Existentialism () is a tradition of philosophical
inquiry associated mainly with certain 19th
and 20th-century European philosophers who,
despite profound doctrinal differences, shared
the belief that philosophical thinking begins
with the human subject—not merely the thinking
subject, but the acting, feeling, living human
individual. While the predominant value of
existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged
to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity.
In the view of the existentialist, the individual's
starting point is characterized by what has
been called "the existential attitude", or
a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread
in the face of an apparently meaningless or
absurd world. Many existentialists have also
regarded traditional systematic or academic
philosophies, in both style and content, as
too abstract and remote from concrete human
experience.Søren Kierkegaard is generally
considered to have been the first existentialist
philosopher, though he did not use the term
existentialism. He proposed that each individual—not
society or religion—is solely responsible
for giving meaning to life and living it passionately
and sincerely, or "authentically". Existentialism
became popular in the years following World
War II, and strongly influenced many disciplines
besides philosophy, including theology, drama,
art, literature, and psychology.
== Etymology ==
The term "existentialism" (French: L'existentialisme)
was coined by the French Catholic philosopher
Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s. At first,
when Marcel applied the term to him at a colloquium
in 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre rejected it. Sartre
subsequently changed his mind and, on October
29, 1945, publicly adopted the existentialist
label in a lecture to the Club Maintenant
in Paris. The lecture was published as L'existentialisme
est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Humanism),
a short book that did much to popularize existentialist
thought. Marcel later came to reject the label
himself in favour of the term Neo-Socratic,
in honor of Kierkegaard's essay "On The Concept
of Irony".
Some scholars argue that the term should be
used only to refer to the cultural movement
in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s associated
with the works of the philosophers Jean-Paul
Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
and Albert Camus. Other scholars extend the
term to Kierkegaard, and yet others extend
it as far back as Socrates. However, the term
is often identified with the philosophical
views of Jean-Paul Sartre.
== Definitional issues and background ==
The labels existentialism and existentialist
are often seen as historical conveniences
in as far as they were first applied to many
philosophers in hindsight, long after they
had died. In fact, while existentialism is
generally considered to have originated with
Kierkegaard, the first prominent existentialist
philosopher to adopt the term as a self-description
was Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre posits the idea
that "what all existentialists have in common
is the fundamental doctrine that existence
precedes essence", as scholar Frederick Copleston
explains. According to philosopher Steven
Crowell, defining existentialism has been
relatively difficult, and he argues that it
is better understood as a general approach
used to reject certain systematic philosophies
rather than as a systematic philosophy itself.
Sartre himself, in a lecture delivered in
1945, described existentialism as "the attempt
to draw all the consequences from a position
of consistent atheism".Although many outside
Scandinavia consider the term existentialism
to have originated from Kierkegaard himself,
it is more likely that Kierkegaard adopted
this term (or at least the term "existential"
as a description of his philosophy) from the
Norwegian poet and literary critic Johan Sebastian
Cammermeyer Welhaven. This assertion comes
from two sources. The Norwegian philosopher
Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish philosopher
Fredrik Christian Sibbern. Sibbern is supposed
to have had two conversations in 1841, the
first with Welhaven and the second with Kierkegaard.
It is in the first conversation that it is
believed that Welhaven came up with "a word
that he said covered a certain thinking, which
had a close and positive attitude to life,
a relationship he described as existential".
This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern.
The second claim comes from the Norwegian
historian Rune Slagstad, who claims to prove
that Kierkegaard himself said the term "existential"
was borrowed from the poet. He strongly believes
that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that
"Hegelians do not study philosophy 'existentially';
to use a phrase by Welhaven from one time
when I spoke with him about philosophy".
== Concepts ==
=== Existence precedes essence ===
Sartre claimed that a central proposition
of Existentialism is that existence precedes
essence, which means that the most important
consideration for individuals is that they
are individuals—independently acting and
responsible, conscious beings ("existence")—rather
than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions,
or other preconceived categories the individuals
fit ("essence"). The actual life of the individuals
is what constitutes what could be called their
"true essence" instead of there being an arbitrarily
attributed essence others use to define them.
Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness,
create their own values and determine a meaning
to their life. Although it was Sartre who
explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions
can be found in the thought of existentialist
philosophers such as Heidegger, and Kierkegaard:
"The subjective thinker’s form, the form
of his communication, is his style. His form
must be just as manifold as are the opposites
that he holds together. The systematic eins,
zwei, drei is an abstract form that also must
inevitably run into trouble whenever it is
to be applied to the concrete. To the same
degree as the subjective thinker is concrete,
to the same degree his form must also be concretely
dialectical. But just as he himself is not
a poet, not an ethicist, not a dialectician,
so also his form is none of these directly.
His form must first and last be related to
existence, and in this regard he must have
at his disposal the poetic, the ethical, the
dialectical, the religious. Subordinate character,
setting, etc., which belong to the well-balanced
character of the esthetic production, are
in themselves breadth; the subjective thinker
has only one setting—existence—and has
nothing to do with localities and such things.
The setting is not the fairyland of the imagination,
where poetry produces consummation, nor is
the setting laid in England, and historical
accuracy is not a concern. The setting is
inwardness in existing as a human being; the
concretion is the relation of the existence-categories
to one another. Historical accuracy and historical
actuality are breadth." Søren Kierkegaard
(Concluding Postscript, Hong pp. 357–58)
Some interpret the imperative to define oneself
as meaning that anyone can wish to be anything.
However, an existentialist philosopher would
say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic
existence - what Sartre would call 'bad faith'.
Instead, the phrase should be taken to say
that people are (1) defined only insofar as
they act and (2) that they are responsible
for their actions. For example, someone who
acts cruelly towards other people is, by that
act, defined as a cruel person. Furthermore,
by this action of cruelty, such persons are
themselves responsible for their new identity
(cruel persons). This is as opposed to their
genes, or human nature, bearing the blame.
As Sartre says in his lecture Existentialism
is a Humanism: "... man first of all exists,
encounters himself, surges up in the world—and
defines himself afterwards". The more positive,
therapeutic aspect of this is also implied:
A person can choose to act in a different
way, and to be a good person instead of a
cruel person.Sartre's definition of existentialism
was based on Heidegger's magnum opus Being
and Time. In the correspondence with Jean
Beaufret later published as the Letter on
Humanism, Heidegger implies that Sartre misunderstood
him for his own purposes of subjectivism,
and that he did not mean that actions take
precedence over being so long as those actions
were not reflected upon. Heidegger commented
that "the reversal of a metaphysical statement
remains a metaphysical statement", meaning
that he thought Sartre had simply switched
the roles traditionally attributed to essence
and existence without interrogating these
concepts and their history in the way that
Heidegger claimed to have done.
=== The Absurd ===
The notion of the Absurd contains the idea
that there is no meaning in the world beyond
what meaning we give it. This meaninglessness
also encompasses the amorality or "unfairness"
of the world. This conceptualization can be
highlighted in the way it opposes the traditional
Judeo-Christian-Islamic perspective, which
establishes that life's purpose is about the
fulfillment of God's commandments. Such a
purpose is what gives meaning to people's
lives. To live the life of the absurd means
rejecting a life that finds or pursues specific
meaning for man's existence since there is
nothing to be discovered. According to Albert
Camus, the world or the human being is not
in itself absurd. The concept only emerges
through the juxtaposition of the two, where
life becomes absurd due to the incompatibility
between human beings and the world they inhabit.
This view constitutes one of the two interpretations
of the absurd in existentialist literature.
The second view, which was first elaborated
by Søren Kierkegaard, holds that absurdity
is limited to actions and choices of human
beings. These are considered absurd since
they issue from human freedom, undermining
their foundation outside of themselves.The
notion of the absurd in existentialism contrasts
with the claim that "bad things don't happen
to good people"; to the world, metaphorically
speaking, there is no such thing as a good
person or a bad person; what happens happens,
and it may just as well happen to a "good"
person as to a "bad" person. Because of the
world's absurdity, at any point in time, anything
can happen to anyone, and a tragic event could
plummet someone into direct confrontation
with the Absurd. The notion of the Absurd
has been prominent in literature throughout
history. Many of the literary works of Søren
Kierkegaard, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Eugène Ionesco, Miguel
de Unamuno, Luigi Pirandello, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Joseph Heller and Albert Camus contain descriptions
of people who encounter the absurdity of the
world.
It is in relation to the concept of the devastating
awareness of meaninglessness that Albert Camus
claimed that "there is only one truly serious
philosophical problem, and that is suicide"
in his The Myth of Sisyphus. Although "prescriptions"
against the possibly deleterious consequences
of these kinds of encounters vary, from Kierkegaard's
religious "stage" to Camus' insistence on
persevering in spite of absurdity, the concern
with helping people avoid living their lives
in ways that put them in the perpetual danger
of having everything meaningful break down
is common to most existentialist philosophers.
The possibility of having everything meaningful
break down poses a threat of quietism, which
is inherently against the existentialist philosophy.
It has been said that the possibility of suicide
makes all humans existentialists. The ultimate
hero of absurdism lives without meaning and
faces suicide without succumbing to it.
=== Facticity ===
Facticity is a concept defined by Sartre in
Being and Nothingness as the in-itself, which
delineates for humans the modalities of being
and not being. This can be more easily understood
when considering facticity in relation to
the temporal dimension of our past: one's
past is what one is, in the sense that it
co-constitutes oneself. However, to say that
one is only one's past would be to ignore
a significant part of reality (the present
and the future), while saying that one's past
is only what one was, would entirely detach
it from oneself now. A denial of one's own
concrete past constitutes an inauthentic lifestyle,
and the same goes for all other kinds of facticity
(having a human body — e.g., one that doesn't
allow a person to run faster than the speed
of sound — identity, values, etc.).Facticity
is both a limitation and a condition of freedom.
It is a limitation in that a large part of
one's facticity consists of things one couldn't
have chosen (birthplace, etc.), but a condition
of freedom in the sense that one's values
most likely depend on it. However, even though
one's facticity is "set in stone" (as being
past, for instance), it cannot determine a
person: The value ascribed to one's facticity
is still ascribed to it freely by that person.
As an example, consider two men, one of whom
has no memory of his past and the other who
remembers everything. They both have committed
many crimes, but the first man, knowing nothing
about this, leads a rather normal life while
the second man, feeling trapped by his own
past, continues a life of crime, blaming his
own past for "trapping" him in this life.
There is nothing essential about his committing
crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to his
past.
However, to disregard one's facticity when,
in the continual process of self-making, one
projects oneself into the future, that would
be to put oneself in denial of oneself, and
thus would be inauthentic. In other words,
the origin of one's projection must still
be one's facticity, though in the mode of
not being it (essentially). An example of
one focusing solely on one's possible projects
without reflecting on one's current facticity:
if one continually thinks about future possibilities
related to being rich (e.g. a better car,
bigger house, better quality of life, etc.)
without considering the facticity of not currently
having the financial means to do so. In this
example, considering both facticity and transcendence,
an authentic mode of being would be considering
future projects that might improve one's current
finances (e.g. putting in extra hours, or
investing savings) in order to arrive at a
future-facticity of a modest pay rise, further
leading to purchase of an affordable car.
Another aspect of facticity is that it entails
angst, both in the sense that freedom "produces"
angst when limited by facticity, and in the
sense that the lack of the possibility of
having facticity to "step in" for one to take
responsibility for something one has done,
also produces angst.
Another aspect of existential freedom is that
one can change one's values. Thus, one is
responsible for one's values, regardless of
society's values. The focus on freedom in
existentialism is related to the limits of
the responsibility one bears, as a result
of one's freedom: the relationship between
freedom and responsibility is one of interdependency,
and a clarification of freedom also clarifies
that for which one is responsible.
=== Authenticity ===
Many noted existentialist writers consider
the theme of authentic existence important.
Authentic existence involves the idea that
one has to "create oneself" and then live
in accordance with this self. What is meant
by authenticity is that in acting, one should
act as oneself, not as "one's acts" or as
"one's genes" or any other essence requires.
The authentic act is one that is in accordance
with one's freedom. As a condition of freedom
is facticity, this includes one's facticity,
but not to the degree that this facticity
can in any way determine one's transcendent
choices (in the sense that one could then
blame one's background [facticity] for making
the choice one made [chosen project, from
one's transcendence]). The role of facticity
in relation to authenticity involves letting
one's actual values come into play when one
makes a choice (instead of, like Kierkegaard's
Aesthete, "choosing" randomly), so that one
also takes responsibility for the act instead
of choosing either-or without allowing the
options to have different values.In contrast
to this, the inauthentic is the denial to
live in accordance with one's freedom. This
can take many forms, from pretending choices
are meaningless or random, through convincing
oneself that some form of determinism is true,
to a sort of "mimicry" where one acts as "one
should".
How "one should" act is often determined by
an image one has, of how one such as oneself
(say, a bank manager, lion tamer, prostitute,
etc.) acts. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre
relates an example of a "waiter" in bad faith:
he merely takes part in the "act" of being
a typical waiter, albeit very convincingly.
This image usually corresponds to some sort
of social norm, but this does not mean that
all acting in accordance with social norms
is inauthentic: The main point is the attitude
one takes to one's own freedom and responsibility,
and the extent to which one acts in accordance
with this freedom.
=== The Other and the Look ===
The Other (when written with a capital "O")
is a concept more properly belonging to phenomenology
and its account of intersubjectivity. However,
the concept has seen widespread use in existentialist
writings, and the conclusions drawn from it
differ slightly from the phenomenological
accounts. The experience of the Other is the
experience of another free subject who inhabits
the same world as a person does. In its most
basic form, it is this experience of the Other
that constitutes intersubjectivity and objectivity.
To clarify, when one experiences someone else,
and this Other person experiences the world
(the same world that a person experiences)—only
from "over there"—the world itself is constituted
as objective in that it is something that
is "there" as identical for both of the subjects;
a person experiences the other person as experiencing
the same things. This experience of the Other's
look is what is termed the Look (sometimes
the Gaze).While this experience, in its basic
phenomenological sense, constitutes the world
as objective, and oneself as objectively existing
subjectivity (one experiences oneself as seen
in the Other's Look in precisely the same
way that one experiences the Other as seen
by him, as subjectivity), in existentialism,
it also acts as a kind of limitation of freedom.
This is because the Look tends to objectify
what it sees. As such, when one experiences
oneself in the Look, one doesn't experience
oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something.
Sartre's own example of a man peeping at someone
through a keyhole can help clarify this: at
first, this man is entirely caught up in the
situation he is in; he is in a pre-reflexive
state where his entire consciousness is directed
at what goes on in the room. Suddenly, he
hears a creaking floorboard behind him, and
he becomes aware of himself as seen by the
Other. He is thus filled with shame for he
perceives himself as he would perceive someone
else doing what he was doing, as a Peeping
Tom. The Look is then co-constitutive of one's
facticity.
Another characteristic feature of the Look
is that no Other really needs to have been
there: It is quite possible that the creaking
floorboard was nothing but the movement of
an old house; the Look isn't some kind of
mystical telepathic experience of the actual
way the other sees one (there may also have
been someone there, but he could have not
noticed that the person was there). It is
only one's perception of the way another might
perceive him.
=== Angst and dread ===
"Existential angst", sometimes called existential
dread, anxiety, or anguish, is a term that
is common to many existentialist thinkers.
It is generally held to be a negative feeling
arising from the experience of human freedom
and responsibility. The archetypical example
is the experience one has when standing on
a cliff where one not only fears falling off
it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing
oneself off. In this experience that "nothing
is holding me back", one senses the lack of
anything that predetermines one to either
throw oneself off or to stand still, and one
experiences one's own freedom. Angst, according
to the modern existentialist, Adam Fong, is
the sudden realization of a lack of meaning,
often while one completes a task that initially
seems to have intrinsic meaning.It can also
be seen in relation to the previous point
how angst is before nothing, and this is what
sets it apart from fear that has an object.
While in the case of fear, one can take definitive
measures to remove the object of fear, in
the case of angst, no such "constructive"
measures are possible. The use of the word
"nothing" in this context relates both to
the inherent insecurity about the consequences
of one's actions, and to the fact that, in
experiencing freedom as angst, one also realizes
that one is fully responsible for these consequences.
There is nothing in people (genetically, for
instance) that acts in their stead—that
they can blame if something goes wrong. Therefore,
not every choice is perceived as having dreadful
possible consequences (and, it can be claimed,
human lives would be unbearable if every choice
facilitated dread). However, this doesn't
change the fact that freedom remains a condition
of every action.
=== Despair ===
Despair, in existentialism, is generally defined
as a loss of hope. More specifically, it is
a loss of hope in reaction to a breakdown
in one or more of the defining qualities of
one's self or identity. If a person is invested
in being a particular thing, such as a bus
driver or an upstanding citizen, and then
finds their being-thing compromised, they
would normally be found in a state of despair—a
hopeless state. For example, a singer who
loses the ability to sing may despair if they
have nothing else to fall back on—nothing
to rely on for their identity. They find themselves
unable to be what defined their being.
What sets the existentialist notion of despair
apart from the conventional definition is
that existentialist despair is a state one
is in even when they aren't overtly in despair.
So long as a person's identity depends on
qualities that can crumble, they are in perpetual
despair—and as there is, in Sartrean terms,
no human essence found in conventional reality
on which to constitute the individual's sense
of identity, despair is a universal human
condition. As Kierkegaard defines it in Either/Or:
"Let each one learn what he can; both of us
can learn that a person’s unhappiness never
lies in his lack of control over external
conditions, since this would only make him
completely unhappy." In Works of Love, he
said: When the God-forsaken worldliness of
earthly life shuts itself in complacency,
the confined air develops poison, the moment
gets stuck and stands still, the prospect
is lost, a need is felt for a refreshing,
enlivening breeze to cleanse the air and dispel
the poisonous vapors lest we suffocate in
worldliness. ... Lovingly to hope all things
is the opposite of despairingly to hope nothing
at all. Love hopes all things—yet is never
put to shame. To relate oneself expectantly
to the possibility of the good is to hope.
To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility
of evil is to fear. By the decision to choose
hope one decides infinitely more than it seems,
because it is an eternal decision. pp. 246–50
== Opposition to positivism and rationalism
==
Existentialists oppose definitions of human
beings as primarily rational, and, therefore,
oppose positivism and rationalism. Existentialism
asserts that people actually make decisions
based on subjective meaning rather than pure
rationality. The rejection of reason as the
source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist
thought, as is the focus on the feelings of
anxiety and dread that we feel in the face
of our own radical freedom and our awareness
of death. Kierkegaard advocated rationality
as a means to interact with the objective
world (e.g., in the natural sciences), but
when it comes to existential problems, reason
is insufficient: "Human reason has boundaries".Like
Kierkegaard, Sartre saw problems with rationality,
calling it a form of "bad faith", an attempt
by the self to impose structure on a world
of phenomena—"the Other"—that is fundamentally
irrational and random. According to Sartre,
rationality and other forms of bad faith hinder
people from finding meaning in freedom. To
try to suppress their feelings of anxiety
and dread, people confine themselves within
everyday experience, Sartre asserts, thereby
relinquishing their freedom and acquiescing
to being possessed in one form or another
by "the Look" of "the Other" (i.e., possessed
by another person—or at least one's idea
of that other person).
== Religion ==
An existentialist reading of the Bible would
demand that the reader recognize that (s)he
is an existing subject studying the words
more as a recollection of events. This is
in contrast to looking at a collection of
"truths" that are outside and unrelated to
the reader, but may develop a sense of reality/God.
Such a reader is not obligated to follow the
commandments as if an external agent is forcing
these commandments upon them, but as though
they are inside them and guiding them from
inside. This is the task Kierkegaard takes
up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult
task: the teacher who lectures on earnest
things a meteor's distance from everyday life
- or the learner who should put it to use?"
== Confusion with nihilism ==
Although nihilism and existentialism are distinct
philosophies, they are often confused with
one another as both are rooted in the human
experience of anguish and confusion stemming
from the apparent meaninglessness of a world
in which humans are compelled to find or create
meaning. A primary cause of confusion is that
Friedrich Nietzsche is an important philosopher
in both fields. Existentialist philosophers
often stress the importance of Angst as signifying
the absolute lack of any objective ground
for action, a move that is often reduced to
a moral or an existential nihilism. A pervasive
theme in the works of existentialist philosophy,
however, is to persist through encounters
with the absurd, as seen in Camus' The Myth
of Sisyphus ("One must imagine Sisyphus happy"),
and it is only very rarely that existentialist
philosophers dismiss morality or one's self-created
meaning: Kierkegaard regained a sort of morality
in the religious (although he wouldn't himself
agree that it was ethical; the religious suspends
the ethical), and Sartre's final words in
Being and Nothingness are "All these questions,
which refer us to a pure and not an accessory
(or impure) reflection, can find their reply
only on the ethical plane. We shall devote
to them a future work."
== 
History ==
=== 19th century ===
==== Kierkegaard and Nietzsche ====
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
were two of the first philosophers considered
fundamental to the existentialist movement,
though neither used the term "existentialism"
and it is unclear whether they would have
supported the existentialism of the 20th century.
They focused on subjective human experience
rather than the objective truths of mathematics
and science, which they believed were too
detached or observational to truly get at
the human experience. Like Pascal, they were
interested in people's quiet struggle with
the apparent meaninglessness of life and the
use of diversion to escape from boredom. Unlike
Pascal, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche also considered
the role of making free choices, particularly
regarding fundamental values and beliefs,
and how such choices change the nature and
identity of the chooser. Kierkegaard's knight
of faith and Nietzsche's Übermensch are representative
of people who exhibit Freedom, in that they
define the nature of their own existence.
Nietzsche's idealized individual invents his
own values and creates the very terms they
excel under. By contrast, Kierkegaard, opposed
to the level of abstraction in Hegel, and
not nearly as hostile (actually welcoming)
to Christianity as Nietzsche, argues through
a pseudonym that the objective certainty of
religious truths (specifically Christian)
is not only impossible, but even founded on
logical paradoxes. Yet he continues to imply
that a leap of faith is a possible means for
an individual to reach a higher stage of existence
that transcends and contains both an aesthetic
and ethical value of life. Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche were also precursors to other intellectual
movements, including postmodernism, and various
strands of psychotherapy. However, Kierkegaard
believed that individuals should live in accordance
with their thinking.
==== Dostoyevsky ====
The first important literary author also important
to existentialism was the Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground portrays
a man unable to fit into society and unhappy
with the identities he creates for himself.
Jean-Paul Sartre, in his book on existentialism
Existentialism is a Humanism, quoted Dostoyevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov as an example of existential
crisis. Sartre attributes Ivan Karamazov's
claim, "If God did not exist, everything would
be permitted" to Dostoyevsky himself, though
this quote does not appear in the novel. However,
a similar sentiment is explicitly stated when
Alyosha visits Dimitri in prison. Dimitri
mentions his conversations with Rakitin in
which the idea that "Then, if He doesn't exist,
man is king of the earth, of the universe"
allowing the inference contained in Sartre's
attribution to remain a valid idea contested
within the novel. Other Dostoyevsky novels
covered issues raised in existentialist philosophy
while presenting story lines divergent from
secular existentialism: for example, in Crime
and Punishment, the protagonist Raskolnikov
experiences an existential crisis and then
moves toward a Christian Orthodox worldview
similar to that advocated by Dostoyevsky himself.
=== Early 20th century ===
In the first decades of the 20th century,
a number of philosophers and writers explored
existentialist ideas. The Spanish philosopher
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, in his 1913 book
The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations,
emphasized the life of "flesh and bone" as
opposed to that of abstract rationalism. Unamuno
rejected systematic philosophy in favor of
the individual's quest for faith. He retained
a sense of the tragic, even absurd nature
of the quest, symbolized by his enduring interest
in Cervantes' fictional character Don Quixote.
A novelist, poet and dramatist as well as
philosophy professor at the University of
Salamanca, Unamuno wrote a short story about
a priest's crisis of faith, Saint Manuel the
Good, Martyr, which has been collected in
anthologies of existentialist fiction. Another
Spanish thinker, Ortega y Gasset, writing
in 1914, held that human existence must always
be defined as the individual person combined
with the concrete circumstances of his life:
"Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am myself
and my circumstances"). Sartre likewise believed
that human existence is not an abstract matter,
but is always situated ("en situation").
Although Martin Buber wrote his major philosophical
works in German, and studied and taught at
the Universities of Berlin and Frankfurt,
he stands apart from the mainstream of German
philosophy. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna
in 1878, he was also a scholar of Jewish culture
and involved at various times in Zionism and
Hasidism. In 1938, he moved permanently to
Jerusalem. His best-known philosophical work
was the short book I and Thou, published in
1922. For Buber, the fundamental fact of human
existence, too readily overlooked by scientific
rationalism and abstract philosophical thought,
is "man with man", a dialogue that takes place
in the so-called "sphere of between" ("das
Zwischenmenschliche").Two Russian thinkers,
Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev, became well
known as existentialist thinkers during their
post-Revolutionary exiles in Paris. Shestov,
born into a Ukrainian-Jewish family in Kiev,
had launched an attack on rationalism and
systematization in philosophy as early as
1905 in his book of aphorisms All Things Are
Possible.
Berdyaev, also from Kiev but with a background
in the Eastern Orthodox Church, drew a radical
distinction between the world of spirit and
the everyday world of objects. Human freedom,
for Berdyaev, is rooted in the realm of spirit,
a realm independent of scientific notions
of causation. To the extent the individual
human being lives in the objective world,
he is estranged from authentic spiritual freedom.
"Man" is not to be interpreted naturalistically,
but as a being created in God's image, an
originator of free, creative acts. He published
a major work on these themes, The Destiny
of Man, in 1931.
Gabriel Marcel, long before coining the term
"existentialism", introduced important existentialist
themes to a French audience in his early essay
"Existence and Objectivity" (1925) and in
his Metaphysical Journal (1927). A dramatist
as well as a philosopher, Marcel found his
philosophical starting point in a condition
of metaphysical alienation: the human individual
searching for harmony in a transient life.
Harmony, for Marcel, was to be sought through
"secondary reflection", a "dialogical" rather
than "dialectical" approach to the world,
characterized by "wonder and astonishment"
and open to the "presence" of other people
and of God rather than merely to "information"
about them. For Marcel, such presence implied
more than simply being there (as one thing
might be in the presence of another thing);
it connoted "extravagant" availability, and
the willingness to put oneself at the disposal
of the other.Marcel contrasted secondary reflection
with abstract, scientific-technical primary
reflection, which he associated with the activity
of the abstract Cartesian ego. For Marcel,
philosophy was a concrete activity undertaken
by a sensing, feeling human being incarnate—embodied—in
a concrete world. Although Jean-Paul Sartre
adopted the term "existentialism" for his
own philosophy in the 1940s, Marcel's thought
has been described as "almost diametrically
opposed" to that of Sartre. Unlike Sartre,
Marcel was a Christian, and became a Catholic
convert in 1929.
In Germany, the psychologist and philosopher
Karl Jaspers—who later described existentialism
as a "phantom" created by the public—called
his own thought, heavily influenced by Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche, Existenzphilosophie. For Jaspers,
"Existenz-philosophy is the way of thought
by means of which man seeks to become himself...This
way of thought does not cognize objects, but
elucidates and makes actual the being of the
thinker".Jaspers, a professor at the University
of Heidelberg, was acquainted with Martin
Heidegger, who held a professorship at Marburg
before acceding to Husserl's chair at Freiburg
in 1928. They held many philosophical discussions,
but later became estranged over Heidegger's
support of National Socialism (Nazism). They
shared an admiration for Kierkegaard, and
in the 1930s, Heidegger lectured extensively
on Nietzsche. Nevertheless, the extent to
which Heidegger should be considered an existentialist
is debatable. In Being and Time he presented
a method of rooting philosophical explanations
in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed
in terms of existential categories (existentiale);
and this has led many commentators to treat
him as an important figure in the existentialist
movement.
=== After the Second World War ===
Following the Second World War, existentialism
became a well-known and significant philosophical
and cultural movement, mainly through the
public prominence of two French writers, Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, who wrote best-selling
novels, plays and widely read journalism as
well as theoretical texts. These years also
saw the growing reputation of Heidegger's
book Being and Time outside Germany.
Sartre dealt with existentialist themes in
his 1938 novel Nausea and the short stories
in his 1939 collection The Wall, and had published
his treatise on existentialism, Being and
Nothingness, in 1943, but it was in the two
years following the liberation of Paris from
the German occupying forces that he and his
close associates—Camus, Simone de Beauvoir,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others—became
internationally famous as the leading figures
of a movement known as existentialism. In
a very short period of time, Camus and Sartre
in particular became the leading public intellectuals
of post-war France, achieving by the end of
1945 "a fame that reached across all audiences."
Camus was an editor of the most popular leftist
(former French Resistance) newspaper Combat;
Sartre launched his journal of leftist thought,
Les Temps Modernes, and two weeks later gave
the widely reported lecture on existentialism
and secular humanism to a packed meeting of
the Club Maintenant. Beauvoir wrote that "not
a week passed without the newspapers discussing
us"; existentialism became "the first media
craze of the postwar era."By the end of 1947,
Camus' earlier fiction and plays had been
reprinted, his new play Caligula had been
performed and his novel The Plague published;
the first two novels of Sartre's The Roads
to Freedom trilogy had appeared, as had Beauvoir's
novel The Blood of Others. Works by Camus
and Sartre were already appearing in foreign
editions. The Paris-based existentialists
had become famous.Sartre had traveled to Germany
in 1930 to study the phenomenology of Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and he included
critical comments on their work in his major
treatise Being and Nothingness. Heidegger's
thought had also become known in French philosophical
circles through its use by Alexandre Kojève
in explicating Hegel in a series of lectures
given in Paris in the 1930s. The lectures
were highly influential; members of the audience
included not only Sartre and Merleau-Ponty,
but Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Louis
Althusser, André Breton, and Jacques Lacan.
A selection from Heidegger's Being and Time
was published in French in 1938, and his essays
began to appear in French philosophy journals.
Heidegger read Sartre's work and was initially
impressed, commenting: "Here for the first
time I encountered an independent thinker
who, from the foundations up, has experienced
the area out of which I think. Your work shows
such an immediate comprehension of my philosophy
as I have never before encountered." Later,
however, in response to a question posed by
his French follower Jean Beaufret, Heidegger
distanced himself from Sartre's position and
existentialism in general in his Letter on
Humanism. Heidegger's reputation continued
to grow in France during the 1950s and 1960s.
In the 1960s, Sartre attempted to reconcile
existentialism and Marxism in his work Critique
of Dialectical Reason. A major theme throughout
his writings was freedom and responsibility.
Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their
falling-out, and wrote several works with
existential themes including The Rebel, Summer
in Algiers, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The
Stranger, the latter being "considered—to
what would have been Camus's irritation—the
exemplary existentialist novel." Camus, like
many others, rejected the existentialist label,
and considered his works concerned with facing
the absurd. In the titular book, Camus uses
the analogy of the Greek myth of Sisyphus
to demonstrate the futility of existence.
In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned for eternity
to roll a rock up a hill, but when he reaches
the summit, the rock will roll to the bottom
again. Camus believes that this existence
is pointless but that Sisyphus ultimately
finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply
by continually applying himself to it. The
first half of the book contains an extended
rebuttal of what Camus took to be existentialist
philosophy in the works of Kierkegaard, Shestov,
Heidegger, and Jaspers.
Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist
who spent much of her life as Sartre's partner,
wrote about feminist and existentialist ethics
in her works, including The Second Sex and
The Ethics of Ambiguity. Although often overlooked
due to her relationship with Sartre, de Beauvoir
integrated existentialism with other forms
of thinking such as feminism, unheard of at
the time, resulting in alienation from fellow
writers such as Camus.Paul Tillich, an important
existentialist theologian following Kierkegaard
and Karl Barth, applied existentialist concepts
to Christian theology, and helped introduce
existential theology to the general public.
His seminal work The Courage to Be follows
Kierkegaard's analysis of anxiety and life's
absurdity, but puts forward the thesis that
modern humans must, via God, achieve selfhood
in spite of life's absurdity. Rudolf Bultmann
used Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's philosophy
of existence to demythologize Christianity
by interpreting Christian mythical concepts
into existentialist concepts.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an existential phenomenologist,
was for a time a companion of Sartre. Merleau-Ponty's
Phenomenology of Perception (1945) was recognized
as a major statement of French existentialism.
It has been said that Merleau-Ponty's work
Humanism and Terror greatly influenced Sartre.
However, in later years they were to disagree
irreparably, dividing many existentialists
such as de Beauvoir, who sided with Sartre.
Colin Wilson, an English writer, published
his study The Outsider in 1956, initially
to critical acclaim. In this book and others
(e.g. Introduction to the New Existentialism),
he attempted to reinvigorate what he perceived
as a pessimistic philosophy and bring it to
a wider audience. He was not, however, academically
trained, and his work was attacked by professional
philosophers for lack of rigor and critical
standards.
== Influence outside philosophy ==
=== Art ===
==== Film and television ====
Stanley Kubrick's 1957 anti-war film Paths
of Glory "illustrates, and even illuminates...existentialism"
by examining the "necessary absurdity of the
human condition" and the "horror of war".
The film tells the story of a fictional World
War I French army regiment ordered to attack
an impregnable German stronghold; when the
attack fails, three soldiers are chosen at
random, court-martialed by a "kangaroo court",
and executed by firing squad. The film examines
existentialist ethics, such as the issue of
whether objectivity is possible and the "problem
of authenticity". Orson Welles' 1962 film
The Trial, based upon Franz Kafka's book of
the same name (Der Process), is characteristic
of both existentialist and absurdist themes
in its depiction of a man (Joseph K.) arrested
for a crime for which the charges are neither
revealed to him nor to the reader.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Japanese science
fiction animation series created by the anime
studio Gainax and was both directed and written
by Hideaki Anno. Existential themes of individuality,
consciousness, freedom, choice, and responsibility
are heavily relied upon throughout the entire
series, particularly through the philosophies
of Jean-Paul Sartre and Søren Kierkegaard.
Episode 16's title, "The Sickness Unto Death,
And..." (死に至る病、そして, Shi
ni itaru yamai, soshite) is a reference to
Kierkegaard's book, The Sickness Unto Death.
Some contemporary films dealing with existentialist
issues include Melancholia, Fight Club, I
Heart Huckabees, Waking Life, The Matrix,
Ordinary People, and Life in a Day. Likewise,
films throughout the 20th century such as
The Seventh Seal, Ikiru, Taxi Driver, the
Toy Story films, The Great Silence, Ghost
in the Shell, Harold and Maude, High Noon,
Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
A Clockwork Orange, Groundhog Day, Apocalypse
Now, Badlands, and Blade Runner also have
existentialist qualities.Notable directors
known for their existentialist films include
Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc
Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Akira Kurosawa,
Terrence Malick, Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky,
Hideaki Anno, Wes Anderson, Gaspar Noé, Woody
Allen, and Christopher Nolan. Charlie Kaufman's
Synecdoche, New York focuses on the protagonist's
desire to find existential meaning. Similarly,
in Kurosawa's Red Beard, the protagonist's
experiences as an intern in a rural health
clinic in Japan lead him to an existential
crisis whereby he questions his reason for
being. This, in turn, leads him to a better
understanding of humanity. The French film,
Mood Indigo (directed by Michel Gondry) embraced
various elements of existentialism. The film
The Shawshank Redemption, released in 1994,
depicts life in a prison in Maine, United
States to explore several existentialist concepts.
==== Literature ====
Existential perspectives are also found in
modern literature to varying degrees, especially
since the 1920s. Louis-Ferdinand Céline's
Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au
bout de la nuit, 1932) celebrated by both
Sartre and Beauvoir, contained many of the
themes that would be found in later existential
literature, and is in some ways, the proto-existential
novel. Jean-Paul Sartre's 1938 novel Nausea
was "steeped in Existential ideas", and is
considered an accessible way of grasping his
philosophical stance. Between 1900 and 1960,
other authors such as Albert Camus, Franz
Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Herman
Hesse, Luigi Pirandello, Ralph Ellison, and
Jack Kerouac, composed literature or poetry
that contained, to varying degrees, elements
of existential or proto-existential thought.
The philosophy's influence even reached pulp
literature shortly after the turn of the 20th
century, as seen in the existential disparity
witnessed in Man's lack of control of his
fate in the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Since
the late 1960s, a great deal of cultural activity
in literature contains postmodernist as well
as existential elements. Books such as Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) (now
republished as Blade Runner) by Philip K.
Dick, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut,
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and Formless
Meanderings by Bharath Srinivasan all distort
the line between reality and appearance while
simultaneously espousing existential themes.
==== Theatre ====
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote No Exit in 1944, an
existentialist play originally published in
French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or
"behind closed doors"), which is the source
of the popular quote, "Hell is other people."
(In French, "L'enfer, c'est les autres").
The play begins with a Valet leading a man
into a room that the audience soon realizes
is in hell. Eventually he is joined by two
women. After their entry, the Valet leaves
and the door is shut and locked. All three
expect to be tortured, but no torturer arrives.
Instead, they realize they are there to torture
each other, which they do effectively by probing
each other's sins, desires, and unpleasant
memories.
Existentialist themes are displayed in the
Theatre of the Absurd, notably in Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot, in which two men divert
themselves while they wait expectantly for
someone (or something) named Godot who never
arrives. They claim Godot is an acquaintance,
but in fact, hardly know him, admitting they
would not recognize him if they saw him. Samuel
Beckett, once asked who or what Godot is,
replied, "If I knew, I would have said so
in the play." To occupy themselves, the men
eat, sleep, talk, argue, sing, play games,
exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide—anything
"to hold the terrible silence at bay". The
play "exploits several archetypal forms and
situations, all of which lend themselves to
both comedy and pathos." The play also illustrates
an attitude toward human experience on earth:
the poignancy, oppression, camaraderie, hope,
corruption, and bewilderment of human experience
that can be reconciled only in the mind and
art of the absurdist. The play examines questions
such as death, the meaning of human existence
and the place of God in human existence.
Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Are Dead is an absurdist tragicomedy first
staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in
1966. The play expands upon the exploits of
two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Comparisons have also been drawn to Samuel
Beckett's Waiting For Godot, for the presence
of two central characters who appear almost
as two halves of a single character. Many
plot features are similar as well: the characters
pass time by playing Questions, impersonating
other characters, and interrupting each other
or remaining silent for long periods of time.
The two characters are portrayed as two clowns
or fools in a world beyond their understanding.
They stumble through philosophical arguments
while not realizing the implications, and
muse on the irrationality and randomness of
the world.
Jean Anouilh's Antigone also presents arguments
founded on existentialist ideas. It is a tragedy
inspired by Greek mythology and the play of
the same name (Antigone, by Sophocles) from
the 5th century BC. In English, it is often
distinguished from its antecedent by being
pronounced in its original French form, approximately
"Ante-GŌN." The play was first performed
in Paris on 6 February 1944, during the Nazi
occupation of France. Produced under Nazi
censorship, the play is purposefully ambiguous
with regards to the rejection of authority
(represented by Antigone) and the acceptance
of it (represented by Creon). The parallels
to the French Resistance and the Nazi occupation
have been drawn. Antigone rejects life as
desperately meaningless but without affirmatively
choosing a noble death. The crux of the play
is the lengthy dialogue concerning the nature
of power, fate, and choice, during which Antigone
says that she is, "... disgusted with [the]...promise
of a humdrum happiness." She states that she
would rather die than live a mediocre existence.
Critic Martin Esslin in his book Theatre of
the Absurd pointed out how many contemporary
playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène
Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov wove
into their plays the existentialist belief
that we are absurd beings loose in a universe
empty of real meaning. Esslin noted that many
of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophy
better than did the plays by Sartre and Camus.
Though most of such playwrights, subsequently
labeled "Absurdist" (based on Esslin's book),
denied affiliations with existentialism and
were often staunchly anti-philosophical (for
example Ionesco often claimed he identified
more with 'Pataphysics or with Surrealism
than with existentialism), the playwrights
are often linked to existentialism based on
Esslin's observation.
=== Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy ===
A major offshoot of existentialism as a philosophy
is existentialist psychology and psychoanalysis,
which first crystallized in the work of Otto
Rank, Freud's closest associate for 20 years.
Without awareness of the writings of Rank,
Ludwig Binswanger was influenced by Freud,
Edmund Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. A later
figure was Viktor Frankl, who briefly met
Freud as a young man. His logotherapy can
be regarded as a form of existentialist therapy.
The existentialists would also influence social
psychology, antipositivist micro-sociology,
symbolic interactionism, and post-structuralism,
with the work of thinkers such as Georg Simmel
and Michel Foucault. Foucault was a great
reader of Kierkegaard even though he almost
never refers this author, who nonetheless
had for him an importance as secret as it
was decisive.An early contributor to existentialist
psychology in the United States was Rollo
May, who was strongly influenced by Kierkegaard
and Otto Rank. One of the most prolific writers
on techniques and theory of existentialist
psychology in the USA is Irvin D. Yalom. Yalom
states that
Aside from their reaction against Freud's
mechanistic, deterministic model of the mind
and their assumption of a phenomenological
approach in therapy, the existentialist analysts
have little in common and have never been
regarded as a cohesive ideological school.
These thinkers—who include Ludwig Binswanger,
Medard Boss, Eugène Minkowski, V.E. Gebsattel,
Roland Kuhn, G. Caruso, F.T. Buytendijk, G.
Bally and Victor Frankl—were almost entirely
unknown to the American psychotherapeutic
community until Rollo May's highly influential
1985 book Existence—and especially his introductory
essay—introduced their work into this country.
A more recent contributor to the development
of a European version of existentialist psychotherapy
is the British-based Emmy van Deurzen.
Anxiety's importance in existentialism makes
it a popular topic in psychotherapy. Therapists
often offer existentialist philosophy as an
explanation for anxiety. The assertion is
that anxiety is manifested of an individual's
complete freedom to decide, and complete responsibility
for the outcome of such decisions. Psychotherapists
using an existentialist approach believe that
a patient can harness his anxiety and use
it constructively. Instead of suppressing
anxiety, patients are advised to use it as
grounds for change. By embracing anxiety as
inevitable, a person can use it to achieve
his full potential in life. Humanistic psychology
also had major impetus from existentialist
psychology and shares many of the fundamental
tenets. Terror management theory, based on
the writings of Ernest Becker and Otto Rank,
is a developing area of study within the academic
study of psychology. It looks at what researchers
claim are implicit emotional reactions of
people confronted with the knowledge that
they will eventually die.
Also, Gerd B. Achenbach has refreshed the
Socratic tradition with his own blend of philosophical
counseling. So did Michel Weber with his Chromatiques
Center in Belgium.
== Criticisms ==
=== General criticisms ===
Walter Kaufmann criticized 'the profoundly
unsound methods and the dangerous contempt
for reason that have been so prominent in
existentialism.'Logical positivist philosophers,
such as Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer, assert
that existentialists are often confused about
the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being".
Specifically, they argue that the verb "is"
is transitive and pre-fixed to a predicate
(e.g., an apple is red) (without a predicate,
the word "is" is meaningless), and that existentialists
frequently misuse the term in this manner.
Colin Wilson has stated in his book The Angry
Years that existentialism has created many
of its own difficulties: "we can see how this
question of freedom of the will has been vitiated
by post-romantic philosophy, with its inbuilt
tendency to laziness and boredom, we can also
see how it came about that existentialism
found itself in a hole of its own digging,
and how the philosophical developments since
then have amounted to walking in circles round
that hole".
=== Sartre's philosophy ===
Many critics argue Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy
is contradictory. Specifically, they argue
that Sartre makes metaphysical arguments despite
his claiming that his philosophical views
ignore metaphysics. Herbert Marcuse criticized
Sartre's 1943 Being and Nothingness for projecting
anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature
of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism
is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an
idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific
historical conditions of human existence into
ontological and metaphysical characteristics.
Existentialism thus becomes part of the very
ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism
is illusory".In Letter on Humanism, Martin
Heidegger criticized Sartre's existentialism:
Existentialism says existence precedes essence.
In this statement he is taking existentia
and essentia according to their metaphysical
meaning, which, from Plato's time on, has
said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre
reverses this statement. But the reversal
of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical
statement. With it, he stays with metaphysics,
in oblivion of the truth of Being.
== See also ==
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Bibliography ===
== Further reading ==
== 
External links ==
Existentialism at Curlie
"Existentialism". Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
Existentialism on In Our Time at the BBC
Friesian interpretation of Existentialism
Crowell, Steven. "Existentialism". In Zalta,
Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
"Existentialism is a Humanism", a lecture
given by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Existential Primer
Buddhists, Existentialists and Situationists:
Waking up in Waking Life
What Is an Existential Threat? A threat to
existence (see Global catastrophic risk) or
to a particular state or group.
=== Journals and articles ===
Stirrings Still: The International Journal
of Existential Literature
Existential Analysis published by The Society
for Existential Analysis
