View source for Existentialism

{{Short description|Philosophical form of enquiry into subjective existence}}
{{redirect|Existential|the logical sense of the term|Existential quantification|other uses|Existence (disambiguation)}}
{{for|the philosophical position commonly seen as the antonym of existentialism |Essentialism}}
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'''Existentialism''' is a family of [[philosophy|philosophical]] views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an [[Authenticity (philosophy)|authentic life]] despite the apparent [[Absurdity#The Absurd|absurd]]ity or incomprehensibility of [[existence]].<ref>{{Cite Merriam-Webster|existentialism}}</ref><ref>{{Cite Dictionary.com|existentialism}}</ref><ref>{{Cite Cambridge Dictionaries|existentialism}}</ref> In examining [[meaning of life|meaning]], purpose, and [[value (ethics)|value]], existentialist thought often includes concepts such as [[existential crisis|existential crises]], [[Angst#Existentialist angst|angst]], [[courage]], and [[freedom]].{{sfn|Solomon|1974|pp=1–2}}

Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought.{{sfn|Crowell|2020}}<ref name="Macquarrie">{{cite book |first=John |last=Macquarrie |title=Existentialism |location=New York |publisher=[[Penguin Books|Penguin]] |pages=14–15 |year=1972}}</ref><ref name="Philosophy 1995 p. 259">{{cite book |title=Oxford Companion to Philosophy |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hond_471 |url-access=limited |editor-first=Ted |editor-last=Honderich |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1995 |page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hond_471/page/n274 259]|isbn=978-0-19-866132-0 }}</ref> Among the 19th-century figures now associated with existentialism are philosophers [[Søren Kierkegaard]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], as well as novelist [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]], all of whom critiqued [[rationalism]] and concerned themselves with the problem of [[meaning (philosophy)|meaning]]. The word ''existentialism'', however, was not coined until the mid 20th century, during which it became most associated with contemporaneous philosophers [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], [[Martin Heidegger]], [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Karl Jaspers]], [[Gabriel Marcel]], [[Paul Tillich]], and more controversially [[Albert Camus]]. 

Many existentialists considered traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in style and content, to be too abstract and removed from concrete human experience.<ref>{{cite book |first=Ernst |last=Breisach |title=Introduction to Modern Existentialism |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |year=1962 |page=5}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Walter |last=Kaufmann |title=Existentialism: From Dostoyevesky to Sartre |location=New York |publisher=Meridian |year=1956 |page=12}}</ref> A primary virtue in existentialist thought is [[authenticity (philosophy)|authenticity]].{{sfn|Flynn|2006|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=eLoTDAAAQBAJ&pg=PP12 xi]}} Existentialism would influence many disciplines outside of philosophy, including [[theology]], drama, art, literature, and psychology.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Guignon |first1=Charles B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NSvRzPye-gEC&q=psychoanalysis |title=Existentialism: Basic Writings |last2=Pereboom |first2=Derk |publisher=Hackett Publishing |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-87220-595-6 |page=xiii |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>

Existentialist philosophy encompasses a range of perspectives, but it shares certain underlying concepts. Among these, a central tenet of existentialism is that personal freedom, individual responsibility, and deliberate choice are essential to the pursuit of self-discovery and the determination of life's meaning.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Paul |last=Kleinman |title=Philosophy 101: from Plato and Socrates to ethics and metaphysics, an essential primer on the history of thought |date=2013 |publisher=Adams Media |isbn=978-1-4405-6767-4 |oclc=869368682}}</ref>

== Etymology ==
The term ''existentialism'' ({{langx|fr|L'existentialisme}}) was coined by the [[Roman Catholicism in France|French Catholic]] philosopher [[Gabriel Marcel]] in the mid-1940s.{{sfn|Cooper|1990|p=1}}{{sfn|Flynn|2006|p=89}}<ref name="Christine Daigle 2006, page 5">{{cite book |first=Christine |last=Daigle |title=Existentialist Thinkers and Ethics |publisher=[[McGill-Queen's University Press]] |date=2006 |page=5}}</ref> When Marcel first applied the term to [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], at a colloquium in 1945, Sartre rejected it.<ref>
Ann Fulton, ''Apostles of Sartre: Existentialism in America, 1945–1963'', Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999, p. 12-13 & 18–19.</ref> Sartre subsequently changed his mind and, on October 29, 1945, publicly adopted the existentialist label in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in Paris, published as {{lang|fr|[[L'existentialisme est un humanisme]]}} (''Existentialism Is a Humanism''), a short book that helped popularize existentialist thought.<ref>''L'Existentialisme est un Humanisme'' (Editions Nagel, 1946); ''English'' Jean-Paul Sartre, ''Existentialism and Humanism'' (Eyre Methuen, 1948).</ref> Marcel later came to reject the label himself in favour of ''Neo-Socratic'', in honor of Kierkegaard's essay "[[On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates|On the Concept of Irony]]".

Some scholars argue that the term should be used to refer only to the cultural movement in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s associated with the works of the philosophers Sartre, [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]], and [[Albert Camus]].{{sfn|Crowell|2020}} Others extend the term to Kierkegaard, and yet others extend it as far back as [[Socrates]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Crowell |first=Steven |title=The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism |location=Cambridge |date=2011 |page=316}}</ref> However, it is often identified with the philosophical views of Sartre.{{sfn|Crowell|2020}}

== Definitional issues and background ==
The labels ''existentialism'' and ''existentialist'' are often seen as historical conveniences in as much as they were first applied to many philosophers long after they had died. While existentialism is generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, the first prominent existentialist philosopher to adopt the term as a self-description was Sartre. Sartre posits the idea that "what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that [[existence precedes essence]]", as the philosopher [[Frederick Copleston]] explains.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Copleston |first1=F. C. |date=January 1948 |title=Existentialism |journal=Philosophy |volume=23 |issue=84 |pages=19–37 |doi=10.1017/S0031819100065955 |issn=0031-8191 |s2cid=262276911 |jstor=3747384}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Crowell|2020}} In a lecture delivered in 1945, Sartre described existentialism as "the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent [[atheism]]".<ref>See [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]]'s introduction to {{Cite book |last=Sartre |first=Jean-Paul |author-link=Jean-Paul Sartre |year=2000 |title=Nausea |location=London |publisher=[[Penguin Classics]] |isbn=978-0-141-18549-1 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=CGbBbtDOZbwC&pg=PT4 vii] }}</ref> For others, existentialism need not involve the rejection of God, but rather "examines mortal man's search for meaning in a meaningless universe", considering less "What is the good life?" (to feel, be, or do, good), instead asking "What is life good for?".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Abulof |first1=Uriel |title=Episode 1: The Jumping Off Place [MOOC lecture] |url=https://www.edx.org/course/hope-human-odyssey-to-political-existentialism |website=Uriel Abulof, Human Odyssey to Political Existentialism (HOPE) |publisher=edX/Princeton |access-date=12 January 2021 |archive-date=5 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210805204711/https://www.edx.org/course/hope-human-odyssey-to-political-existentialism }}</ref>

Although many outside [[Scandinavia]] consider the term existentialism to have originated from Kierkegaard, 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]].<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Welhaven og psykologien: Del 2. Welhaven peker fremover |trans-title=Welhaven and psychology: Part 2. Welhaven points forward |url=https://psykologtidsskriftet.no/fagessay/2008/10/welhaven-og-psykologien-del-2-welhaven-peker-fremover |access-date=2022-07-14 |journal=Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening |date=October 2008 |volume=45 |issue=10 |language=nb |last1=Klempe |first1=Hroar}}</ref> 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".<ref>Lundestad, 1998, p. 169.</ref> This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern.
* The second claim comes from the Norwegian historian [[Rune Slagstad]], who claimed 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 "[[Hegelianism|Hegelians]] do not study philosophy 'existentially;' to use a phrase by Welhaven from one time when I spoke with him about philosophy."<ref>Slagstad, 2001, p. 89.</ref>

== Concepts ==

=== Existence precedes essence ===
{{Main|Existence precedes essence}}

Sartre argued that a central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which is to say that individuals shape themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and ''a priori'' categories, an "essence". The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Human beings, through their own [[consciousness]], create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.<ref>(Dictionary) "L'existencialisme" – see "l'identité de la personne" {{in lang|fr}}.</ref> This view is in contradiction to [[Aristotle]] and [[Aquinas]], who taught that essence precedes individual existence.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Aquinas: Metaphysics {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/thomas-aquinas-metaphysics/ |access-date=2022-11-10 |language=en-US}}</ref> 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:

{{Blockquote|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 that 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.|source=Søren Kierkegaard (''Concluding Postscript'', Hong pp. 357–358.)}}

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 (existentialism)|bad faith]]". Instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions. Someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (cruel persons). This is opposed to their genes, or ''human nature'', bearing the blame.

As Sartre said 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Baird |first=Forrest E. |author2=Walter Kaufmann |title=From Plato to Derrida |publisher=Pearson Prentice Hall |year=2008 |location=Upper Saddle River, New Jersey |isbn=978-0-13-158591-1}}</ref>

Jonathan Webber interprets Sartre's usage of the term ''essence'' not in a modal fashion, i.e. as necessary features, but in a teleological fashion: "an essence is the relational property of having a set of parts ordered in such a way as to collectively perform some activity".<ref name="Webber">{{cite book |last1=Webber |first1=Jonathan |title=Rethinking Existentialism |date=2018 |publisher=Oxford: Oxford University Press |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/WEBRE-3}}</ref>{{rp|3}}{{sfn|Crowell|2020}} For example, it belongs to the essence of a house to keep the bad weather out, which is why it has walls and a roof. Humans are different from houses because—unlike houses—they do not have an inbuilt purpose: they are free to ''choose'' their own purpose and thereby shape their essence; thus, ''their existence precedes their essence''.<ref name="Webber"/>{{rp|1–4}}

Sartre is committed to a radical conception of freedom: nothing fixes our purpose but we ourselves, our projects have no weight or inertia except for our endorsement of them.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Burnham |first1=Douglas |title=Existentialism |url=https://iep.utm.edu/existent/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=16 November 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Cox |first1=Gary |title=The Sartre Dictionary |date=2008 |publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group|Continuum]] |pages=41–42 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/COXTSD}}</ref> Simone de Beauvoir, on the other hand, holds that there are various factors, grouped together under the term ''sedimentation'', that offer resistance to attempts to change our direction in life. ''Sedimentations'' are themselves products of past choices and can be changed by choosing differently in the present, but such changes happen slowly. They are a force of inertia that shapes the agent's evaluative outlook on the world until the transition is complete.<ref name="Webber"/>{{rp|5,9,66}}

Sartre's definition of existentialism was based on Heidegger's magnum opus ''[[Being and Time]]'' (1927). In the correspondence with [[Jean Beaufret]] later published as the ''[[Letter on Humanism]]'', Heidegger implied 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.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |publisher=Harper San Francisco |editor=David Farrell Krell |year=1993 |isbn=0-06-063763-3 |edition=Revised and expanded |location=San Francisco, California |oclc=26355951}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of thinking (1964) |url=https://archive.org/details/basicwritings00heid |url-access=limited |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |publisher=Harper San Francisco |editor=David Farrell Krell |year=1993 |isbn=0-06-063763-3 |edition=Revised and expanded |location=San Francisco, California |pages=[https://archive.org/details/basicwritings00heid/page/n128 243] |oclc=26355951}}</ref>

=== The absurd ===
{{Main|Absurdism}}
[[File:Sisyphus by von Stuck.jpg|thumb|[[Sisyphus]], the symbol of the absurdity of existence, painting by [[Franz Stuck]] (1920)]]

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 can be highlighted in the way it opposes the traditional [[Abrahamic religions|Abrahamic religious]] perspective, which establishes that life's purpose is the fulfillment of God's commandments.{{sfn|Wartenberg|2008}} This 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; life becomes absurd due to the incompatibility between human beings and the world they inhabit.{{sfn|Wartenberg|2008}} This view constitutes one of the two interpretations of the absurd in existentialist literature. The second view, 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.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The A to Z of Existentialism |last=Michelman |first=Stephen |publisher=The [[Scarecrow Press]], Inc. |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-8108-7589-0 |location=Lanham, Maryland |page=27}}</ref>

The absurd 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.{{sfn|Crowell|2020|loc=3.1 Anxiety, Nothingness, the Absurd}} Because of the world's absurdity, anything can happen to anyone at any time and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the absurd. Many of the literary works of [[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard]], [[Samuel Beckett|Beckett]], [[Franz Kafka|Kafka]], [[Fyodor Dostoevsky|Dostoevsky]], [[Eugène Ionesco|Ionesco]], [[Miguel de Unamuno]], [[Luigi Pirandello]],<ref name=luigitheatre>{{cite book |last1=Bassnett |first1=Susan |last2=Lorch |first2=Jennifer |title=Luigi Pirandello in the Theatre |date=March 18, 2014 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FpwiAwAAQBAJ&q=existentialist&pg=PA182 |access-date=26 March 2015 |isbn=978-1-134-35114-5 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref name=understandex>{{cite book |last1=Thompson |first1=Mel |last2=Rodgers |first2=Nigel |title=Understanding Existentialism: Teach Yourself |date=2010 |publisher=[[Hodder & Stoughton]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vfczAgAAQBAJ&q=pirandello+existentialism&pg=PT105 |isbn=978-1-4441-3421-6 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref name=crisisconsciousness>{{cite book |last1=Caputi |first1=Anthony Francis |title=Pirandello and the Crisis of Modern Consciousness |date=1988 |publisher=[[University of Illinois Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0Qv2nuJF7yYC&q=pirandello+existentialist+absurdity&pg=PA80 |isbn=978-0-252-01468-0 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref name=masks>{{cite book |last1=Mariani |first1=Umberto |title=Living Masks: The Achievement of Pirandello |date=2010 |publisher=[[University of Toronto Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vBviYn43H34C&q=pirandello+existential+absurd&pg=PT178 |access-date=26 March 2015 |isbn=978-1-4426-9314-2 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]], [[Joseph Heller]], and [[Albert Camus|Camus]] contain descriptions of people who encounter the absurdity of the world.

It is because of the devastating awareness of meaninglessness that Camus claimed in ''[[The Myth of Sisyphus]]'' that "There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Although "prescriptions" against the possible 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 (philosophy)|quietism]], which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy.<ref>{{cite book |first=Jean-Paul |last=Sartre |author-link=Jean-Paul Sartre |url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm |title=Existentialism is a Humanism |date=1946 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=2010-03-08}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Suicide and Self-Deception |first=E. |last=Keen |journal=[[Psychoanalytic Review]] |year=1973 |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=575–85 |pmid=4772778 |url=http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=PSAR.060.0575A}}</ref>

=== Facticity ===
{{main|Facticity}}
{{Technical|section|date=November 2020}}

Facticity is defined by Sartre in ''[[Being and Nothingness]]'' (1943) as the ''[[being-in-itself|in-itself]]'', which for humans takes the form of being and not being. It is the facts of one's personal life and as per Heidegger, it is "[[Thrownness|the way in which we are thrown into the world]]." This can be more easily understood when considering facticity in relation to a person's past: one's past forms the person who exists in the present. However, to reduce a person to their past would ignore the change a person undergoes in the present and future, while saying that one's past is only what one was, would entirely detach it from the present self. A denial of one's concrete past constitutes an inauthentic lifestyle, and also applies to other kinds of facticity (having a human body with all its limitations, identity, values, etc.).{{sfn|Crowell|2020|loc=2.1 Facticity and Transcendence}}

Facticity is a limitation and a condition of freedom. It is a limitation in that a large part of a person's facticity consists of things they did not choose (birthplace, etc.), but a condition of freedom in the sense that one's values most likely depend on these factors. However, even though one's facticity is fixed, it cannot determine a person: they may choose to assign as much value to their facticity as they choose. As an example, consider two men, one of whom has no memory of his past and the other who remembers everything. Both have committed many crimes, but the first man, remembering nothing, leads a rather normal life while the second man, feeling trapped by his past, continues a life of crime, blaming his own past. There is nothing essential about his committing crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to his past.

However, to disregard one's facticity during the evolution of one's sense of self would be a denial of the conditions shaping the present self and would be inauthentic. An example of the focus solely on possible projects without reflecting on one's current facticity would be continually thinking about future possibilities related to being rich (e.g. a better car, bigger house, better quality of life, etc.) without acknowledging 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 real future, or ''future-facticity'' of a modest pay rise, further leading to purchase of an affordable car.

Another aspect of facticity is that it entails [[angst]]. Freedom "produces" angst when limited by facticity and the lack of the possibility of having facticity to "step in" and take responsibility for something one has done also produces angst.

Another aspect of existential freedom is that one can change one's values. One is responsible for one's values, regardless of society's values. The focus on [[freedom]] in existentialism is related to the limits of 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.{{sfn|Crowell|2020|loc=3. Freedom and Value}}{{sfn|Crowell|2020|loc=3.2 The Ideality of Values}}

=== Authenticity ===
{{main|Authenticity (philosophy)|l1=Authenticity}}

Many noted existentialists consider the theme of authentic existence important. [[Authenticity (philosophy)|Authenticity]] involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and live in accordance with this self. For an authentic existence, one should act as oneself, not as "one's acts" or as "one's genes" or as any other essence requires. The authentic act is one in accordance with one's freedom. A component of freedom is facticity, but not to the degree that this facticity determines one's transcendent choices (one could then blame one's background for making the choice one made [chosen project, from one's transcendence]). Facticity, in relation to authenticity, involves acting on one's actual values when making a choice (instead of, like Kierkegaard's Aesthete, "choosing" randomly), so that one takes responsibility for the act instead of choosing either-or without allowing the options to have different values.{{sfn|Crowell|2020|loc=2.3 Authenticity}}

In contrast, the inauthentic is the denial to live{{Clarify|reason=Does this mean '[a person's individual] choice to not live in accordance with one's [i.e., their] freedom'? If so, the word 'denial' doesn't seem appropriate. But maybe something else is meant.|date=February 2023}} in accordance with one's freedom. This can take many forms, from pretending choices are meaningless or random, convincing oneself that some form of [[determinism]] is true, or "mimicry" where one acts as "one should".{{citation needed|date=October 2021}}

How one "should" act is often determined by an image one has, of how one in such a role (bank manager, lion tamer, sex worker, etc.) acts. In ''Being and Nothingness'', Sartre uses the example of a waiter in "bad faith". He merely takes part in the "act" of being a typical waiter, albeit very convincingly.<ref name="Jean-Paul Sartre 2003">Jean-Paul Sartre, ''Being and Nothingness'', Routledge Classics (2003).</ref> This image usually corresponds to a 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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sartre, Jean Paul: Existentialism {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/ |access-date=2022-11-10 |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== The Other and the Look ===
{{main|Other (philosophy)}}
The Other (written with a capital "O") is a concept more properly belonging to [[phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] and its account of [[intersubjectivity]]. However, it has seen widespread use in existentialist writings, and the conclusions drawn differ slightly from the phenomenological accounts. 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 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]]).{{sfn|Crowell|2020|loc=2.2 Alienation}}

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. When one experiences oneself in the Look, one does not experience oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something (some thing). In Sartre's example of a man peeping at someone through a keyhole, the 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 then filled with shame for he perceives himself as he would perceive someone else doing what he was doing—as a [[Peeping Tom]]. For Sartre, this phenomenological experience of shame establishes proof for the existence of other minds and defeats the problem of [[solipsism]]. For the conscious state of shame to be experienced, one has to become aware of oneself as an object of another look, proving a priori, that other minds exist.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sartre |first=Jean Paul |title=Being and Nothingness |date=1992 |publisher=Washington Square Press |isbn=978-0-230-00673-7 |location=New York |translator-first=Hazel E. |translator-last=Barnes |chapter=Chapter 1 |author-link=Jean-Paul Sartre}}</ref> 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 possible that the creaking floorboard was simply the movement of an old house; the Look is not some kind of mystical telepathic experience of the actual way the Other sees one (there may have been someone there, but he could have not noticed that person). It is only one's perception of the way another might perceive him.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sartre, Jean Paul: Existentialism {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/ |access-date=2024-06-14 |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Angst and dread ===
{{main|Angst}}

"Existential angst", sometimes called existential dread, anxiety, or [[anguish]], is a term common to many existentialist thinkers. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Plesa |first=Patric |date=2021-07-14 |title=Reassessing Existential Constructs and Subjectivity: Freedom and Authenticity in Neoliberalism |journal=Journal of Humanistic Psychology |language=en |page=002216782110320 |doi=10.1177/00221678211032065 |issn=0022-1678|doi-access=free }}</ref>{{sfn|Aho|2023}} The archetypal 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.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2018-02-20 |title=Soren Kierkegaard and The Psychology of Anxiety |url=https://academyofideas.com/2018/02/soren-kierkegaard-psychology-anxiety/ |access-date=2024-05-07 |language=en-US}}</ref>

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 one can take measures to remove an object of fear, for angst no such "constructive" measures are possible. The use of the word "nothing" in this context relates 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 does not change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action.

=== Despair ===
{{Main|Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard#Despair|l1=Despair}}
{{See also|Existential crisis}}

Despair is generally defined as a loss of hope.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tfd.com/despair |title=despair – definition of despair by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia |publisher=Tfd.com |access-date=2010-03-08}}</ref> In existentialism, it is more specifically 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 are not 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 (Kierkegaard book)|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."<ref>Either/Or Part II p. 188 Hong.</ref> In ''[[Works of Love]]'', he says:

{{Blockquote|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.|author=Søren Kierkegaard|title=Works of Love|source=}}

== Opposition to positivism and rationalism ==
{{See also|Positivism|Rationalism}}

Existentialists oppose defining human beings as primarily rational, and, therefore, oppose both [[positivism]] and [[rationalism]]. Existentialism asserts that people 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 [[anxiety]] and [[angst|dread]] that we feel in the face of our own radical [[free will]] 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".<ref>''Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers'' Vol. 5, p. 5.</ref>

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 feelings of anxiety and dread, people confine themselves within everyday experience, Sartre asserted, 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).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ethics - Existentialism |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethics-philosophy |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |language=en |access-date=2020-05-28}}</ref>

== Religion ==
{{See also|Atheistic existentialism|Christian existentialism|Jewish existentialism}}

An existentialist reading of the [[Bible]] would demand that the reader recognize that they are an existing [[subject (philosophy)|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?"<ref>Kierkegaard, Soren. ''Works of Love''. Harper & Row, Publishers. New York, N.Y. 1962. p. 62.</ref> Philosophers such as [[Hans Jonas]] and [[Rudolph Bultmann]] introduced the concept of existentialist [[demythologization]] into the field of [[early Christianity]] and [[Christian theology]], respectively.<ref>Sariel, Aviram. "Jonasian Gnosticism." Harvard Theological Review 116.1 (2023): 91-122.</ref>

== Confusion with nihilism ==
{{See also|Existential nihilism}}

Although [[nihilism]] and existentialism are distinct philosophies, they are often confused with one another since both are rooted in the human experience of anguish and confusion that stems from the apparent meaninglessness of a world in which humans are compelled to find or create meaning.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/#H3 |title=Nihilism |author=Alan Pratt |date=April 23, 2001 |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=[[Embry–Riddle University]] |access-date=November 18, 2018}}</ref> A primary cause of confusion is that [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] was 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 [[Moral nihilism|moral]] or [[existential nihilism]]. A pervasive theme in existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist through encounters with the absurd, as seen in [[Albert Camus]]'s philosophical essay ''[[The Myth of Sisyphus]]'' (1942): "One must imagine Sisyphus happy".<ref>Camus, Albert. "The Myth of Sisyphus". [http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/hell/camus.html NYU.edu].</ref> and it is only very rarely that existentialist philosophers dismiss morality or one's self-created meaning: [[Søren Kierkegaard]] regained a sort of morality in the religious (although he would not agree that it was ethical; the religious suspends the ethical), and [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]'s final words in ''[[Being and Nothingness]]'' (1943): "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."<ref name="Jean-Paul Sartre 2003"/>

== History ==

=== Precursors ===
Some have argued that existentialism has long been an element of European religious thought, even before the term came into use. [[William Barrett (philosopher)|William Barrett]] identified [[Blaise Pascal]] and [[Søren Kierkegaard]] as two specific examples.{{Sfn|Barrett|1958|pp=97, 133–157}} [[Jean Wahl]] also identified [[William Shakespeare]]'s [[Prince Hamlet]] ("[[To be, or not to be]]"), [[Jules Lequier]], [[Thomas Carlyle]], and [[William James]] as existentialists. According to Wahl, "the origins of most great philosophies, like those of [[Plato]], [[Descartes]], and [[Kant]], are to be found in existential reflections."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wahl |first=Jean André |url=http://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofex00wahl |title=A Short History of Existentialism |date=1949 |publisher=Philosophical Library |location=New York |pages=32–33 |author-link=Jean Wahl}}</ref> Precursors to existentialism can also be identified in the works of Iranian Muslim philosopher [[Mulla Sadra]] (c. 1571–1635), who would posit that "[[existence precedes essence]]" becoming the principle expositor of the [[School of Isfahan]], which is described as "alive and active".{{According to whom|date=January 2024}}

=== 19th century ===

==== Kierkegaard and Nietzsche ====
{{Main|Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche}}

Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher.{{sfn|Crowell|2020}}{{sfn|Marino|2004|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=v8tvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR9 ix]}}{{sfn|McDonald|Lippitt|Evans|2017}} He proposed that each individual—not reason, society, or religious orthodoxy—is solely tasked with giving [[Meaning of life|meaning]] to life and living it sincerely, or "authentically".<ref>{{cite book |last=Watts |first=Michael |title=Kierkegaard |url=https://archive.org/details/kierkegaard00watt |url-access=limited |publisher=Oneworld |year=2003 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/kierkegaard00watt/page/n18 4]–6|isbn=978-1-85168-317-8 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Lowrie |first=Walter |title=Kierkegaard's attack upon "Christendom" |publisher=Princeton |year=1969 |pages=37–40}}</ref>

Kierkegaard and 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.{{sfn|Luper|2000|pp=4–5, 11}} Kierkegaard's [[knight of faith]] and Nietzsche's [[Übermensch]] are representative of people who exhibit [[Free will|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 [[psychology|psychotherapy.]]{{citation needed|date=October 2021}} However, Kierkegaard believed that individuals should live in accordance with their thinking.{{sfn|McDonald|Lippitt|Evans|2017}}

In ''Twilight of the Idols'', Nietzsche's sentiments resonate the idea of "existence precedes essence." He writes, "no one ''gives''  man his qualities-- neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself...No one is responsible for man's being there at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment...Man is not the effect of some special purpose of a will, and end..."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nietzsche |first1=Friedrich |title=The portable Nietzsche |last2=Kaufmann |first2=Walter |date=1994 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-14-015062-9 |edition=Repr. of the 1954 ed. publ. by The Viking Press, New York |series=Penguin books |location=New York}}</ref> Within this view, Nietzsche ties in his rejection of the existence of God, which he sees as a means to "redeem the world." By rejecting the existence of God, Nietzsche also rejects beliefs that claim humans have a predestined purpose according to what God has instructed.

====Dostoyevsky====

The first important literary author also important to existentialism was the Russian, Dostoyevsky.<ref>Hubben, William. ''Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Kafka, Jabber-wacky'', Scribner, 1997.</ref> Dostoyevsky's ''[[Notes from Underground]]'' portrays a man unable to fit into society and unhappy with the identities he creates for himself. Sartre, in his book on existentialism ''[[Existentialism is a Humanism]]'', quoted Dostoyevsky's ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'' as an example of [[existential crisis]]. 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.<ref name="Rukhsana">{{Cite book |last=Rukhsana |first=Akhter |title=Existentialism and Its Relevance to the Contemporary System of Education in India: Existentialism and Present Educational Scenario |date=June 2014 |isbn=978-3-95489-277-8 |location=Hamburg |publisher=Anchor Academic |oclc=911266433}}</ref>

=== Early 20th century ===
{{See also|Martin Heidegger}}

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 the eponymous character from the [[Miguel de Cervantes]] novel ''[[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, ''[[San Manuel Bueno, Mártir|Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr]]'', which has been collected in anthologies of existentialist fiction. Another Spanish thinker, [[José 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''").<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pitari |first1=Paolo |date=7 August 2020 |title=The Influence of Sartre’s “What Is Literature?” on David Foster Wallace’s Literary Project |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00111619.2020.1729690 |journal=Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction |volume=61 |issue=4 |pages=423–439 |doi=10.1080/00111619.2020.1729690 |access-date=22 December 2024|hdl=10278/3730293 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

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 [[Hasidic Judaism|Hasidism]]. In 1938, he moved permanently to [[Jerusalem]]. His best-known philosophical work was the short book ''[[I and Thou]]'', published in 1922.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Buber|first=Martin|title=I and Thou. Trans. Walter Kaufmann|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons|year=1970|isbn=978-0-684-71725-8|location=United States}}</ref> 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"'').<ref>Maurice S. Friedman, ''Martin Buber. The Life of Dialogue'', University of Chicago Press, 1955, p. 85.</ref>

Two Russian philosophers, [[Lev Shestov]] and [[Nikolai Berdyaev]], became well known as existentialist thinkers during their post-Revolutionary exiles in Paris. Shestov had launched an attack on rationalism and systematization in philosophy as early as 1905 in his book of aphorisms ''All Things Are Possible''. Berdyaev 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.<ref>Ernst Breisach, ''Introduction to Modern Existentialism'', New York (1962), pp. 173–76.</ref> 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).<ref name="Samuel M. Keen 1967">Samuel M. Keen, "Gabriel Marcel" in Paul Edwards (ed.) ''The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy'', Macmillan Publishing Co, 1967.</ref> 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.<ref>John Macquarrie, ''Existentialism'', Pelican, 1973, p. 110.</ref>

Marcel contrasted ''secondary reflection'' with abstract, scientific-technical ''primary reflection'', which he associated with the activity of the abstract [[René Descartes|Cartesian]] ego. For Marcel, philosophy was a concrete activity undertaken by a sensing, feeling human being incarnate—embodied—in a concrete world.<ref name="Samuel M. Keen 1967"/><ref>John Macquarrie, ''Existentialism'', Pelican, 1973, p. 96.</ref> Although 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.<ref name="Samuel M. Keen 1967"/> Unlike Sartre, Marcel was a Christian, and became a Catholic convert in 1929.

In Germany, the psychiatrist and philosopher [[Karl Jaspers]]—who later described existentialism as a "phantom" created by the public<ref>Karl Jaspers, "Philosophical Autobiography" in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.) ''The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers'' The Library of Living Philosophers IX, Tudor Publishing Company, 1957, p. 75/11.</ref>—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".<ref>Karl Jaspers, "Philosophical Autobiography" in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.) ''The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers'' The Library of Living Philosophers IX, Tudor Publishing Company, 1957, p. 40.</ref>

Jaspers, a professor at the university of [[Heidelberg]], was acquainted with 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 [[Nazism|National Socialism]]. They shared an admiration for Kierkegaard,<ref>Karl Jaspers, "Philosophical Autobiography" in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.) ''The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers'' The Library of Living Philosophers IX, Tudor Publishing Company, 1957, p. 75/2 and following.</ref> 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 ===
{{main|Feminist existentialism}}
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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Baert |first=Patrick |date=2015 |title=The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual |publisher=Polity Press}}</ref> These years also saw the growing reputation of ''Being and Time'' outside Germany.
[[File:Sartre and de Beauvoir at Balzac Memorial.jpg|thumb|left|upright|French philosophers [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and [[Simone de Beauvoir]]]]

Sartre dealt with existentialist themes in his 1938 novel ''[[Nausea (novel)|Nausea]]'' and the short stories in his 1939 collection ''[[The Wall (Sartre short story 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.<ref name="Ronald Aronson 2004">Ronald Aronson, ''Camus and Sartre'', University of Chicago Press, 2004, Chapter 3 ''passim.''</ref> 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."<ref>Ronald Aronson, ''Camus and Sartre'', University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 44.</ref> Camus was an editor of the most popular leftist (former [[French Resistance]]) newspaper ''[[Combat (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";<ref>Simone de Beauvoir, ''Force of Circumstance'', quoted in Ronald Aronson, ''Camus and Sartre'', University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 48.</ref> existentialism became "the first media craze of the postwar era."<ref>Ronald Aronson, ''Camus and Sartre'', University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 48.</ref>

By the end of 1947, Camus' earlier fiction and plays had been reprinted, his new play ''[[Caligula (play)|Caligula]]'' had been performed and his novel ''[[The Plague (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.<ref name="Ronald Aronson 2004"/>

Sartre had traveled to Germany in 1930 to study the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] of [[Edmund Husserl]] and [[Martin Heidegger]],<ref>Rüdiger Safranski, ''[[Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil]]'', Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 343.</ref> 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.<ref>Entry on Kojève in Martin Cohen (editor), ''The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics'' (Hodder Arnold, 2006, p. 158); see also Alexandre Kojève, ''Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit'' (Cornell University Press, 1980).</ref> 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]].<ref>Entry on Kojève in Martin Cohen (editor), ''The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics'' (Hodder Arnold, 2006, p. 158).</ref> A selection from ''Being and Time'' was published in French in 1938, and his essays began to appear in French philosophy journals.
[[File:Albert Camus, gagnant de prix Nobel, portrait en buste, posé au bureau, faisant face à gauche, cigarette de tabagisme.jpg|thumb|upright|French philosopher, novelist, and playwright [[Albert Camus]]]]

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."<ref>Martin Heidegger, letter, quoted in Rüdiger Safranski, ''Martin Heidegger – Between Good and Evil'' (Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 349).</ref> Later, however, in response to a question posed by his French follower [[Jean Beaufret]],<ref>Rüdiger Safranski, ''Martin Heidegger – Between Good and Evil'' (Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 356).</ref> Heidegger distanced himself from Sartre's position and existentialism in general in his ''[[Letter on Humanism]]''.<ref>William J. Richardson, ''Martin Heidegger: From Phenomenology to Thought'' (Martjinus Nijhoff, 1967, p. 351).</ref> 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 (book)|The Rebel]]'', ''Summer in Algiers'', ''[[The Myth of Sisyphus]]'', and ''[[The Stranger (Camus novel)|The Stranger]]'', the latter being "considered—to what would have been Camus's irritation—the exemplary existentialist novel."<ref>{{Cite journal |last = Messud |first = Claire |author-link = Claire Messud |year = 2014 |title = A New 'L'Étranger' |url = http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/camus-new-letranger/ |journal = [[The New York Review of Books]] |volume = 61 |number = 10 |access-date = 1 June 2014 }}</ref> Camus, like many others, rejected the existentialist label, and considered his works concerned with facing the absurd.{{sfn|Camus|1968}} 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 existentialist]] ethics in her works, including ''[[The Second Sex]]'' and ''[[The Ethics of Ambiguity]]''. Although often overlooked due to her relationship with Sartre,<ref name = Bergoffen-SEoP>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/|title=Simone de Beauvoir|encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |author=Bergoffen, Debra|date=September 2010}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Rukhsana"/>

[[Paul Tillich]], an important existentialist theologian following Kierkegaard and [[Karl Barth]], applied existentialist concepts to [[Christian theology]], and helped introduce [[neo-orthodoxy|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 phenomenology|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.<ref>Madison, G. B., in Robert Audi's ''The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 559).</ref> 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,<ref name="Rukhsana"/> who sided with Sartre.

[[Colin Wilson]], an English writer, published his study ''[[The Outsider (Colin Wilson)|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.<ref>K. Gunnar Bergström, ''An Odyssey to Freedom'' University of Uppsala, 1983, p. 92. Colin Stanley, ''Colin Wilson, a Celebration: Essays and Recollections'' Cecil Woolf, 1988, p. 43.</ref>

== Influence outside philosophy ==

=== Art ===

==== Film and television ====
[[File:Paths of Glory trailer 2.jpg|thumb|left|[[Adolphe Menjou]] (''left'') and [[Kirk Douglas]] (''right'') in ''[[Paths of Glory]]'' (1957)]]
[[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".<ref name=Holt2007>Holt, Jason. "Existential Ethics: Where do the Paths of Glory Lead?". In ''The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick''. By Jerold J. Abrams. Published 2007. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2445-X</ref> 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 (philosophy)|objectivity]] is possible and the "problem of [[Authenticity (philosophy)|authenticity]]".<ref name=Holt2007/> [[Orson Welles]]'s 1962 film ''[[The Trial (1962 film)|The Trial]]'', based upon Franz Kafka's book of the same name (''Der Prozeß''), 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, {{Nihongo|"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 (2011 film)|''Melancholia'']], ''[[Fight Club]]'', ''[[I Heart Huckabees]]'', ''[[Waking Life]]'', ''[[The Matrix]]'', ''[[Ordinary People]]'', ''[[Life in a Day (2011 film)|Life in a Day]]'', ''[[Barbie (film)|Barbie]]'', and ''[[Everything Everywhere All at Once]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.existential-therapy.com/Arts/Movies.htm |title=Existential & Psychological Movie Recommendations |publisher=Existential-therapy.com |access-date=2010-03-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100107010239/http://www.existential-therapy.com/Arts/Movies.htm |archive-date=2010-01-07 }}</ref> Likewise, films throughout the 20th century such as ''[[The Seventh Seal]]'', ''[[Ikiru]]'', ''[[Taxi Driver]]'', the [[Toy Story (franchise)|''Toy Story'' films]], ''[[Pokémon: The First Movie]]'', ''[[The Great Silence]]'', ''[[Ghost in the Shell (1995 film)|Ghost in the Shell]]'', ''[[Harold and Maude]]'', ''[[High Noon]]'', ''[[Easy Rider]]'', ''[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)|One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest]]'', ''[[A Clockwork Orange (film)|A Clockwork Orange]]'', ''[[Groundhog Day (film)|Groundhog Day]]'', ''[[Apocalypse Now]]'', ''[[Badlands (film)|Badlands]]'', and ''[[Blade Runner]]'' also have existentialist qualities.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/BEAUCHEMI/ |title=Existentialism in Film |publisher=Uhaweb.hartford.edu |access-date=2010-03-08 |archive-date=2010-01-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100113012444/http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/BEAUCHEMI/ }}</ref>
 
Notable directors known for their existentialist films include [[Ingmar Bergman]], [[Bela Tarr]], [[Robert Bresson]], [[Jean-Pierre Melville]], [[François Truffaut]], [[Jean-Luc Godard]], [[Michelangelo Antonioni]], [[Akira Kurosawa]], [[Terrence Malick]], [[Stanley Kubrick]], [[Andrei Tarkovsky]], [[Éric Rohmer]], [[Wes Anderson]], [[Woody Allen]], and [[Christopher Nolan]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2005winter/existential.html |title=Existentialist Adaptations – Harvard Film Archive |publisher=Hcl.harvard.edu |access-date=2010-03-08 |archive-date=2011-01-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110127085429/http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2005winter/existential.html }}</ref> [[Charlie Kaufman]]'s ''[[Synecdoche, New York]]'' focuses on the protagonist's desire to find existential meaning.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-synecdoche24-2008oct24,0,5252277.story|title=Review: 'Synecdoche, New York'|access-date=2008-11-17 | work=Los Angeles Times | first=Carina | last=Chocano | date=2008-10-24}}</ref> 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 (film)|Mood Indigo]]'' (directed by [[Michel Gondry]]) embraced various elements of existentialism.{{citation needed|date=April 2016}} The film ''[[The Shawshank Redemption]]'', released in 1994, depicts life in a prison in [[Maine]], United States to explore several existentialist concepts.<ref>For an examination of the existentialist elements within the film, see [[Philosophy Now]], issue 102, accessible [http://philosophynow.org/issues/102/The_Shawshank_Redemption here (link)], accessed 3 June 2014.</ref>

==== Literature ====
[[File:Kafka Der Prozess 1925.jpg|thumb|upright|First edition of ''[[The Trial]]'' by [[Franz Kafka]] (1925)|alt=A simple book cover in green displays the name of the author and the book]]
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 (novel)|Nausea]]''<ref name=SartreNausea>{{Cite book | first= Jean-Paul| last= Sartre| translator-last=Baldick |translator-first=Robert |translator-link=Robert Baldick | title= Nausea|location= London| publisher= Penguin| year= 2000 |orig-date=1938 }}</ref> was "steeped in Existential ideas", and is considered an accessible way of grasping his philosophical stance.<ref name=Earnshaw2006>{{Cite book| first= Steven| last= Earnshaw| title = Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed|location= London| publisher= Continuum| year= 2006| page= 75| isbn= 0-8264-8530-8}}</ref> Between 1900 and 1960, other authors such as [[Albert Camus]], [[Franz Kafka]], [[Rainer Maria Rilke]], [[T. S. Eliot]], [[Yukio Mishima]], [[Hermann Hesse]], [[Luigi Pirandello]],<ref name="luigitheatre"/><ref name="understandex"/><ref name="masks"/><ref name=luigip>{{cite book|last1=Cincotta|first1=Madeleine Strong|title=Luigi Pirandello: The Humorous Existentialist|date=1989|publisher=University of Wollongong Press|isbn=978-0-86418-090-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CUIoPQAACAAJ|access-date=26 March 2015}}</ref><ref name=luigi>{{cite book|last1=Bassanese|first1=Fiora A.|title=Understanding Luigi Pirandello|date=Jan 1, 1997|publisher=University of South Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-585-33727-2|url=https://archive.org/details/understandinglui0000bass|url-access=registration|quote=existential.|access-date=26 March 2015}}</ref><ref name=playwrights>{{cite book|last1=DiGaetani|first1=John Louis|title=Stages of Struggle: Modern Playwrights and Their Psychological Inspirations|date=Jan 25, 2008|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-8259-7|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A5C9gbBCwvYC&q=luigi+pirandello+existentialism&pg=PA34|access-date=26 March 2015}}</ref> [[Ralph Ellison]],<ref name=ellison>{{cite book|last1=Graham|first1=Maryemma|last2=Singh|first2=Amritjit|title=Conversations with Ralph Ellison|date=1995|publisher=University of Mississippi Press|isbn=978-0-87805-781-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L0lb8WoLRDkC&q=existentialism&pg=PA84|access-date=26 March 2015}}</ref><ref name=existentialamerica>{{cite book|last1=Cotkin|first1=George|title=Existential American|date=2005|publisher=JHU Press|isbn=978-0-8018-8200-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MJS3SMamIxIC&q=ralph+ellison+existential|access-date=26 March 2015}}</ref><ref name=readinglearning>{{cite book|last1=Thomas|first1=Paul Lee|title=Reading, Learning, Teach Ralph Ellison|date=2008|publisher=Peter Lang|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XQ2Giri4RegC&q=ralph+ellison+existential&pg=PA18|access-date=26 March 2015|isbn=978-1-4331-0090-1}}</ref><ref name=ellisongenius>{{cite book|last1=Jackson|first1=Lawrence Patrick|title=Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius|date=2007|publisher=University of Georgia Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NCEV37_oA2AC&q=ralph+ellison+existential&pg=PA339|access-date=26 March 2015|isbn=978-0-8203-2993-2}}</ref> 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]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.horrorreview.com/essay/eglovecraft12008.html |title=Zarathustra . . . Cthulhu . Meursault: Existential Futility in H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Call of Cthulhu' |access-date=2015-02-17 |work=The Horror Review |first=Michael |last=Gurnow |date=2008-10-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006180224/http://www.horrorreview.com/essay/eglovecraft12008.html |archive-date=October 6, 2014 }}</ref>

==== Theatre ====
Sartre wrote ''[[No Exit]]'' in 1944, an existentialist [[play (theatre)|play]] originally published in French as ''Huis Clos'' (meaning ''[[wikt:in camera|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, [[Physical exercise|exercise]], swap hats, and contemplate [[suicide]]—anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay".<ref>''The Times'', 31 December 1964. Quoted in Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 57</ref> The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and [[pathos]]."<ref>Cronin, A., ''Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist'' (London: Flamingo, 1997), p. 391</ref> 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 life (philosophy)#Existentialism|meaning of human existence]] and the place of God in human existence.

[[Tom Stoppard]]'s ''[[Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead]]'' is an [[Theatre of the Absurd|absurdist]] [[tragicomedy]] first staged at the [[Edinburgh Festival Fringe]] in 1966.<ref name="Chrono">{{cite web | author= Michael H. Hutchins | title=A Tom Stoppard Bibliography: Chronology | work=The Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide | url=http://www.sondheimguide.com/Stoppard/chronology.html | date=14 August 2006 | access-date=2008-06-23}}</ref> The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from [[William Shakespeare|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 (game)|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 (Anouilh play)|Antigone]]'' also presents arguments founded on existentialist ideas.<ref>{{cite news |last=Wren|first=Celia |date= 12 December 2007 |title= From Forum, an Earnest and Painstaking 'Antigone' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/11/AR2007121102254.html |newspaper=Washington Post |access-date=2008-04-07}}</ref> It is a tragedy inspired by Greek mythology and the play of the same name (''Antigone'', by Sophocles) from the fifth 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, "...&nbsp;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.<ref>Kernan, Alvin B. ''The Modern American Theater: A Collection of Critical Essays''. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: [[Prentice-Hall]], 1967.</ref>
=== Activism ===

[[Black existentialism]] explores the existence and experiences of Black people in the world.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bassey |first=Magnus O. |date=2007 |title=What is Africana Critical Theory or Black Existential Philosophy? |journal=Journal of Black Studies |volume=37 |issue=6 |pages=914–935 |doi=10.1177/0021934705285563 |jstor=40034961 |s2cid=145250815 |issn=0021-9347}}</ref> Classical and contemporary thinkers include [[C. L. R. James|C.L.R James]], [[Frederick Douglass]], [[W. E. B. Du Bois|W.E.B DuBois]], [[Frantz Fanon]], [[Angela Davis]], [[Cornel West]], [[Naomi Zack]], [[bell hooks]], [[Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)|Stuart Hall]], [[Lewis Gordon]], and [[Audre Lorde]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gordon |first=Lewis R. |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203900758/existentia-africana-lewis-gordon |title=Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought |date=2000-04-11 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-203-90075-8 |location=New York |doi=10.4324/9780203900758}}</ref>

=== Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy ===
{{Main|Existential therapy}}

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 [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]], [[Edmund Husserl]], [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]], and [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]]. A later figure was [[Viktor Frankl]], who briefly met [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] as a young man.<ref>{{cite book |last=Frankl |first=Viktor |title=Recollections: An Autobiography |publisher=Perseus Publishing |location=Massachusetts |date=2000 |page=51}}</ref> 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]]{{sfn|Šajda|2011|p=38}} and [[Michel Foucault]]. Foucault was a great reader of Kierkegaard even though he almost never refers to this author, who nonetheless had for him an importance as secret as it was decisive.<ref>{{cite book |last=Flynn |first=Thomas R. |title=Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason |page=323}}</ref>

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 US is [[Irvin D. Yalom]]. Yalom states that
{{blockquote|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 1958 book ''Existence''—and especially his introductory essay—introduced their work into this country.<ref name=Yalom1980>{{Cite book |first=Irvin D. |last=Yalom |author-link=Irvin D. Yalom |title=Existential Psychotherapy |url=https://archive.org/details/existentialpsych00yalo_638 |url-access=limited |location=New York |publisher=[[Basic Books]] (Subsidiary of Perseus Books, L.L.C. |year=1980 |page=[https://archive.org/details/existentialpsych00yalo_638/page/n26 17] |isbn=0-465-02147-6}} Note: The copyright year has not changed, but the book remains in print.</ref>}}

A more recent contributor to the development of a European version of existentialist psychotherapy is the British-based [[Emmy van Deurzen]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kass |first1=Sarah A. |date=April 2014 |title=Don't Fall Into Those Stereotype Traps: Women and the Feminine in Existential Therapy |journal=Journal of Humanistic Psychology |publication-date=11 March 2013 |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=131–157 |doi=10.1177/0022167813478836}}</ref>{{rp|pp=142–144}}

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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Terror Management Theory – Ernest Becker Foundation |url=https://ernestbecker.org/resources/terror-management-theory/ |access-date=2022-11-10 |website=ernestbecker.org |language=en-US}}</ref>

Also, [[Gerd B. Achenbach]] has refreshed the Socratic tradition with his own blend of [[philosophical counseling]]; as did [[Michel Weber]] with his Chromatiques Center in Belgium.{{citation needed|date=October 2021}}

== Criticisms ==

=== General criticisms ===
[[Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)|Walter Kaufmann]] criticized "the profoundly unsound methods and the dangerous contempt for reason that have been so prominent in existentialism."<ref>Kaufmann, Walter Arnold, From Shakespeare To Existentialism (Princeton University Press 1979), p. xvi.</ref> [[Logical positivists|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".<ref name="Carnap, Rudolf 1932 pp. 219">Carnap, Rudolf, ''Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache'' [''Overcoming Metaphysics by the Logical Analysis of Speech''], Erkenntnis (1932), pp. 219–41. Carnap's critique of Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics."
</ref> Specifically, they argue that the verb "is" is transitive and pre-fixed to a [[predicate (grammar)|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."<ref>Colin, Wilson, ''The Angry Years'' (2007), p. 214</ref>

=== Sartre's philosophy ===
Many critics argue 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 ''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 [[hypostatic abstraction|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."<ref name="Marcuse1972">Marcuse, Herbert. "Sartre's Existentialism". Printed in ''Studies in Critical Philosophy''. Translated by Joris De Bres. London: NLB, 1972. p. 161.</ref>

In ''Letter on Humanism'', Heidegger criticized Sartre's existentialism:

{{blockquote|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.<ref>Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism", in ''Basic Writings: Nine Key Essays, plus the Introduction to ''Being and Time'' '', trans. David Farrell Krell (London, Routledge; 1978), p. 208. [https://books.google.com/books?id=kVc9AAAAIAAJ&dq=But+the+reversal+of+a+metaphysical+statement+remains+a+metaphysical+statement.+With+it%2C+he+stays+with+metaphysics%2C+in+oblivion+of+the+truth+of+Being.&pg=PA208 Google Books].</ref>}}

== See also ==
{{div col|colwidth=25em}}
* [[Abandonment (existentialism)]]
* [[Disenchantment]]
* [[Existential phenomenology]]
* [[Existential risk]]
* [[Existentiell]]
* [[List of existentialists]]
* [[Meaning (existential)]] 
* [[Meaning-making]]
* [[Philosophical pessimism]]
* [[Self-reflection]]{{div col end}}

== References ==
=== Citations ===
{{reflist}}

=== Bibliography ===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last1=Aho |first1=Kevin |editor-last1=Zalta |editor-first1=Edward N. |editor-last2=Nodelman |editor-first2=Uri |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |title=Existentialism |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/ |access-date=2024-11-18 |date=6 January 2023 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, [[Center for the Study of Language and Information]], [[Stanford University]]}}
* {{cite book |last1=Barrett |first1=William |year=1958 |title=Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy |title-link=Irrational Man |edition=1st |location=Garden City, NY |publisher=Doubleday Anchor Books |oclc=14597959 |ol=6247210M}}
* {{cite book |last1=Camus |first1=Albert |editor-last1=Thody |editor-first1=Philip |editor-link1=Philip Thody |translator-last1=Kennedy |translator-first1=Ellen Conroy |year=1968 |chapter=No, I am not an existentialist . . . [from an interview by [[Jeanine Delpech]] in ''[[Les Nouvelles littéraires]]'', 15 November 1945] |title=Lyrical and Critical Essays |location=New York |publisher=Vintage Books |pages=345–348 |oclc=160250}}
* {{cite book |last1=Cooper |first1=David E. |author-link1=David E. Cooper |year=1990 |title=Existentialism: A Reconstruction |edition=1st |location=Oxford, England & Cambridge, MA |publisher=Basil Blackwell |isbn=978-0-631-16191-2}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last1=Crowell |first1=Steven |editor-last1=Zalta |editor-first1=Edward N. |editor-last2=Nodelman |editor-first2=Uri |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |title=Existentialism |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/existentialism/ |access-date=2024-11-18 |edition=Winter 2022 |date=9 June 2020 |orig-date=first published 23 August 2004 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University}}
* {{cite book |last1=Flynn |first1=Thomas R. |author-link1=Thomas R. Flynn |year=2006 |title=Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction |location=Oxford, England & New York, NY |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-280428-0}}
* {{cite book |last1=Luper |first1=Steven |editor-last1=Luper |editor-first1=Steven |year=2000 |title=Existing: An Introduction to Existential Thought |location=Mountain View, CA |publisher=Mayfield Publishing Company |isbn=978-0-7674-0587-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Marino |first1=Gordon |editor-last1=Marino |editor-first1=Gordon |year=2004 |chapter=Introduction |title=Basic Writings of Existentialism |location=New York |publisher=Modern Library |pages=ix–xvi |isbn=978-0-375-75989-5}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last1=McDonald |first1=William |last2=Lippitt |first2=John |last3=Evans |first3=C. Stephen |editor-last1=Zalta |editor-first1=Edward N. |editor-last2=Nodelman |editor-first2=Uri |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |title=Søren Kierkegaard |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/kierkegaard/ |access-date=2024-11-18 |edition=Spring 2023 |date=10 November 2017 |orig-date=first published 3 December 1996 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University}}
* {{cite book |last1=Šajda |first1=Peter |editor-last1=Stewart |editor-first1=Jon |editor-link1=Jon Stewart (philosopher) |year=2011 |chapter=Martin Buber: "No-One Can so Refute Kierkegaard as Kierkegaard Himself" |title=Kierkegaard and Existentialism |series=Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources |volume=9 |location=Farnham, England & Burlington, VT |publisher=Ashgate |pages=33–62 |isbn=978-1-4094-2641-7}}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Solomon |editor-first1=Robert C. |editor-link1=Robert C. Solomon |year=1974 |title=Existentialism |edition=1st |location=New York |publisher=Modern Library |isbn=978-0-394-31704-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=Wartenberg |first1=Thomas E. |year=2008 |title=Existentialism: A Beginner's Guide |edition=ebook |location=Oxford, England |publisher=Oneworld |publication-date=2011 |isbn=978-1-78074-020-1}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{sister project links|d=Q38066|n=no|mw=no|m=no|species=no|c=Category:Existentialism|b=Introduction to Philosophy/Existentialism|s=no|v=no|voy=no}}
* {{cite IEP |url-id=existent}}
* {{In Our Time|Existentialism|p00547h8|Existentialism}}
* [https://www.tameri.com/exist/ ''The Existential Primer'']
* {{Internet Archive|id=introducingexist0000appi|name=''Introducing Existentialism''|url-access=registration|at=no}} by [[Richard Appignanesi]] & [[Oscar Zárate]] (Icon Books, 2001)

{{Existentialism}}
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