Editing Existentialism (section)

=== 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>