Nobody Is Coming to Save You

Nobody is coming to save you. It sounds like despair. This video argues it is one of the most freeing sentences in philosophy. From Kant's "dare to know" to Sartre's condemned freedom, from Viktor Frankl's last freedom to Harriet Tubman's escape and return, we ask why we wait for a rescuer, who we are really waiting for, and what changes when we stop. We also look at why taking responsibility is not the same as blaming yourself for everything that has happened to you. Further reading: Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?, 1784 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 1927 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947 Epictetus, Enchiridion Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 1958 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics John Darley and Bibb Latané, "Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility," 1968 Steven Maier and Martin Seligman, "Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights from Neuroscience," 2016 Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman #philosophy #existentialism #stoicism #sartre