Editing Existentialism (section)

== 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>