What Are Existential Questions? A Visual Guide to Life’s Deepest Inquiries
I still remember the moment I first encountered Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in a Parisian bookstore. Growing up in France, philosophers like Sartre held a kind of cultural prominence—not quite superheroes, but figures who mattered publicly, argued over at dinner tables and stacked on shelves like mythical artifacts, revered yet feared for their impenetrable complexity. Years later, when I finally dared to crack that one open, I found myself sketching rats in the margins as I wrestled with existential questions that seemed to have no clear answers.
Existential questions are profound inquiries about human existence, purpose, and meaning: questions like “Why am I here?” and “How should I live?” that emerge from our awareness of freedom, mortality, and the search for purpose. Unlike everyday questions with simple answers, these inquiries invite lifelong exploration through both intellectual analysis and creative expression.
My margin doodles, born from wrestling with exactly these questions, eventually became the philosophy comics of The Labyrinth. The journey taught me these questions have no simple answers, and you can’t reason your way to them with intellect alone. You can’t think your way to the meaning of your own life. But you can feel your way toward it. That’s what drawing these questions offers: not a tidy answer handed to you, but a way, through emotional visual storytelling and art, to find your own.
What Are Existential Questions?
An existential question is a deep inquiry into the nature of our existence, our purpose, freedom, mortality, and place in the universe. Unlike practical questions about everyday matters, existential questions have no fixed answers. They surface during pivotal moments (loss, transition, uncertainty) and invite lifelong reflection rather than tidy solutions.
Existential questions strike at the heart of what it means to be alive. They don’t concern themselves with the practical business of living (what to eat, where to work) but with the strange fact of living at all. They are the questions that gnaw at you, that keep you up at night, that cut right to your core.
This kind of questioning gathered force through existentialism, the philosophical movement developed by thinkers like Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre across the 19th and 20th centuries. The word “existential” carries the weight of that struggle: the effort to define the essence of a human life from the inside, rather than receiving it ready-made.
What distinguishes these inquiries from other questions is their depth and personal stakes. They don’t have definitive answers. Instead, they invite us into a lifelong process of exploration and self-discovery, one I’ve found responds remarkably well to making comics.
The Four Categories of Existential Questions (Through Visual Philosophy)
Existentialist thinkers return again and again to four fundamental concerns that emerge from the human condition: our mortality, our freedom, our relationships with others, and our search for meaning. These four anxieties—death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness—form the spine of The Labyrinth, and they map closely onto how psychiatrist Irvin Yalom organized existential experience. Visual storytelling gives each one a body: it turns philosophical theory into something a reader can feel.
Existential questions are one branch of a wider family of abstract philosophical questions that comics are uniquely suited to explore. But the existential branch is the most personal. These are the questions about your own existence, not existence in general.
My approach to adapting Sartre wasn’t casual. I spent months cross-referencing passages from Being and Nothingness with visual metaphors, building what I called my philosophical sketchbook. For concepts that resist normal storytelling, I pull characters out of the narrative world and into symbolic spaces—a maze, an eye, a beam of light—using visual icons we all recognize. If you want the original texts behind these ideas, my guide to Sartre’s major works is a good place to start.
Life and Death—Confronting Our Mortality
Awareness of our finite existence gives urgency to every other question. When we truly grasp that our time is limited, each choice gains weight. Most of us don’t walk around asking these questions daily. We simply exist. Until tragedy, loss, or a sudden change strips away the surface and forces us to look.
These moments force the hardest questions. How should I live, knowing I will die? What do I want to leave behind? Sequential art can show the exact progression from not-knowing to knowing: the instant a character feels their own mortality. In The Labyrinth, that realization changes how the rats see their maze: not an eternal prison, but a finite space that demands to be navigated now.
On the page below, look closely and the rats are walking on a cross-section of the ground: the same earth the dead lie buried in, a tombstone marking the first panel. I drew that soil as wavering vertical lines, so the eye is tugged downward, toward the grave, rather than pulled on to the next panel. You linger in the thought of death because the page itself won’t let you hurry past it.
Freedom — The Weight of Choice
Sartre’s existentialist philosophy proposes that, unlike animals born with a fixed nature, humans must create their own meaning. This radical freedom is the foundation of existential anxiety. We are, as Sartre famously put it, “condemned to be free.”
This freedom brings exhilaration and terror together. With no predetermined essence, we continuously decide who to become, and no external authority signs off on our decisions. Visual narratives capture this through crossroads, open doors, and forking paths. The space between panels becomes the gap between stimulus and response, the small clearing where human choice actually happens.
How do you draw the weight of freedom? The aha moment for The Labyrinth came when I realized the maze could carry all of this. A maze is choice made visible: every junction forces a direction, every turn closes off the others. It gave freedom and choice a graphical form—and it let the book’s structure mirror the structure of a life, the story advancing the way our lives do, one irreversible choice at a time. The maze isn’t the prison. The prison is that we must choose, and refusing to choose is itself a choice. Every choice the rats make eliminates the others—choosing who you are means choosing who you are not.
Others and Me — The Paradox of Connection
Sartre’s view of relationships reveals a paradox: we desperately need others, yet their presence both steadies and threatens us. “Hell is other people,” cries a character in Sartre’s No Exit, one of philosophy’s most misunderstood lines, mistaken for simple misanthropy when it names something deeper.
Here is where the question of identity lives. In Being and Nothingness, the Other’s gaze is what confers our identity. We need someone to see us in order to become someone, to escape the dread of being nobody. Yet that same gaze fixes us as an object, a thing, and strips away our freedom. We need recognition to define who we are, and we resist being defined by it. That double bind—needing the Other, refusing the Other—is exactly what “Hell is other people” means.
How do you draw the weight of another’s gaze? My solution was to render it as a single eye casting a spotlight. The rat is exposed in the beam when the eye opens (being seen) and abandoned to darkness when it closes (being ignored). Neither state is safe. The questions this raises cut to the core: Can I stay authentic and still stay close to anyone? Who am I when no one is watching, and who am I under someone else’s eyes?
The Meaning of Life—Creating Purpose in an Absurd World
Perhaps the ultimate existential question is the search for meaning: Why do we exist? What is our purpose? Existentialism’s radical answer is that meaning isn’t discovered: it’s created. We start, as Descartes did, from the one thing we cannot doubt: that we exist. From that bare fact, we build significance through our choices and actions.
This is also where the danger lives. Push the logic of meaninglessness far enough and it turns on itself. If nothing has a point, then giving up has no point either. The conclusion eats its own premise and leaves only a question mark. That blank is not an ending; it is where the real work begins. Camus called this confronting the absurd: not a reason to flee life, but a condition to live inside with open eyes.
In The Labyrinth, the white rat’s search becomes meaningful not when it finds the cheese, but because it keeps searching. The point was never the cheese; the pursuit is what fills the maze with purpose. The maze turns from a trap into a space for self-definition. One technique I developed for these themes is what I call philosophical pacing: one-page panels that force readers to sit with discomfort, repetitive layouts that mimic the loop of anxiety. These aren’t aesthetic choices. They’re tools to make readers feel a concept rather than merely understand it.
Why Do Existential Questions Matter in Daily Life?
Existential questions matter because engaging with them clarifies what we actually value. When we ask what gives life meaning or how we want to live, we reassess our goals and choose a more intentional path. Research links a clear sense of purpose to lower anxiety and depression—these questions shape how we live.
There is a difference between productive questioning and paralysis, though. Healthy inquiry stays curious and open to growth. When existential questions become obsessive or trap you in a loop, that can signal a need for support from a counselor or therapist. The goal is to hold the questions, not to be crushed by them.
I felt this the whole time I was drawing The Labyrinth: you don’t need a philosophy degree for these questions to matter. Every person who asks them is, in essence, already a philosopher—because philosophy isn’t a profession but an attitude: the act of questioning your own existence.
Whether you’re reading Sartre’s original text or following two rats through a maze, the questions are the same: Who am I? Why am I here? How should I live? Comics simply invite you to explore them with curiosity instead of dread.
From My Studio
These existential questions are exactly what I set out to draw rather than explain. What Is Life All About? is a 15-page comic in the same style as my Eisner-nominated graphic novel The Labyrinth—philosophy’s ultimate question made visual, and a little fun. Get it free here.
28. Essential Existential Questions to Explore
Here are existential questions organized by the four categories, plus a set that ties them together. I encourage you not just to think about them, but to visualize or even sketch your responses. Sometimes the most profound insights arrive through creative expression rather than rational analysis.
Life and Death:
–How does knowing I will die change how I live today?
–What do I want to be remembered for after I’m gone?
–If I had one year left, what would I change immediately?
–What am I postponing that I would regret never doing?
–Does the certainty of death make my choices matter more, or less?
–What would shift if I truly accepted my own mortality?
Freedom:
–In what ways am I truly free, and where do I only imagine constraint?
–What would I attempt if I knew I could not fail?
–How have my past choices made me who I am becoming?
–Where am I avoiding a decision by pretending I have no choice?
–If no authority can validate my decisions, how do I choose well?
–What am I responsible for that I would rather blame on circumstance?
Others and Me:
–How can I stay authentic and still stay close to others?
–Who am I when no one is watching, and who am I under another’s gaze?
–What do I need from others, and what do they need from me?
–How do I balance my hunger for connection with my need to be free?
–Whose recognition am I living for, and is it worth the cost?
–Can anyone truly know me, or do I remain finally alone?
The Meaning of Life:
–What gives my life purpose when no purpose is handed to me?
–How do I make meaning in moments that feel meaningless?
–What values do I want to steer my decisions?
–If I create my own meaning, what am I building toward?
–What would make today feel worth living, on its own terms?
–Where do I find significance that doesn’t depend on results?
Integrated Questions:
–If existence has no predetermined purpose, how do I choose my own?
–What would it actually mean to live an authentic life?
–How do I carry the responsibility of authoring my own meaning?
–Which of these questions am I most afraid to sit with, and why?
These questions don’t have correct answers. Their value lies in the reflection they provoke.
Beyond Questions: Finding Your Own Visual Philosophy
Existential questions are invitations, not problems to solve. They open doorways to deeper self-understanding and more honest living. Through making The Labyrinth, I found that visual storytelling builds a bridge between abstract concepts and lived experience that few other forms can match.
Approaching these questions with curiosity instead of fear gives us room to grow. Whether through comics, sketching, journaling, or any creative practice, working the questions through more than one channel reaches what logic alone cannot. These aren’t problems to be solved by reasoning. They have no final answers, and often an image or a feeling carries you closer than an argument ever could.
Life’s deepest questions don’t require philosophical training—they arise naturally from being conscious, mortal, and free. The key is openness, creativity, and a little fun, held together by the understanding that the questioning matters more than any final answer.
As you keep exploring, remember that every human who has ever lived has wrestled with the same things. You’re joining a conversation that spans centuries and cultures, adding your own voice to our ongoing attempt to understand what it means to be here.
Further Reading
Existential questions open onto a wider landscape of thought. For deeper reading, I’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to the best existentialism books, from the foundational texts to the graphic novels that make them visual—a natural next step once these questions take hold.
Originally published 1 August 1 2025 | Last updated 1 July 2026
By Ben Argon, philosophy comics creator and author of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel The Labyrinth, exploring the intersection of comics, philosophy, and visual storytelling.
