You may have heard of these things going about, be it in your psychology class or on your TikTok feed. Stoicism, nihilism, and existentialism. All long funny words that end with “ism” and have something in common. However, not everyone knows what they have in common, and honestly, not everyone knows what each of them means. So grab a snack and a drink of your choice, and let’s take a quick look at a few of the philosophical “isms”.
Before we take a look at any of them by themselves, we’ve gotta cover what they mean! The three we’ll be covering today fall under the category of philosophy. There are ways to perceive the world and values to base your life on, like whether life has a purpose, if anything matters, and whether the help of others is good or bad. They are belief systems that simply rely on how you perceive the world. All of them were invented by people a long time ago and are thought to be some of the most valid ways to view the world by many.
Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium, holds a strong connection to the physical world and doing what you can do. The most famous practitioner of this ideology is Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. His personal journals, which are now labeled as “The meditations”, are a spectacular study of stoicism and its purpose: to strive to be better and self-reliant, while also knowing when to accept help. It’s a very tough ideology, as it involves a lot of holding yourself accountable and working incredibly hard in all aspects of life at once, but it is surely worth trying.
Nihilism, commonly associated with Friedrich Nietche, is one of the more depressing and downtrodden philosophies. It posits that all things, all actions, and the entirety of existence are meaningless! While not fun, nihilism does hold a candle for some people. It’s very brutally honest and attempts to focus on the objective truths. People who follow Nihilism are often aesthetic, as the positing that there is no real moral truth, only what we’ve decided the moral truth should be, implies there is no god. While this one is not as good-seeming as Stoicism, it still has its place within the world, for to live on despite thinking it’s all meaningless is one of the truest tests of character.
Existentialism! Søren Kierkegaard is credited with being the first follower of this philosophy. Think of this one as Nihilism’s sort of older, happier cousin. The thought process behind existentialism is that whatever you give meaning to matters, and if you are to succeed in this life, you must create your path there. It looks at how Nihilism is saying it’s all pointless, and it’s saying back, “Yeah, but not to me, I like these things,” and going on for those things. It’s self-centered, of course, but it’s one of the best ways to cope with and to deal with the feeling of there being a lack of meaning in life. This is why I love existentialism. It asks you to go for it, to just go for what you want, and to deny its lack of meaning. It means something to you, and that’s all that matters.
Those are some of the “isms”! They’re very fun, philosophical things to think over, and it’s very nice to at least get quickly acquainted with them. If any of those rang a bell with how you’ve felt in the world, then maybe you should study them further!
