For human beings existentialists argue, "Existence precedes essence." Things for humans are meaningful not in virtue of some always already divinely determined essence or nature but the nature or function of a thing follows from how we apprehend it. Our perception of the world is of our own making.
The world is to be understood as an object of art, a product of human creativity. However, unlike typical works of art, which are, completed or finished products, the world and everything in it are never finished. The world is a work in progress, not something that is being but rather something that is becoming. The virtue of art is that it highlights this incomplete character indirectly by showing the kind of thing that the world is not. The becoming of the world displaces us, makes us homeless, and requires us to assume our responsibility to create.
Art requires that we pass from the familiar to questions regarding the ultimate meaning of existence. Art challenges us to examine things such as birth, death and interaction with others and moves us from the typical to the symbolic and enables us to transcend ordinary life. The point of art is to make us do something to change our lives from the mundane to the meaningful. Such a change is possible only when we recognize that we are the ones who must do it and no one else.
