Editing Existentialism (section)

=== 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.