Existentialism

Existentialism
Name	Existentialism
Caption	Jean-Paul Sartre (1967)
Region	Western philosophy
Era	19th–20th century
Main figures	Søren Kierkegaard; Friedrich Nietzsche; Jean-Paul Sartre; Simone de Beauvoir; Martin Heidegger; Albert Camus; Karl Jaspers

Existentialism Existentialism is a philosophical movement emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice. It arose in 19th–20th century Europe amid debates in Søren Kierkegaard's Copenhagen, Friedrich Nietzsche's Germany, and later in Parisian intellectual circles around Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus, influencing literature, theology, and social theory.

Origins and historical development

Early roots trace to Søren Kierkegaard's critiques of Christendom and subjectivity and to Friedrich Nietzsche's denunciations of Christian morality and the Übermensch motif. 19th-century antecedents intersect with reactions to the Revolutions of 1848, industrialization, and nineteenth-century scientific debates such as those triggered by Charles Darwin's work. 20th-century consolidation occurred through the works of Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and interwar intellectual life in Germany and France, intensified by experiences of World War I, World War II, the Spanish Civil War, and the Nazi regime. Postwar dissemination passed through institutions like the Sorbonne, Collège de France, New School for Social Research, and journals connected to figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gabriel Marcel.

Core themes and concepts

Central motifs include individual freedom and responsibility as elaborated by Jean-Paul Sartre; authenticity and inauthenticity as analyzed by Martin Heidegger; the absurd as foregrounded by Albert Camus; and existential despair, angst, and dread as treated by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Related concepts feature bad faith in Sartre's analyses, the Other and intersubjectivity discussed by Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and existential guilt in Karl Jaspers. Philosophical methods draw on phenomenology from Edmund Husserl and hermeneutics practiced by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricœur, while ethical implications intersect with feminist critiques from Simone de Beauvoir and political readings by Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon.

Major existentialist philosophers and works

Key texts include Søren Kierkegaard's Either/Or and Fear and Trembling; Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil; Martin Heidegger's Being and Time; Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Existentialism is a Humanism; Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex; Albert Camus's The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus; Karl Jaspers's Philosophy of Existence; Gabriel Marcel's The Mystery of Being; Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations; and Emmanuel Levinas's Totality and Infinity. Later contributors and interlocutors include Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hannah Arendt, Paul Ricœur, Frantz Fanon, Jean Wahl, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Simone Weil, Roland Barthes, Walter Kaufmann, Isaiah Berlin, and John Macquarrie.

Existentialism in literature and the arts

Literary manifestations appear in novels and plays by Fyodor Dostoevsky (notably Crime and Punishment), Franz Kafka (The Trial), Jean-Paul Sartre (No Exit), Albert Camus (The Stranger), and Simone de Beauvoir's fiction. Poets and dramatists like T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Eugène Ionesco (The Bald Soprano), and Arthur Miller incorporate existential motifs. Visual arts and cinema show existential influence in works by directors such as Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal), Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita), Antonioni (L'Avventura), and Jean-Luc Godard; painters and composers engaged with existential themes include Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Criticisms and debates

Critics from analytic traditions like Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore challenged existentialist metaphysics and style; Marxist critics including Georg Lukács and Theodor Adorno argued existentialism overlooked structural social analysis and class struggle, while feminist thinkers Simone de Beauvoir both used and critiqued existentialist premises. Theological critics from Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr contested existentialist theology, and poststructuralists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida critiqued existentialist humanism and subject-centered narratives. Debates continue about whether existentialism fosters political passivity or radical freedom, voiced by figures like Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon.

Influence on psychology, theology, and politics

Existential thought shaped psychotherapies including existential psychotherapy and influenced figures like Rollo May, Viktor Frankl (Logotherapy), and Irvin D. Yalom. Theological dialogue incorporated existentialist themes via Paul Tillich, Karl Jaspers's engagement with religious existence, and Gabriel Marcel's Christian existentialism. Politically, existentialism informed anti-colonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and shaped debates within French Communist Party circles, postwar intellectual politics at the Sorbonne, and movements tied to the May 1968 events in France and broader debates involving Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Category:Philosophical movements