Existentialism
Existentialism begins when philosophy stops asking what human beings are in the abstract and asks what they must become in the pressure of a life that offers no ready-made meaning.
Quick Facts
- Period
- 1801 – 2000
- Region
- Europe
- Key Figures
- Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre +3 more
Key Figures
Albert Camus
Critic
French absurdism and moral philosophyAlbert Camus is often remembered as the indispensable architect of the absurd hero, but he was never a detached builder ...
Friedrich Nietzsche
Interlocutor
German philosophy; genealogy of valuesNietzsche is one of the crucial ancestral voices behind Camus’s absurd hero, not because Camus merely repeats him, but b...
Jean-Paul Sartre
Proponent
French phenomenology; atheistic existentialismJean-Paul Sartre mattered to the absurd hero both as a near ally and as a sharp contrast, but his importance goes beyond...
Martin Heidegger
Developer
German phenomenology and ontologyMartin Heidegger is one of the twentieth century’s most unsettling philosophical figures because he did not merely ask w...
Simon de Beauvoir
Developer
French existentialism; feminist philosophySimone de Beauvoir’s place in the intellectual history of absurdism is often described in terms of philosophy, but her d...
Søren Kierkegaard
Originator
Danish Golden Age; Christian existential thoughtSøren Kierkegaard stands behind Camus as a thinker of inwardness, anxiety, and the failure of abstract systems to captur...
The Story
This narrative combines documented history with dramatized scenes for storytelling purposes.
The World That Made It
Existentialism did not appear from nowhere, like a doctrine dropped into a vacuum. It grew in the cracks of a nineteenth-century Europe that had inherited the c...
The Central Idea
Existentialism is easiest to misunderstand when it is reduced to a slogan. “Existence precedes essence” sounds like a tidy thesis, but in the hands of the exist...
The System
Because existentialism is often introduced as a mood, its internal structure is easy to miss. Yet the movement developed a set of recurring distinctions that le...
Tensions & Critiques
The first and most persistent objection to existentialism is that it makes freedom sound larger than life. Critics have asked whether the movement really descri...
Legacy & Echoes
Existentialism’s strange fate is that it became both famous and misunderstood. In the decades after the Second World War, it was associated with black turtlenec...
Timeline
Birth of Søren Kierkegaard
**1813-05-05** — Kierkegaard is born in Copenhagen into the Danish world that would shape his lifelong suspicion of public religion and social conformity. His later works would turn the problem of inwardness into a philosophical crisis for modern life.
Publication of *Either/Or* and *Fear and Trembling*
**1843** — These books establish Kierkegaard’s method of indirect communication and his account of choice, inwardness, and the leap beyond ethical calculation. They become foundational texts for later existential thought.
Nietzsche announces the death of God in *The Gay Science*
**1882** — Nietzsche’s diagnosis of modern Europe names the collapse of inherited metaphysical certainty and the crisis of value that follows. Existentialists later read this as one of the defining conditions of modern freedom.
Heidegger publishes *Being and Time*
**1927** — Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein, thrownness, anxiety, and being-toward-death reorients existential thinking toward ontology. The book becomes one of the major sources for twentieth-century existential philosophy.
Camus publishes *The Myth of Sisyphus*
**1942** — Camus formulates the absurd as the confrontation between the human demand for meaning and the world’s silence. The book becomes a critical companion to existentialism, sharing its mood while resisting its more heroic conclusions.
Sartre publishes *Being and Nothingness*
**1943** — Sartre’s major philosophical work offers a phenomenology of consciousness, bad faith, and freedom. It gives existentialism its most systematic atheistic form and its most influential vocabulary of responsibility.
Sartre delivers “Existentialism Is a Humanism”
**1945** — The lecture popularizes existentialism and provokes debate over whether the philosophy is a defense of human freedom or a recipe for anguish. It becomes the movement’s most famous public statement.
De Beauvoir publishes *The Ethics of Ambiguity*
**1947** — De Beauvoir recasts existential freedom in ethical terms and argues that ambiguity is the condition of human action. The book becomes a bridge between existentialism and later feminist and political thought.
Publication of *The Second Sex*
**1949** — De Beauvoir’s landmark study shows how existential ideas can analyze gender as a social and historical formation rather than a natural destiny. It becomes one of the twentieth century’s most influential philosophical books.
Camus publishes *The Rebel*
**1951** — Camus sharpens his critique of ideological violence and of philosophies that turn rebellion into historical absolution. The book marks a major rupture between Camus and Sartre’s political circle.
Death of Albert Camus
**1960** — Camus’s death ends one of the most morally demanding branches of existential-adjacent thought. His work continues to influence moral philosophy, literature, and political reflection on revolt and measure.
Renewed public interest in existential themes
**2020** — Under conditions of pandemic anxiety, climate dread, and precarious labor, existential questions about finitude, responsibility, and meaning reappear in philosophy, therapy, and popular culture. The movement’s vocabulary regains urgency in a changed world.
Sources
- primary_textSøren Kierkegaard, *Fear and Trembling*
Standard English translation by Alastair Hannay or Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
- primary_textSøren Kierkegaard, *The Sickness Unto Death*
Classic text on despair and selfhood.
- primary_textMartin Heidegger, *Being and Time*
Foundational phenomenological-ontological text for existential themes.
- primary_textJean-Paul Sartre, *Being and Nothingness*
Major source for freedom, bad faith, and consciousness.
- primary_textJean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism Is a Humanism”
Public lecture that popularized the movement.
- primary_textSimone de Beauvoir, *The Ethics of Ambiguity*
Ethical account of freedom under ambiguity.
- primary_textSimone de Beauvoir, *The Second Sex*
Existential analysis of gender and oppression.
- secondary_referenceStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Existentialism”
Reliable overview of the movement and its major figures.
- secondary_referenceInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Existentialism”
Accessible scholarly introduction.
- scholarly_bookWilliam Barrett, *Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy*
Classic mid-century account of existentialism in English.
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