30 EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS FROM GREAT PHILOSOPHERS - PHILOSOPHY - 2025

The existential questions have marked the development of people. These existentialist questions and doubts have been the object of the thoughts of great philosophers. Since man has set foot on Earth, he has had to become aware of his qualities, but also know his own limits derived from his human condition. From then on, and as he evolved and perfected his reasoning, he began to ask himself questions.

In the Greek world, ancient China, pre-Columbian peoples, there are many thinkers from different latitudes who have tried to answer these questions. However, to this day, many of them remain unanswered.

Religions also do the same, curdling their visions in sacred books. While empirical science has answered only the observed reality.

Philosophy has been in charge of proposing thesis and reflecting on the meaning of life, happiness, love, faith, the universe, being, God, etc. Given this, we must mention Rousseau, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Nietzche, Schopenhauer, among others. Next, 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 posed by a Swiss philosopher, in the 18th century. "Man was born free and, nevertheless, everywhere he is in chains," 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 the French Jean Baudrillard, they have meditated on this matter. Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that in pain would be found the foundation of human and universal reality. The question remains open.

3- Does God exist?

It is one of the most existential questions out there. Scholastics like Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine or Saint Francis of Assisi, will say that he exists and that he 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 human beings have a language, although there are other forms of communication, such as non-verbal communication. Experts have not yet reached a conclusive answer. According to the writer Carmen Conde: "Language is the most human thing that exists."

5- Is man just a fault of God, or God just a fault of man?

Question asked by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. The thinker poses this question to speculate on whether it is the human being by mistake invented God or it was the Most High who, by mistake, created man in the image and likeness.

6- Isn't life a hundred times too short to get bored?

To avoid suffocating others with the apathy that leisure provokes in man, Nietzsche argued in the nineteenth century that one must enjoy existence. You have to live the present intensely and not be chained to the past in life, it is ephemeral.

7- How is perfection to be sought? Where does our hope reside?

"In education, and nothing else," answered the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, to his own question, which he asserted in the 18th century. It gives training a leading role in human development.

8- Is there life after death?

Essential question that human beings have asked themselves, since their origins, and that religion has tried to answer with its different creeds, manifested in sacred books, which 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 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 the Greek Socrates said the famous phrase "know yourself." Well, "to find yourself, think for yourself", responds the philosopher himself. Phrase in favor of the creation of one's own criteria through reflection.

11- Isn't it a shame for man that the same thing happens to the most irrational animals?

This question outlines the distinction between rational and irrational beings, which marked the thought of Socrates.

12- Who is the richest?

"The richest is he who is content with little," replied Socrates to his own questioning. Humility for him is one more quality, in which he could stand out 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 are carried out", sentenced 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, of 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 a king or a 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 19th century.

17- Where do we come from?

It has been something that man has questioned since memorial time. The pre-Socratics, in ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and even today, thinkers from all over the world have wanted to answer 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, Hegel and Marx would say. While the Chilean constructivist Humberto Maturana will say that the human is the architect of his own destiny, therefore, he creates his purpose to live.

19- Who am I?

We have all wondered that at times. Some philosophers believe that the answer lies outside of us in objective reality, as posited by the French positivist, Auguste Comte. Or the response of the being is given by the grace of God, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas.

20- What is love?

There are several that answer that. According to Ortega y Gasset, love for someone comes from the deep side of the human mind. For Sigmund Freud it is the life instinct (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 Alejandro Jodorowsky would say. The individual recognizes his "I", with the ego, says psychology. Sogyal Rinpoche's "Tibetan Book of Life and Death" says, "As long as we don't unmask the ego, it will continue to deceive us."

22- Where does fear come from?

"The source of fear is in the future, and he 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 to Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher: “there is nothing permanent except change (…) You cannot step on the same river twice”. "Changes everything changes," says a song by the folklorist, Violeta Parra. They both see permanent change as an opportunity.

24- Why is there something instead of nothing?

Unanswered question that various philosophers in history have tried to answer. What secret impulse of the physical universe was the decisive factor for the nothingness to become something? It's 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. Although there is consensus on what human rights are, there are still differences between the eastern and western world, on, for example, valuing terrorism.

26- How to become really happy?

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda responds: “Happiness is internal; therefore, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are ”. "Happiness is not something that is found, but is built," says Arnaud Desjardins.

27- How do I get success?

"Success is easy to obtain. The difficult thing is to deserve it ”, Albert Camus responds to this question. While Woody Allen maintains: "90% of success is based simply on insisting". Consistency and discipline are the key to obtaining it, according to them.

28- What are numbers?

Although they are a human invention, their essence remains a mystery. What is 2 or 5? They are figures, but they don't say anything, they only quantify something. Wittgenstein put numbers on the same level as colors "So what is red?" He wondered.

29- What is pleasure?

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding," Leonardo Da Vinci used to say in the Renaissance. "Pleasure is one of the mystical ways of union with the infinite, the ecstasies of drink, dance, love", raised the British writer, Aldous Huxley.

30- How to find peace?

“Peace comes from within. Don't look for it outside, ”Buddha said. “Peace is not something that happens to you. Peace is part of who you are ”, Osho responds. Both agree that peace must be sought in oneself and not abroad.