Introducing Existentialism

Man simply invented God in order not to kill himself

What is history? That which can be otherwise but never is.

Truth must have a strange aversion to itself.

The contrary of suicide is the man condemned to death

“Can you ever ‘sincerely know’ without falling into self-deception?”

Perhaps one’s eyes adjust to reality in the negative.

a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

Notes from the Underground (1846) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81)

If you want Existentialism in the raw, go to Dostoyevsky

TO BE, OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION …
Hamlet’s “problem of being” does not of course make him an Existentialist. Besides, he is a fiction, and his speech is Shakespeare’s ironic reminder of that. Is this not a clue to disavowing the temptation of literature?