Existential Suffering, Happiness, and Hope

Abstract

This chapter shows that while existentialist thinkers recognize the human condition as wrought with difficulty, their vision of suffering is complex and should be considered alongside existentialist interest in happiness and the possibility of hope. All existentialist thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, extend philosophical dignity to suffering by considering our experiences of anxiety, dread, the tragic, anguish, forlornness, and despair. While this focus on suffering has led to the vision of existentialism as a nihilistic philosophy, this chapter shows that a number of existential thinkers also propose joyful responses to the difficulties of the human condition. Nietzsche, Camus, and Marcel in particular suggest that pain and joy can be interrelated, that the experience of anxiety is linked to that of happiness, the prospect of despair to the possibility of hope.