存在主义认为存在先于本质。我们的嘉宾拉尼尔·安德森(Lanier Anderson)提出了一种看待这个问题的方法，那就是将切刀与人类处境进行比较。刀在被制造出来之前就有了它的本质——它是用来切割的。然而，一个人在他存在之前没有任何特定的目的或意义。让-保罗·萨特最初定义了存在主义这个词，并将其应用于许多从来不知道自己是存在主义者的人，他们在各种各样的话题上持有一系列相互冲突的观点，上帝的存在就是其中一个备受争议的话题。

Lanier states that the seventeen-year-old self in each of us is attracted to existentialism because there is a certain amount of freedom that we have in this philosophy. The essential idea is that we are whatever we make ourselves, that nothing about our essence is given to us. Certainly we have a facticity about us- essential aspects of our existence given to us in terms of our biological constraints- but nothing that really defines us. Lanier argues that this facticity as a whole will interact with your life projects, but you will have chosen those projects, which then gives the meaning to those things. From the point of view of the individual, existentialism takes nothing for granted and does not believe any mandates about human nature have been handed down to people. Individuals have to create meaning for and define themselves, Each person's own human nature will be dictated by the actions he pursues.

Existentialism is a very influential philosophy that went through periods where it greatly affected politics and pop-culture, and is still very popular in certain circles. It is often a difficult philosophy to understand as well. John notes that there is so much terminology like the for-itself, the in-itself, and other existentialist ideas, that Sarte outlined all of these concepts in what amounts to eight hundred pages of translations.

• Roving Philosophical Report(Seek to 04:26): Polly Stryker addresses the intersection of psychotherapy and philosophy, specifically with father and son existentialist psychotherapists. They look at how existentialism can be useful in psychiatry, and how the issues people desire to address in psychotherapy are often of an existential nature, like life, death, and meaning.