Meaning Made, Not Given

This affirmation is central to secular humanism, a life-stance that seeks to lead an ethical and fulfilling life on the basis of reason and human experience without religion. It follows from the humanist conviction that this life is the only one and that the universe is natural, and it grounds an ethics oriented to human flourishing here and now. The belief distinguishes humanism from worldviews that locate the source of meaning in God or a hereafter, and it is presented here as the affirmation humanists hold.

A related but philosophically distinct articulation of self-made meaning comes from atheistic existentialism, particularly Jean-Paul Sartre's 1946 lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism, which argued that because "existence precedes essence," a human being has no given nature or purpose and must therefore choose and create meaning entirely through free action, famously describing humanity as "condemned to be free." Where secular humanism typically frames the absence of a given cosmic purpose as an invitation to a confident, rationalist, broadly optimistic ethics of flourishing, existentialist writers, Sartre among them, more often emphasised the anxiety, responsibility, and even absurdity such radical freedom entails, so the two traditions share a premise, meaning is made rather than given, while differing markedly in tone.