The Existential questions Have marked the future of people. These questions have been the subject of the thoughts of great philosophers.
Since man has stepped on the Earth, he has had to become aware of his qualities, but also to know his own limits derived from his human condition. From then on, and as his reasoning evolved and refined, he began to ask questions.
In the Greek world, ancient China, pre-Columbian peoples, there are many Thinkers Of different latitudes that have tried to answer said questions. However, to this day, many of them remain unanswered.
Religions also do the same, setting their sacred visions in sacred books. Whereas empirical science has responded only to the observed reality.
Philosophy has been responsible for proposing theses and reflecting on the meaning of life, happiness, love, faith, the universe, being, God, etc. In view of this, it is necessary to Rousseau , Wittgenstein , Sartre , Nietzsche , Schopenhauer , among others. Then I invite you to meditate on some existential questions.
You can also see The 14 most important philosophical currents and their representatives .
List of 30 existential questions posed by great philosophers of history
1- Is man really free?
Question raised by a Swiss philosopher, in the eighteenth century. "Man has been born free and yet everywhere is chained,"said Jean-Jacques Rousseau, pointing to laws, family, duties, etc., imposed by the social system.
2- Is our universe real?
Essential question of human thought. In sacred texts, religions and even French Jean Baudrillard , Have meditated on this matter. Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that in pain one would find the foundation of human and universal reality. The question remains open.
3- Does God exist?
It is one of the most existential questions there is. Scholastics as Saint Thomas of Aquino , San Agustin or San Francisco de Asis , Will say that it exists and that it is the creator of everything. While Sartre, Nietszche or Schopenhauer will say otherwise. There is a Free Will when it comes to believing.
4- Why do we talk?
Some will say that it is because the human being has a language, although there are other forms of communication, such as nonverbal. Experts have not yet come to a conclusive answer. According to the writer Carmen Conde :"Language is the most human that exists".
5 - Is man only a fault of God, or God only a failure of man?
Question asked by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. The thinker raises this question to speculate on whether it is the human being who mistakenly invented God or was the Most High who, by mistake, created man in image and likeness.
6- Is not life a hundred times too brief to bore us?
In order to avoid suffocating the others with the abulia that the leisure provokes in the man, Nietzsche maintained in the nineteenth century, that it is necessary to enjoy the existence. We must live the present intensely and not be chained to the past in life, because it is ephemeral.
7- How is perfection sought?, Where does our hope reside?
"In education, and nothing more,"replied the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant , To his own question, which he asserted in the eighteenth century. It gives training a major role in human development.
8- Is there life after death?
An essential question that has been made by human beings since its inception, and which religion has tried to respond with its different creeds, manifested in sacred books, that speak of paradise, hell, reincarnation and emancipation of the soul.
9- Can we be 100% objective?
Edmund Husserl , Considered the father of phenomenology, considered that in order to understand a phenomenon the researcher must first know his own condition, put aside prejudices and accept that there is an external world independent of being.
10- How to know yourself?
It is already known that Greek Socrates Said the famous phrase"know thyself". Well,"to find yourself, think for yourself,"answers the philosopher himself. Phrase in favor of the creation of an own criterion through reflection.
11- Is it not a shame for man to be the same as for the most irrational animals?
This question outlines the distinction between rational and irrational beings, which marked the thinking of Socrates.
12- Who is the richest?
"The richest is the one who is content with little,"Socrates replied to his own questioning. Humility for him is one more quality, one that could be emphasized or not, but which always resulted from practical experience.
13- What is the fundamental law of man and nature?
"The first and fundamental law of nature is to seek peace,"said the British philosopher, Thomas Hobbes , Who believed that peace is the foundation of all regulations.
14- Does terrorism have any justification?
"Morally, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation in which they take place,"said the contemporary philosopher, Jürgen Habermas . The German believes that there is no reason to attack innocent people.
15- What is the human being?
Faced with such doubt, the Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard Said:"The human being is a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal, the finite and the infinite." For him, man is a compendium between the opposites of life.
16- What does it mean to be a happy man?
"The happy man is one who, being king or peasant, finds peace in his home,"answers this question, Johann Wolfgang Goethe . German thinker, poet and playwright, considered one of the most intelligent of the nineteenth century.
17- Where do we come from?
It has been something that from time to time the man has questioned. The pre-Socratics, in ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and even today, thinkers around the world have wanted to respond to this. Not yet found Will it ever be found?
18- What is the purpose of life?
Part of the human condition is precisely not knowing how to answer this, they would say Hegel Y Marx . While the Chilean constructivist Humberto Maturana He will say that the human is the architect of his own destiny, therefore, he creates his purpose to live.
19- Who am I?
We've all asked ourselves that one time. Some philosophers believe that the answer lies outside us in objective reality, as posited by positivist French, Auguste Comte . Or the response of being is given by the grace of God, according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
20- What is love?
There are several who respond to that. According Ortega y Gasset , Love for someone comes from the deep side of human spirit. For Sigmund Freud It is the instinct of life (eros). St. Clement of the School of Alexandria seems to have reduced love as"perfection itself."
21- What is the ego?
"The biggest lie", the Chilean would say Alejandro Jodorowsky . The individual recognizes his"I", with the ego, says psychology. "The Tibetan book of life and death,"by Sogyal Rinpoche, says:"As long as we do not unmask the ego, it will continue to cajole us."
22- Where does fear come from?
"The source of fear is in the future, and the one who frees himself from the future has nothing to fear,"said the Czech writer Milan Kundera . The uncertainty about what will happen in the future is the cause of fear, according to the author.
23- Is the change perpetual?
According Heraclitus , Pre-Socratic philosopher:"there is nothing permanent except change (...) You can not tread the same river twice". "Change changes everything,"says a song by the folklorist, Violeta Parra . Both see permanent change as an opportunity.
24 - Why is there something instead of nothing?
An unanswered question that several philosophers of history have tried to answer What secret impulse of the physical universe was the decisive one for nothing to become something? It is a question posed today by quantum physicists.
25- What is the best moral system?
There is no universality on which ethical standards are the best for coexistence. While there is consensus on what human rights are, there are still differences between the Eastern and Western world, for example, to value terrorism.
26- How to become really happy?
The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda Responds:"Happiness is interior; Therefore, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are." "Happiness is not something that is found, but is built,"he asserts for his part, Arnaud Desjardins .
27- How do I get success?
"Success is easy to obtain. The difficult thing is deserve it,"he says. Albert Camus To this question. While Woody Allen Argues:"90% of success is simply based on insisting." Consistency and discipline are the key to obtaining it, according to them.
28- What are numbers?
Although they are a human invention, its essence remains a mystery. What is 2 or 5? They are figures, but they say nothing, they only quantify something. Wittgenstein put the numbers on the same level as the colors"What, then, is something red?"He wondered.
29- What is pleasure?
"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding,"he said. Leonardo da Vinci In the time of the Renaissance. "Pleasure is one of the mystical ways of union with infinity, the ecstasies of drink, dance, love,"said the British writer, Aldous Huxley .
30- How to find peace?
"Peace comes from within. Do not look outside,"he said. Buddha . "Peace is not something that happens to you. Peace is part of who you are,"he replied. Osho . Both agree that peace must be sought in oneself and not in the exterior.