Book Notes - What is Existentialism

Arpit Bhayani

curious, tinkerer, and explorer


I recently finished reading the book What is Existentialism by Simone de Beauvoir. First of all, the book isn’t structured like a story with a central character or plot. Instead, it’s a collection of essays or short philosophical reflections on various existential themes like devotion, action, and more.

The writing is quite dense and at times feels unnecessarily convoluted. I had to read the book twice to really make sense of it.

What truly stands out are the ideas placed subtly throughout the text that leave a lasting impact and make you reflect on life :) If you enjoy deep thinking, you’ll absolutely love it. Some of the excerpts I particularly liked are:

There is no doubt why so much importance is attached to the last wish of a dying man … it is the one in which the dying man has grasped his whole life again

… [by completing the last wish] prolongs his last instant by maintaining its privilege

… [but once you look from the outside] the last instant becomes instant among others … then the dead person is really dead.

whenever the project [purpose] stops, the future also stops

our freedoms support each other like the stones in an arch, but in an arch with no pillars. Humanity is entirely suspended in a void that it creates itself by its reflections on its plentitude.

In denying individuality, they also deny failure

It’s a shame that jailor cannot also be a comrade, but it would be even more of a shame for the prisoner never to have any comrades again.

men must love it, want it, prolong it.

Once I have surpassed my own goals, my actions will fall back upon themselves, inert and useless, if they have not been carried off towards a new future by new projects

All the unhappiness of men arises from a single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber

and the best one

Paradise is rest.

You’ll need to do a fair amount of heavy lifting while reading this book, so be prepared. Expect to read it more than once. But once you grasp the deeper meaning, you’ll absolutely love it.

Arpit Bhayani

Creator of DiceDB, Staff Engg at Google Ads and Dataproc, ex-Amazon Fast Data, ex-Director of Engg. SRE and Data Engineering at Unacademy. I spark engineering curiosity through my no-fluff engineering videos on YouTube and my courses


Arpit's Newsletter read by 125,000 engineers

Weekly essays on real-world system design, distributed systems, or a deep dive into some super-clever algorithm.


The courses listed on this website are offered by

Relog Deeptech Pvt. Ltd.
203, Sagar Apartment, Camp Road, Mangilal Plot, Amravati, Maharashtra, 444602
GSTIN: 27AALCR5165R1ZF