Existentialism and Social Science: Flowers Blooming from Nothingness

In an age shaken by AI, what remains of the spirit of the social sciences? To me, it is the cultivation of a kind of resilience for living, much like Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. People today are always asking how to live better. But when one lives in an era of stagnant growth and rapid advances in artificial intelligence, what if life does not go well at all? At that point, why live becomes a prior question to how to live. That is what led me to connect existentialism with the role of the social sciences.

Imagine a world like this: in that world, “causality” as a cold and objective law stands exposed far more starkly than the moralized idea of karmic justice that people often invoke. Evil causes do indeed produce evil consequences, yet those consequences do not necessarily fall on the evil-doer.¹ The will of justice does not fill every corner of the world as naturally as air. When someone prays sincerely for the happiness they feel they ought to have, what they are chasing is only the illusion of moral retribution, not causality itself.

When causality overrides moral recompense, we arrive at the absurd. “Natural rights” emerge from emptiness; every complaint of the form “I only wanted xxx, what did I do wrong?” is often no more than an emotional outlet. The only thing one can really trust is that human beings are born without a preset purpose and with nothing in hand.

From childhood, we are trained to ask what is, why, and how. Yet many times we slip too easily into the illusion of asking what the world ought to be like, rather than accepting what the world is actually like. Let me quote Yang Xiaokai here:

After going to prison, my political philosophy became very different from what it had been when I wrote Where Is China Heading? At that time I pursued ideals and believed that democracy should be based on elections. But in prison I lost all idealism. I came to believe that the standards by which people judge what they value change with history, so how history develops is far more important than some ideal end point. Before, I cared about questions such as “What is good? What is bad? What should the world be like?” In prison I instead asked: “How will this world develop?” The worst things may happen within our own lifetimes, so subjective judgments of right and wrong are of no real importance. The important thing is to adapt to the environment and survive.

Giving up illusions and admitting the irrational structure of causality is the first step toward grasping what existentialism is. Once people realize that this is what the world actually looks like, they become lost and distressed.

And that is how they fall into nihilism.

For example:

• What is the purpose of the universe?² If all existence is destined to vanish, what meaning can there be in what we do?
• The greatest dividing line in life seems to begin in the womb. What some people spend their entire lives striving for may be something others casually disdain. Is there any fairness in fate?
• Is it really a universal law of the world that good people are rewarded?
• Does effort necessarily lead to return?
• How do talent and effort combine to shape a person’s choices?

Questions like these can indeed drive people toward nihilism. In modern society, I think there are two main ways people cope with them:

1. Avoid the questions altogether.
2. Believe in some set of convictions: in earlier times these might have been religion or Confucian norms; today they may be moral principles, or some personal creed one has cultivated.

And the latter is precisely part of the future that the social sciences help construct.³

Once traditions accumulate over time, we stop paying attention to the foundations beneath our feet. Yet every chain of thought, if we keep tracing it backward, eventually rests on some basic premise that cannot fully justify itself. These ideas seep into everyday life through film, literature, and art, and gradually become the value-foundations on which we stand. I find that phenomenon deeply fascinating. To me, this is one of the great sediments of humanistic and social development: ideas are transmitted, reinforced in transmission, and gradually built up from zero toward something that feels infinite.

After the great pandemics, religion came under suspicion. After World War II, philosophy entered a golden age. It seems that only when the foundations of human existence are challenged do the humanities show their full resilience. When the beliefs we have built are fully woven into ordinary life, people no longer doubt the ground beneath their feet.

Take this passage from The Great Gatsby:

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that not all the people in this world have had the advantages that you’ve had.

Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

After boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I do not care what it is founded on.

• The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1

On the long road of civilization, the social sciences may matter most because they cultivate a certain toughness of life. They help us understand ourselves and why we should keep living, which in some sense comes even before the question of how we should live.

That is why Camus said:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.

Socrates put it more elegantly:

The unexamined life is not worth living.

The self-contradictions of social-science theories reflect, paradoxically, a value of tolerance. Economics in particular is full of competing frameworks. Although different schools have argued for a thousand years and still cannot completely settle even the question of what is, they have done one vital thing: they have made it possible for people to face an unreasonable reality of what is. That is both a constraint and a form of freedom. People love to recite Romain Rolland’s heroism and flee quickly from the scene of tragedy, refusing to ask where suffering comes from and avoiding any philosophy of death.

Are not morality, ritual, and the search for meaning all products of this same process? People remain immersed in the taken-for-granted nature of moral order for so long that they forget how precious and hard-won that order really is. I would even say that this pursuit is born out of nihilism itself.

Take fairness as an example. What is fairness when some people are born in Rome? What is fairness when some people seem impossibly lucky all the time?⁴ By what measure can you quantify the legitimacy of fairness? The tolerance of theory can bring calm, but that does not mean such outcomes are therefore as they should be.

Many people complain that economics cannot predict well, or that the social sciences have little practical value. But there is a kind of magic in tolerant explanation. Consider a simple example: in ancient times nobles might complain that the poor lacked virtue or refinement. Yet anyone trained in causal reasoning will realize that only when granaries are full do people learn propriety; only when food and clothing are sufficient do people know honor and shame. Does wealth produce civility, or does civility produce wealth? The egg and the chicken remain entangled forever. There is no final answer. But the theory itself helps scholars maintain a deeper sympathy for the poor.

The social sciences do not bring wealth directly. There is an old joke in economics: studying economics will not make you rich, but at least it can help you understand why you are poor. There are not many rich economists. The most famous example, Ricardo, became wealthy before he became an economist. The deepest wisdom in life may be the capacity for tolerance: to tolerate contradictory theories, then to tolerate other people, and finally to tolerate one’s own life.⁵ Only then can the path of learning avoid turning away from the path of living.

I have seen countless arguments over whether emotional intelligence matters more than intelligence, whether social skill matters more than competence, followed by endless complaints about other people. But once we sort such claims into categories, we realize that people usually care most about the dimension in which they themselves are strong, and from there they build their own standards of judgment. At that point, what will happen matters far more than what ought to happen.

When explanatory theory can bring inner peace, its power goes far beyond immediate application. To me, that is what humanism really looks like. Studying the social sciences should not consist only of criticizing the world; it should also involve explaining and understanding the world, even its difficult and obscure sides. In the long river of history, were concepts like morality, fairness, and justice inevitable? I do not know. But I do know that these words carry tremendous tolerance. They allow people to remain hopeful and to hold onto conviction, even if such aspirations were never the world’s original governing law. They are like flowers blooming out of nothingness.

When inclusive theories become people’s convictions, the seeds of tomorrow are planted today. Even an imperfect fable can become a prophecy.

Let me end on a slightly lyrical note:

For those who insist on knocking at the truth of life, for those who acknowledge the absurd, there are only two paths: collapse into madness, or join this endless, futile labor of pushing the stone uphill. To admit the emptiness beneath morality and yet praise the greatness of moral construction; to admit that causality stands above moral recompense and yet still devote one’s tiny life to building an order of justice. To pass through the silent valley, to admit that everything may be meaningless and still refuse to bow one’s head: this is the smallest act of resistance a person can make, the only one, and the most essential one.