what
religion offers.
Nihilists believe/know not just that
religion is false—i.e., that there is no
built-in meaning in the universe waiting
to be discovered—but that any
meaning we try to build for ourselves
will not be “real” either. It’ll just be a
construct of our own minds that we
pretend has the gravity of religious
meaning.
Absurdism is the unifier: it accepts that
we seem to function best with some
sort of religious belief in our lives, but
that science has shown the nihilists are
right about both revealed meaning and
constructed meaning. As a result, many
choose to use some parts of a meaning
structure—either borrowed or
constructed—to get the human
benefits thereof, but without relaxing
so far that they start believing it’s true.

Knowing where one stands among—or

perhaps outside—these options is a cru‐
cial part of self-understanding.

Notes

1. I’m quite aware that one can, and people have, written
entire books on each of these definitions. The goal of this
exercise is not to dive deeply into each, but instead to
summarize as cleanly as possible how they respond to a
lack of intrinsic meaning.
2. Nihilists aren’t Absurdists because they’re not fighting
for meaning that they know they can never have. They’re
just moving through life without it.
3. The choice to rebel is specifically Camus’ response to the
situation, but since he’s associated with the term I
include it in the definition here.
4. The pretend use of a false scaffold is my interpretation of
Absurdism, as I’m not sure if using a knowingly false
system in this way would be endorsed by Sarte or
Camus. To me it still represents rebellion because we’re
still getting the joys from life (and having a structure is
part of that), while never surrendering our intellect that
knows it to be false.

Written By Daniel
Miessler
Daniel Miessler is a
cybersecurity leader, writer,
and founder of Unsupervised
Learning. He writes about
security, tech, and society and
has been featured in the New
York Times, WSJ, and the BBC.

I spend my time reading 3-6 books a month on

security, technology, and society—and thinking
about what might be coming next.

Every Monday morning I send out a list of the

best content I've found in the last week to
around 50,000 people.

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