The absence of divine design obliges us to act without hoping for cosmic outcomes

Evidence

For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 16

Categorization

• XREF: Links to Stoic and Descartes’ ‘conquer yourself’ ethics, and connects to the reader’s interest in existentialist ethics alongside Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity. — connects to: Humans lack any predefined nature and create themselves through choices — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 26; The idea of extra-human objectivity is a leftover of the concept of God — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1582; Secular naturalism cannot ground gratitude toward nature because nature lacks intention — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 492 (+3 more)
• APHORISMS: ‘Act without hope’ is a rare, genuinely life-guiding distillation: effort belongs to the will, outcomes are surrendered.

Related

• Absence of God entails the absence of any fixed human nature. (similarity 0.81)
• Humans lack any predefined nature and create themselves through choices (similarity 0.81)
• All human projects aim at becoming God through self-causation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Humans lack any predefined nature and create themselves through choices #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 26
• The idea of extra-human objectivity is a leftover of the concept of God #responds-to (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1582
• Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 27
• Secular naturalism cannot ground gratitude toward nature because nature lacks intention #complicates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 492
• Humans are blind to their own lack of an original fixed nature #epitomizes (0.70)