Short answers, pulled from the story.
Existential meaning refers to the personal significance an individual assigns to something physical or abstract, including the values attached to that significance. Unlike prescriptive philosophical systems, existentialism treats meaning as purely subjective, shaped by each person's unique perspective. The word "meaning" traces to the root "mean," referring to how something is conveyed, interpreted, or represented.
Kierkegaard believed meaning is a lived experience, not a body of knowledge. He described it as a quest to find one's values, beliefs, and purpose in a world that offers no built-in answers, writing that the crucial thing is "to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die." As a Christian, Kierkegaard found his own meaning in the Word of God, but he extended good wishes to those who searched by other paths.
Sartre's phrase means that humans exist before they have any predetermined meaning or purpose. Because Sartre was an atheist who rejected the idea of a creator who designed human nature in advance, he argued that each person must create their own essence through interaction with their surroundings and themselves. Meaning is therefore something unique to each individual, separate and independent, with no external authority to supply it.
Logotherapy is a type of psychological analysis developed by psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. It centers on a "will to meaning" as the primary human motivation, in contrast to Freud's "will to pleasure" and the Nietzschean and Adlerian "will to power." Its three core principles hold that life has meaning under all circumstances, that the will to find meaning is our main motivation for living, and that we have an inalienable freedom to find meaning.
According to Frankl's Logotherapy, meaning can be found in three ways: by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone; or by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. Frankl also warned that affluence, hedonism, and materialism act as barriers to the search for meaning.
Existentialism treats meaning as descriptive rather than prescriptive. Prescriptive or declarative statements about meaning are considered unjustified within existentialist methods. Meaning is understood as purely subjective, defined by each individual's own perspective and lived experience rather than by universal rules or inherited essences.