Atheist existentialists asked how we can live meaningfully in the absence of God. They all wrote about anxiety and the experience of being overwhelmed by choice – a feeling that has become ever more intense in the relatively prosperous parts of the twenty-first-century world, even while real-world choices have shut down alarmingly for some of us. They worried about suffering, inequality and exploitation, and wondered whether anything could be done about these evils. As part of all these questions, they asked what individuals could do, and what they themselves had to offer.
