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This is a topic that can be taken a number of ways, but I am of the opinion that there is only one moral compass appropriate to the true existentialist, and this shines above all others like the Great North Star. That being the principle of life. Life itself. You know, this thing that fascinates you so much? How could you study it if you were not here?

And thus the chief moral principle of existentialism is revealed to be preservation and extension of life.

I do not see how any moral standard beyond valuing life as the highest priority could apply to existentialism at all. Why does a philosophy need a moral code attached every time? Does pragmatism have a moral code? To say one should not engage in excessive sexual activity because one is an existentialist, something like that, would be patently absurd. It would be mixing up two things that have nothing to do with each other, probably for political purposes, like subverting the wonder at this life to something that will support some sort of agenda.

For someone with whom life itself is the primary focus of their lives it naturally follows that life itself would also be their chief guiding principle. Anything less would be contradictory, and from a certain point of view selfish and hypocritical. You get a life to wonder but do not care if others get the same chance? You worry about your own life but no one else's? To worry about other things is not existentialism but a manifestation of your other philosophies but to worry about someone's life is in my view a part of existentialism itself.

The many manifestations of this moral code include trying to increase the lifespan of the elderly or terminally ill, doing all possible to keep children from dying of starvation and the like, and in general viewing murder as the only true mortal sin. Murder in the eyes of an existentialist should be a wrong that towers over everything to such a degree that morally it blots everything else out entirely. But the other manifestations are a bit more complicated. Should an existentialist support GE crops for starving nations, in the name of preserving life, even if their is authenticity to the horror stories about these products? I think if they were rational they would. Is not a person messed up from GE crops infinitely better off than one dead from starvation?

If you are alive in any state you can tap into most of what the existentialists get their pleasure from. Therefore an existentialist should be concerned with life itself above the subjective thing known as quality of life or any of the moral codes people try to impose on each other to craft the life of another in their own image. An existentialist should be beyond all of that nitpicking. I actually think if this moral principle were the guiding light for our world, there would be a lot less war and politically motivated starvation and a lot more people would make it on this rock a lot longer, thus extended their intake of this great resource known as time alive on this planet. Nothing like it. We should all seek to cultivate this moral principle. A good existentialist should be the most life-loving human possible. When human life is everything you are curious about, it cannot come cheap.

Learn more about this author, Royce Radcliffe.
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