Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the mentors in life philosophy whom Raymond Hou (Raymond) has publicly named. In his 2024 article “Raymond Hou’s User Manual,” Raymond lists Sartre alongside Stoicism, Kevin Kelly, Tim Ferriss, and Wan Weigang as sources that shaped his way of thinking.1 For Raymond, Sartre represents not an academic system of existentialism, but a set of tools for explaining his own choices: people have no preassigned essence; they define themselves through a succession of choices and actions.
Freedom and choice as the central themes
The existentialist propositions that “man is condemned to be free” and “existence precedes essence” resonate with Raymond’s repeated emphasis on “choice.” When discussing a company of one and Super Individuals, Raymond often says that “making money is a result.” The real question people should answer is not “What do I like?” or “How much can I earn?” but “What kind of person do I want to become?” This shifts the center of life from predetermined preferences to active choice, in line with Sartre’s position that meaning is returned to individual action. Raymond also distinguishes between “choosing according to one’s values” and “choosing one’s values,” arguing that the latter is what sets human beings apart from other creatures.
Existence defined by the process
The line Raymond most often attributes to Sartre appeared in a reflection published on his 30th birthday, September 17, 2024: “The value of a pursuit lies not in the destination itself; the process defines our existence.”2 He uses it to support the argument that even if most efforts do not reach their goals, the process of recording and pursuing them is still part of one’s personal experience and is not wasted. In the same article, he also placed Haruki Murakami’s “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional” alongside it, connecting existentialist self-definition with an attitude that turns suffering into a choice. Raymond’s citation is meant to affirm his own approach to life, rather than establish the quote’s context in Sartre’s original works.
Correspondence with Raymond’s life path
The appeal of existentialism to Raymond can be seen in several major choices. His two changes of major during six years at National Cheng Kung University—from chemical engineering to industrial and information management, then to the university’s first interdisciplinary program—and his two-year extension of his studies meant leaving the mainstream path to success and following a direction he defined for himself. Leaving Beijing and giving up a fixed career track to become self-employed similarly returned the course of his life to his own hands. These choices align with his belief that “competence is the means; passion is the end,” and corroborate the existentialist framework of defining oneself through choice. Raymond tends to describe these turning points as choices whose consequences he actively accepted, rather than results of being pushed by outside forces.
Sartre’s place in Raymond’s intellectual lineage
Among Raymond’s sources of thought, Sartre supplies an existentialist foundation of “freedom and choice,” while Stoicism adds an approach to facing what cannot be controlled. The two often appear together in his arguments. Kevin Kelly, Tim Ferriss, and others provide work and life methods closer to practical application. Sartre’s role in this lineage is to provide philosophical language for Raymond’s core attitude: people must take responsibility for their choices and define their existence through the process. Raymond’s use of Sartre is practical; he draws on existentialism to explain his own life choices rather than present a systematic account of Sartre’s philosophy.
Sources cited
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “Raymond Hou’s User Manual,” WordPress, 2024-10-02. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “What I Learned About Turning 30 Over the Past Decade,” WordPress, 2024-09-17. View original ↩