Existentialism and Dating

At first glance, nothing immediately seems to connect the business of dating with the European philosophical movement of Existentialism. However, on closer inspection, the thoughts of Existential philosophers contain a number of insights that serve to illuminate aspects of the dating world. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/4sGcU Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/k_EYw FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects here: https://bit.ly/2QXvPZu “Dating brings us close to a particular strand of philosophy that, the rest of the time, might not seem particularly relevant to our lives: existentialism. One of the movement’s major proponents – Jean-Paul Sartre – developed a set of ideas that help explain, and give dignity to, the anxiety, excitement and at points vertigo we may experience as we go through the dating ritual. A key concept of Existentialism is expressed in Sartre’s somewhat obscure but useful phrase: “Being precedes essence”. What Sartre meant by ‘being’ are the bits of our life that we are free to choose for ourselves: how we live, what job we do, how we conceive of what happens to us. And by ‘essence’, he refers to things that lie outside our command: our biological nature, the flow of history, the position of the stars…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on RELATIONSHIPS in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLrelationships SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Andrew Lees https://www.damnfinemedia.co.uk/ #TheSchoolOfLife #Existentialism #JeanPaulSartre