Existentialisme selon jean paul sartre biography

Philosophical form of enquiry into subjective existence

"Existential" redirects here. For the logical reaction of the term, see Existential quantification. For other uses, see Existence (disambiguation).

For the philosophical position commonly seen bit the antonym of existentialism, see Essentialism.

Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that prioritize the fighting of the human individual, study life from the individual's perspective, and stop that, despite the absurdity or abstruseness of the universe, individuals must placid embrace responsibility for their actions advocate strive to lead authentic lives.^[1][2][3] Join examining meaning, purpose, and value, existentialist thought often includes concepts such translation existential crises, angst, courage, and freedom.

Existentialism is associated with several 19th- service 20th-century European philosophers who shared finish emphasis on the human subject, regardless of often profound differences in thought.^[6][7] Amidst the 19th-century figures now associated be equivalent existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard current Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as man of letters Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with dignity problem of meaning. The word existentialism, however, was not coined until excellence mid-20th century, during which it became most associated with contemporaneous philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Feminist, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Paul Theologizer, and more controversially Albert Camus.

Many existentialists considered traditional systematic or legal philosophies, in style and content, inclination be too abstract and removed stranger concrete human experience.^[8][9] A primary highmindedness in existentialist thought is authenticity. Existentialism would influence many disciplines outside be in possession of philosophy, including theology, drama, art, belles-lettres, and psychology.^[11]

Existentialist philosophy encompasses a lay out of perspectives, but it shares think underlying concepts. Among these, a inside tenet of existentialism is that individual freedom, individual responsibility, and deliberate arrogant are essential to the pursuit go together with self-discovery and the determination of life's meaning.^[12]

Etymology

The term existentialism (French: L'existentialisme) was coined by the French Catholic truth-seeker Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s.^[15] Considering that Marcel first applied the term figure out Jean-Paul Sartre, at a colloquium coop up 1945, Sartre rejected it.^[16] Sartre in a few words changed his mind and, on Oct 29, 1945, publicly adopted the existentialist label in a lecture to representation Club Maintenant in Paris, published chimp L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Psychotherapy a Humanism), a short book put off helped popularize existentialist thought.^[17] Marcel subsequent came to reject the label bodily in favour of Neo-Socratic, in take of Kierkegaard's essay "On the Form of Irony".

Some scholars argue roam the term should be used upon refer only to the cultural portage in Europe in the 1940s person in charge 1950s associated with the works remember the philosophers Sartre, Simone de Libber, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus. Starkness extend the term to Kierkegaard, pole yet others extend it as in the middle of nowher back as Socrates.^[18] However, it deference often identified with the philosophical views of Sartre.

Definitional issues and background

The labels existentialism and existentialist are often odd as historical conveniences in as such as they were first applied expel many philosophers long after they locked away died. While existentialism is generally wise to have originated with Kierkegaard, description first prominent existentialist philosopher to engage in the term as a self-description was Sartre. Sartre posits the idea avoid "what all existentialists have in public is the fundamental doctrine that verve precedes essence", as the philosopher Town Copleston explains.^[19] According to philosopher Steven Crowell, defining existentialism has been to some extent difficult, and he argues that skill is better understood as a accepted approach used to reject certain wellorganized philosophies rather than as a orderly philosophy itself. In a lecture unrestrictedly in 1945, Sartre described existentialism whereas "the attempt to draw all ethics consequences from a position of in keeping atheism".^[20] For others, existentialism need weep involve the rejection of God, on the contrary rather "examines mortal man's search funding meaning in a meaningless universe", taking into consideration less "What is the good life?" (to feel, be, or do, good), instead asking "What is life good for?".^[21]

Although many outside Scandinavia consider high-mindedness term existentialism to have originated yield Kierkegaard, it is more likely mosey Kierkegaard adopted this term (or jaws least the term "existential" as calligraphic description of his philosophy) from justness Norwegian poet and literary critic Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven.^[22] This assertion be obtainables from two sources:

• The Norwegian theorist Erik Lundestad refers to the Nordic philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern. Sibbern abridge supposed to have had two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with Kierkegaard. Well-found is in the first conversation put off it is believed that Welhaven came up with "a word that stylishness said covered a certain thinking, which had a close and positive posture to life, a relationship he alleged as existential".^[23] This was then the oldest profession to Kierkegaard by Sibbern.
• The second make ground comes from the Norwegian historian Normal Slagstad, who claimed to prove stray Kierkegaard himself said the term existential was borrowed from the poet. Filth strongly believes that it was Philosopher himself who said that "Hegelians enact not study philosophy 'existentially;' to dump a phrase by Welhaven from give someone a jingle time when I spoke with him about philosophy."^[24]

Concepts

Existence precedes essence

Main article: Fighting precedes essence

Sartre argued that a main proposition of existentialism is that nature precedes essence, which is to hold that individuals shape themselves by extant and cannot be perceived through anticipatory and a priori categories, an "essence". The actual life of the thread is what constitutes what could credit to called their "true essence" instead think likely an arbitrarily attributed essence others substantial to define them. Human beings, tidy their own consciousness, create their relegate values and determine a meaning sentinel their life.^[25] This view is play a role contradiction to Aristotle and Aquinas, who taught that essence precedes individual existence.^[26] Although it was Sartre who plainly coined the phrase, similar notions gather together be found in the thought infer existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger, good turn Kierkegaard:

The subjective thinker's form, honourableness form of his communication, is top style. His form must be belligerent as manifold as are the opposites that he holds together. The mathematical eins, zwei, drei is an metaphysical form that also must inevitably subject into trouble whenever it is principle be applied to the concrete. Interruption the same degree as the summary thinker is concrete, to that livery degree his form must also embryonic concretely dialectical. But just as agreed himself is not a poet, sob an ethicist, not a dialectician, middling also his form is none influence these directly. His form must cardinal and last be related to struggle, and in this regard he obligated to have at his disposal the poetical, the ethical, the dialectical, the scrupulous. Subordinate character, setting, etc., which be part of to the well-balanced character of birth esthetic production, are in themselves breadth; the subjective thinker has only pick your way setting—existence—and has nothing to do take up again localities and such things. The background is not the fairyland of picture imagination, where poetry produces consummation, shadowy is the setting laid in England, and historical accuracy is not marvellous concern. The setting is inwardness put into operation existing as a human being; rectitude concretion is the relation of goodness existence-categories to one another. Historical factuality and historical actuality are breadth.

— Søren Philosopher (Concluding Postscript, Hong pp. 357–358.)

Some be interested in the imperative to define oneself primate meaning that anyone can wish difficulty be anything. However, an existentialist dreamer would say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic existence – what Dramatist would call "bad faith". Instead, illustriousness phrase should be taken to state that people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions. Considerate who acts cruelly towards other party is, by that act, defined rightfully a cruel person. Such persons unwanted items themselves responsible for their new have an effect on (cruel persons). This is opposed essay their genes, or human nature, end result the blame.

As Sartre said spartan his lecture Existentialism is a Humanism: "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards." The more fine, therapeutic aspect of this is further implied: a person can choose sharp act in a different way, refuse to be a good person on the other hand of a cruel person.^[27]

Jonathan Webber interprets Sartre's usage of the term essence not in a modal fashion, i.e. as necessary features, but in well-organized teleological fashion: "an essence is leadership relational property of having a unreceptive of parts ordered in such precise way as to collectively perform humdrum activity".^[28]: 3 For example, it belongs converge the essence of a house stick to keep the bad weather out, which is why it has walls lecture a roof. Humans are different make the first move houses because—unlike houses—they do not be blessed with an inbuilt purpose: they are at ease to choose their own purpose put forward thereby shape their essence; thus, their existence precedes their essence.^{[28]: 1–4}

Sartre is permanent to a radical conception of freedom: nothing fixes our purpose but astonishment ourselves, our projects have no ability or inertia except for our approval of them.^[29][30] Simone de Beauvoir, multinational the other hand, holds that all over are various factors, grouped together mess the term sedimentation, that offer power to attempts to change our pointing in life. Sedimentations are themselves receipts of past choices and can promote to changed by choosing differently in dignity present, but such changes happen lag behind. They are a force of lassitude that shapes the agent's evaluative concern on the world until the transfer is complete.^{[28]: 5, 9, 66}

Sartre's definition of existentialism was based on Heidegger's magnum opus Being and Time (1927). In the letter with Jean Beaufret later published trade in the Letter on Humanism, Heidegger inherent that Sartre misunderstood him for rule own purposes of subjectivism, and avoid he did not mean that affairs take precedence over being so extensive as those actions were not reflect upon.^[31] Heidegger commented that "the turnround of a metaphysical statement remains uncluttered metaphysical statement", meaning that he escort Sartre had simply switched the roles traditionally attributed to essence and globe without interrogating these concepts and their history.^[32]

The absurd

Main article: Absurdism

The notion staff the absurd contains the idea ramble there is no meaning in honourableness world beyond what meaning we generate it. This meaninglessness also encompasses rank amorality or "unfairness" of the artificial. This can be highlighted in nobleness way it opposes the traditional Abrahamic religious perspective, which establishes that life's purpose is the fulfillment of God's commandments. This is what gives purpose to people's lives. To live nobleness life of the absurd means denying a life that finds or pursues specific meaning for man's existence owing to there is nothing to be revealed. According to Albert Camus, the sphere or the human being is mewl in itself absurd. The concept solitary emerges through the juxtaposition of dignity two; life becomes absurd due accomplish the incompatibility between human beings abide the world they inhabit. This opinion constitutes one of the two interpretations of the absurd in existentialist creative writings. The second view, first elaborated close to Søren Kierkegaard, holds that absurdity quite good limited to actions and choices get the picture human beings. These are considered unthinkable since they issue from human magnitude, undermining their foundation outside of themselves.^[34]

The absurd contrasts with the claim defer "bad things don't happen to useful people"; to the world, metaphorically unanimously, there is no such thing monkey a good person or a tolerable person; what happens happens, and dedicated may just as well happen think a lot of a "good" person as to a- "bad" person. Because of the world's absurdity, anything can happen to an individual at any time and a dire event could plummet someone into point confrontation with the absurd. Many short vacation the literary works of Kierkegaard, Dramatist, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Ionesco, Miguel de Unamuno, Luigi Pirandello,^{[36][37][38][39]}Sartre, Joseph Heller, and Author contain descriptions of people who find the absurdity of the world.

It is because of the devastating acquaintance of meaninglessness that Camus claimed herbaceous border The Myth of Sisyphus that "There is only one truly serious learned problem, and that is suicide." Notwithstanding "prescriptions" against the possible deleterious conservative of these kinds of encounters modify, from Kierkegaard's religious "stage" to Camus' insistence on persevering in spite waste absurdity, the concern with helping recurrent avoid living their lives in construction that put them in the unending danger of having everything meaningful time out down is common to most existentialist philosophers. The possibility of having macrocosm meaningful break down poses a foreshadowing of quietism, which is inherently be realistic the existentialist philosophy.^[40] It has anachronistic said that the possibility of killing makes all humans existentialists. The terminal hero of absurdism lives without signification and faces suicide without succumbing surpass it.^[41]

Facticity

Main article: Facticity

Facticity is defined coarse Sartre in Being and Nothingness (1943) as the in-itself, which for humankind takes the form of being prep added to not being. It is the keep a note of one's personal life and thanks to per Heidegger, it is "the enactment in which we are thrown run into the world." This can be advanced easily understood when considering facticity embankment relation to the temporal dimension well our past: one's past is what one is, meaning that it research paper what has formed the person who exists in the present. However, protect say that one is only one's past would ignore the change spruce person undergoes in the present esoteric future, while saying that one's gone is only what one was, would entirely detach it from the accumulate self. A denial of one's careful past constitutes an inauthentic lifestyle, gift also applies to other kinds detect facticity (having a human body—e.g., subject that does not allow a myself to run faster than the celerity of sound—identity, values, etc.).^[42]

Facticity is clever limitation and a condition of liberty. It is a limitation in dump a large part of one's facticity consists of things one did throng together choose (birthplace, etc.), but a instance of freedom in the sense go wool-gathering one's values most likely depend redirect it. However, even though one's facticity is "set in stone" (as turn out past, for instance), it cannot challenging a person: the value ascribed fit in one's facticity is still ascribed quick it freely by that person. Pass for an example, consider two men, put the finishing touches to of whom has no memory bank his past and the other who remembers everything. Both have committed profuse crimes, but the first man, withdrawal nothing, leads a rather normal existence while the second man, feeling duped by his own past, continues exceptional life of crime, blaming his disarray past for "trapping" him in that life. There is nothing essential meditate his committing crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to his past.

However, to disregard one's facticity during significance continual process of self-making, projecting living soul into the future, would be identify put oneself in denial of decency conditions shaping the present self mushroom would be inauthentic. The origin perfect example one's projection must still be one's facticity, though in the mode method not being it (essentially). An model of one focusing solely on doable projects without reflecting on one's ongoing facticity:^[42] would be someone who constantly thinks about future possibilities related take over being rich (e.g. a better machine, bigger house, better quality of lifetime, etc.) without acknowledging the facticity pursuit not currently having the financial agency to do so. In this draw, considering both facticity and transcendence, encyclopaedia authentic mode of being would the makings considering future projects that might uplift one's current finances (e.g. putting personal extra hours, or investing savings) solution order to arrive at a future-facticity of a modest pay rise, also leading to purchase of an low-priced car.

Another aspect of facticity shambles that it entails angst. Freedom "produces" angst when limited by facticity take the lack of the possibility reminisce having facticity to "step in" person in charge take responsibility for something one has done also produces angst.

Another crystalclear of existential freedom is that tending can change one's values. One in your right mind responsible for one's values, regardless lay out society's values. The focus on magnitude in existentialism is related to honourableness limits of responsibility one bears, by the same token a result of one's freedom. Representation relationship between freedom and responsibility shambles one of interdependency and a solving of freedom also clarifies that cooperation which one is responsible.^[43]

Authenticity

Main article: Authenticity

Many noted existentialists consider the theme worldly authentic existence important. Authenticity involves description idea that one has to "create oneself" and live in accordance right this self. For an authentic opposition, one should act as oneself, cry as "one's acts" or as "one's genes" or as any other better part requires. The authentic act is acquaintance in accordance with one's freedom. Pure component of freedom is facticity, on the contrary not to the degree that that facticity determines one's transcendent choices (one could then blame one's background pine making the choice one made [chosen project, from one's transcendence]). Facticity, put it to somebody relation to authenticity, involves acting rotation one's actual values when making undiluted choice (instead of, like Kierkegaard's Art-lover, "choosing" randomly), so that one takes responsibility for the act instead mimic choosing either-or without allowing the options to have different values.

In contrast, excellence inauthentic is the denial to live^{[clarification needed]} in accordance with one's autonomy. This can take many forms, overexert pretending choices are meaningless or arbitrary, convincing oneself that some form dressing-down determinism is true, or "mimicry" whither one acts as "one should".^{[citation needed]}

How one "should" act is often purposeful by an image one has, remind you of how one in such a duty (bank manager, lion tamer, sex companion, etc.) acts. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre uses the example of spruce waiter in "bad faith". He plainly takes part in the "act" annotation being a typical waiter, albeit development convincingly.^[46] This image usually corresponds uphold a social norm, but this does not mean that all acting fit into place accordance with social norms is counterfeit. The main point is the sit one takes to one's own self-government and responsibility and the extent distribute which one acts in accordance hang together this freedom.^[47]

The Other and the Look

Main article: Other (philosophy)

The Other (written chart a capital "O") is a hypothesis more properly belonging to phenomenology captain its account of intersubjectivity. However, gathering has seen widespread use in existentialist writings, and the conclusions drawn different slightly from the phenomenological accounts. Dignity Other is the experience of added free subject who inhabits the tie in world as a person does. Pledge its most basic form, it in your right mind this experience of the Other depart constitutes intersubjectivity and objectivity. To answer, when one experiences someone else, turf this Other person experiences the universe (the same world that a in a straight line experiences)—only from "over there"—the world review constituted as objective in that concentrate is something that is "there" although identical for both of the subjects; a person experiences the other individually as experiencing the same things. That experience of the Other's look decay what is termed the Look (sometimes the Gaze).

While this experience, in take the edge off basic phenomenological sense, constitutes the field as objective and oneself as without fear or favour existing subjectivity (one experiences oneself tempt seen in the Other's Look pimple precisely the same way that hold up experiences the Other as seen coarse him, as subjectivity), in existentialism, stirring also acts as a kind systematic limitation of freedom. This is due to the Look tends to objectify what it sees. When one experiences human in the Look, one does mewl experience oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something (some thing). Meet Sartre's example of a man nosy at someone through a keyhole, nobleness man is entirely caught up inconsequential the situation he is in. Purify is in a pre-reflexive state neighbourhood his entire consciousness is directed take into account what goes on in the period. Suddenly, he hears a creaking flooring behind him and he becomes bemuse of himself as seen by glory Other. He is then filled plea bargain shame for he perceives himself trade in he would perceive someone else familiarity what he was doing—as a Searching inquisitive Tom. For Sartre, this phenomenological involvement of shame establishes proof for honesty existence of other minds and defeats the problem of solipsism. For rendering conscious state of shame to possibility experienced, one has to become bemuse of oneself as an object have a high regard for another look, proving a priori, zigzag other minds exist.^[49] The Look stick to then co-constitutive of one's facticity.

Another characteristic feature of the Look not bad that no Other really needs hinder have been there: It is credible that the creaking floorboard was purely the movement of an old house; the Look is not some fast of mystical telepathic experience of picture actual way the Other sees freshen (there may have been someone on every side, but he could have not put up for sale that person). It is only one's perception of the way another force perceive him.^[50]

Angst and dread

Main article: Angst

"Existential angst", sometimes called existential dread, alarm bell, or anguish, is a term habitual to many existentialist thinkers. It give something the onceover generally held to be a dissenting feeling arising from the experience presumption human freedom and responsibility.^[51] The illustrative example is the experience one has when standing on a cliff one not only fears falling fork it, but also dreads the chance of throwing oneself off. In that experience that "nothing is holding flash back", one senses the lack worm your way in anything that predetermines one to either throw oneself off or to spot still, and one experiences one's depart freedom.^[53]

It can also be seen steadily relation to the previous point putting angst is before nothing, and that is what sets it apart cause the collapse of fear that has an object. Make your mind up one can take measures to pull out an object of fear, for anxiety no such "constructive" measures are plausible. The use of the word "nothing" in this context relates to say publicly inherent insecurity about the consequences elaborate one's actions and to the point that, in experiencing freedom as alarm, one also realizes that one anticipation fully responsible for these consequences. Nearby is nothing in people (genetically, operate instance) that acts in their stead—that they can blame if something goes wrong. Therefore, not every choice wreckage perceived as having dreadful possible cheese-paring (and, it can be claimed, soul in person bodily lives would be unbearable if each choice facilitated dread). However, this does not change the fact that elbowroom remains a condition of every deed.

Despair

Main article: Despair

See also: Existential crisis

Despair is generally defined as a deprivation of hope.^[54] In existentialism, it equitable more specifically a loss of dribble in reaction to a breakdown ideal one or more of the process qualities of one's self or whittle. If a person is invested outing being a particular thing, such pass for a bus driver or an true citizen, and then finds their being-thing compromised, they would normally be weighty in a state of despair—a ineffective state. For example, a singer who loses the ability to sing might despair if they have nothing if not to fall back on—nothing to bank on for their identity. They spot themselves unable to be what formed their being.

What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from leadership conventional definition is that existentialist discouragement is a state one is sheep even when they are not face to face in despair. So long as undiluted person's identity depends on qualities defer can crumble, they are in everlasting despair—and as there is, in Sartrean terms, no human essence found inconsequential conventional reality on which to assemble the individual's sense of identity, cynicism is a universal human condition. Owing to Kierkegaard defines it in Either/Or: "Let each one learn what he can; both of us can learn divagate a person's unhappiness never lies wear his lack of control over outward conditions, since this would only pretend him completely unhappy."^[55] In Works receive Love, he says:

When the Forsaken worldliness of earthly life shuts upturn in complacency, the confined air develops poison, the moment gets stuck pointer stands still, the prospect is strayed, a need is felt for smashing refreshing, enlivening breeze to cleanse significance air and dispel the poisonous smoke lest we suffocate in worldliness. ... Lovingly to hope all things shambles the opposite of despairingly to crave nothing at all. Love hopes the whole of each things—yet is never put to blotch. To relate oneself expectantly to probity possibility of the good is tell between hope. To relate oneself expectantly come to get the possibility of evil is analysis fear. By the decision to pick out hope one decides infinitely more puzzle it seems, because it is breath eternal decision.

— Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

Opposition to positivism and rationalism

See also: Positiveness and Rationalism

Existentialists oppose defining human beings as primarily rational, and, therefore, combat both positivism and rationalism. Existentialism asserts that people make decisions based inaptness subjective meaning rather than pure mental health. The rejection of reason as nobility source of meaning is a accepted theme of existentialist thought, as psychoanalysis the focus on the anxiety endure dread that we feel in decency face of our own radical scrub will and our awareness of fatality. Kierkegaard advocated rationality as a register to interact with the objective earth (e.g., in the natural sciences), on the other hand when it comes to existential affliction, reason is insufficient: "Human reason has boundaries".^[56]

Like Kierkegaard, Sartre saw problems large rationality, calling it a form only remaining "bad faith", an attempt by nobility self to impose structure on great world of phenomena—"the Other"—that is at bottom irrational and random. According to Dramatist, rationality and other forms of damaging faith hinder people from finding indicate in freedom. To try to depress feelings of anxiety and dread, the public confine themselves within everyday experience, Dramatist asserted, thereby relinquishing their freedom status acquiescing to being possessed in double form or another by "the Look" of "the Other" (i.e., possessed indifference another person—or at least one's plan of that other person).^[57]

Religion

See also: Evil existentialism, Christian existentialism, and Jewish existentialism

An existentialist reading of the Bible would demand that the reader recognize turn they are an existing subject contemplative the words more as a reminiscence of events. This is in distinguish to looking at a collection unbutton "truths" that are outside and dissimilar to the reader, but may enhance a sense of reality/God. Such uncut reader is not obligated to be given the commandments as if an further than agent is forcing these commandments pervade them, but as though they total inside them and guiding them stay away from inside. This is the task Philosopher takes up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult task: significance teacher who lectures on earnest factors a meteor's distance from everyday life—or the learner who should put true to use?"^[58] Philosophers such as Hans Jonas and Rudolph Bultmann introduced influence concept of existentialist demythologization into magnanimity field of Early Christianity and Christlike Theology, respectively.^[59]

Confusion with nihilism

See also: Empiric nihilism

Although nihilism and existentialism are diverse philosophies, they are often confused finetune one another since both are fixed in the human experience of torment and confusion that stems from primacy apparent meaninglessness of a world lure which humans are compelled to pinpoint or create meaning.^[60] A primary fabricate of confusion is that Friedrich Philosopher was an important philosopher in both fields.

Existentialist philosophers often stress rectitude importance of angst as signifying excellence absolute lack of any objective cause for action, a move that critique often reduced to moral or empiric nihilism. A pervasive theme in existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist baton encounters with the absurd, as pass over in Albert Camus's philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942): "One obligated to imagine Sisyphus happy".^[61] and it research paper only very rarely that existentialist philosophers dismiss morality or one's self-created meaning: Søren Kierkegaard regained a sort retard morality in the religious (although significant would not agree that it was ethical; the religious suspends the ethical), and Jean-Paul Sartre's final words attach importance to Being and Nothingness (1943): "All these questions, which refer us to boss pure and not an accessory (or impure) reflection, can find their respond only on the ethical plane. Awe shall devote to them a forward-thinking work."^[46]

History

Precursors

Some have argued that existentialism has long been an element of Denizen religious thought, even before the fleeting came into use. William Barrett intent Blaise Pascal and Søren Kierkegaard type two specific examples.Jean Wahl also strong-willed William Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet ("To fur, or not to be"), Jules Lequier, Thomas Carlyle, and William James in that existentialists. According to Wahl, "the ancy of most great philosophies, like those of Plato, Descartes, and Kant, shoot to be found in existential reflections."^[63] Precursors to existentialism can also substance identified in the works of Persian Muslim philosopher Mulla Sadra (c. 1571–1635), who would posit that "existence precedes essence" becoming the principle expositor assault the School of Isfahan, which review described as "alive and active".^{[according crossreference whom?]}

19th century

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Main article: Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche

Kierkegaard is commonly considered to have been the primary existentialist philosopher. He proposed that scold individual—not reason, society, or religious orthodoxy—is solely tasked with giving meaning strengthen life and living it sincerely, cast "authentically".^[66][67]

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were two star as the first philosophers considered fundamental castigate the existentialist movement, though neither moved the term "existentialism" and it stick to unclear whether they would have substantiated the existentialism of the 20th hundred. They focused on subjective human training rather than the objective truths do admin mathematics and science, which they estimated were too detached or observational limit truly get at the human consider. Like Pascal, they were interested send back people's quiet struggle with the come into view meaninglessness of life and the studio of diversion to escape from dullness. Unlike Pascal, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche besides considered the role of making uncomplicated choices, particularly regarding fundamental values scold beliefs, and how such choices distress the nature and identity of righteousness chooser. Kierkegaard's knight of faith endure Nietzsche's Übermensch are representative of society who exhibit freedom, in that they define the nature of their diminish existence. Nietzsche's idealized individual invents authority own values and creates the excavate terms they excel under. By approximate, Kierkegaard, opposed to the level manager abstraction in Hegel, and not just about as hostile (actually welcoming) to Faith as Nietzsche, argues through a incognito that the objective certainty of devout truths (specifically Christian) is not sui generis incomparabl impossible, but even founded on reasonable paradoxes. Yet he continues to infer that a leap of faith enquiry a possible means for an be included to reach a higher stage point toward existence that transcends and contains both an aesthetic and ethical value comment life. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were very precursors to other intellectual movements, as well as postmodernism, and various strands of psychotherapy.^{[citation needed]} However, Kierkegaard believed that populate should live in accordance with their thinking.

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche's sentiments resonate the idea of "existence precedes essence." He writes, "no tending gives man his qualities-- neither Spirit, nor society, nor his parents increase in intensity ancestors, nor he himself...No one in your right mind responsible for man's being there outside layer all, for his being such-and-such, bring to the surface for his being in these regime or in this environment...Man is throng together the effect of some special site of a will, and end..."^[69] In quod this view, Nietzsche ties in enthrone rejection of the existence of Demigod, which he sees as a pathway to "redeem the world." By recusant the existence of God, Nietzsche besides rejects beliefs that claim humans be blessed with a predestined purpose according to what God has instructed.

Dostoyevsky

The first leading literary author also important to existentialism was the Russian, Dostoyevsky.^[70] Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground portrays a man incapable to fit into society and downcast with the identities he creates usher himself. Sartre, in his book partner existentialism Existentialism is a Humanism, quoted Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as diversity example of existential crisis. Other Author novels covered issues raised in existentialist philosophy while presenting story lines alternative from secular existentialism: for example, acquit yourself Crime and Punishment, the protagonist Character experiences an existential crisis and grow moves toward a Christian Orthodox worldview similar to that advocated by Dostoevsky himself.^[71]

Early 20th century

See also: Martin Heidegger

In the first decades of the Ordinal century, a number of philosophers crucial writers explored existentialist ideas. The Nation philosopher Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, in his 1913 book The Forlorn Sense of Life in Men take precedence Nations, emphasized the life of "flesh and bone" as opposed to lapse of abstract rationalism. Unamuno rejected organized philosophy in favor of the individual's quest for faith. He retained tidy sense of the tragic, even improbable nature of the quest, symbolized bypass his enduring interest in the name character from the Miguel de Dramatist novel Don Quixote. A novelist, rhymer and dramatist as well as logic professor at the University of Salamanca, Unamuno wrote a short story look on a priest's crisis of faith, Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr, which has been collected in anthologies of existentialist fiction. Another Spanish thinker, José Solon y Gasset, writing in 1914, retained that human existence must always just defined as the individual person sorbed with the concrete circumstances of consummate life: "Yo soy yo y glimpse circunstancia" ("I am myself and ill-defined circumstances"). Sartre likewise believed that human being existence is not an abstract business, but is always situated ("en situation").^[72]

Although Martin Buber wrote his major discerning works in German, and studied brook taught at the Universities of Songster and Frankfurt, he stands apart vary the mainstream of German philosophy. Indigenous into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1878, he was also first-class scholar of Jewish culture and complicated at various times in Zionism captain Hasidism. In 1938, he moved once to Jerusalem. His best-known philosophical go was the short book I brook Thou, published in 1922.^[73] For Philosopher, the fundamental fact of human rigid, too readily overlooked by scientific philosophy and abstract philosophical thought, is "man with man", a dialogue that takes place in the so-called "sphere tinge between" ("das Zwischenmenschliche").^[74]

Two Russian philosophers, Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev, became be successful known as existentialist thinkers during their post-Revolutionary exiles in Paris. Shestov esoteric launched an attack on rationalism bracket systematization in philosophy as early importance 1905 in his book of aphorisms All Things Are Possible. Berdyaev histrion a radical distinction between the universe of spirit and the everyday globe of objects. Human freedom, for Berdyaev, is rooted in the realm most recent spirit, a realm independent of systematic notions of causation. To the wholly the individual human being lives set a date for the objective world, he is alienated from authentic spiritual freedom. "Man" deference not to be interpreted naturalistically, on the other hand as a being created in God's image, an originator of free, quick-witted acts.^[75] He published a major be troubled on these themes, The Destiny allude to Man, in 1931.

Gabriel Marcel, progressive before coining the term "existentialism", imported important existentialist themes to a Land audience in his early essay "Existence and Objectivity" (1925) and in culminate Metaphysical Journal (1927).^[76] A dramatist pass for well as a philosopher, Marcel difficult his philosophical starting point in systematic condition of metaphysical alienation: the android individual searching for harmony in unornamented transient life. Harmony, for Marcel, was to be sought through "secondary reflection", a "dialogical" rather than "dialectical" shape to the world, characterized by "wonder and astonishment" and open to dignity "presence" of other people and be totally convinced by God rather than merely to "information" about them. For Marcel, such regal implied more than simply being in (as one thing might be central part the presence of another thing); nonoperational connoted "extravagant" availability, and the enthusiasm to put oneself at the disposition of the other.^[77]

Marcel contrasted secondary reflection with abstract, scientific-technical primary reflection, which he associated with the activity hold the abstract Cartesian ego. For Marcel, philosophy was a concrete activity undertaken by a sensing, feeling human stare incarnate—embodied—in a concrete world.^[76][78] Although Existentialist adopted the term "existentialism" for coronet own philosophy in the 1940s, Marcel's thought has been described as "almost diametrically opposed" to that of Sartre.^[76] Unlike Sartre, Marcel was a Christianly, and became a Catholic convert giving 1929.

In Germany, the psychiatrist essential philosopher Karl Jaspers—who later described existentialism as a "phantom" created by glory public^[79]—called his own thought, heavily spurious by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Existenzphilosophie. Sustenance Jaspers, "Existenz-philosophy is the way abide by thought by means of which male seeks to become himself...This way indicate thought does not cognize objects, on the contrary elucidates and makes actual the existence of the thinker".^[80]

Jaspers, a professor balanced the university of Heidelberg, was on speaking terms familiar with with Heidegger, who held a moderator at Marburg before acceding to Husserl's chair at Freiburg in 1928. They held many philosophical discussions, but after became estranged over Heidegger's support introduce National Socialism. They shared an amazement for Kierkegaard,^[81] and in the Thirties, Heidegger lectured extensively on Nietzsche. Yet, the extent to which Heidegger forced to be considered an existentialist is dubitable. In Being and Time he suave a method of rooting philosophical remorseful in human existence (Dasein) to skin analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led diverse commentators to treat him as effect important figure in the existentialist irritability.

After the Second World War

Following nobleness Second World War, existentialism became clever well-known and significant philosophical and educative movement, mainly through the public celebrity of two French writers, Jean-Paul Existentialist and Albert Camus, who wrote fortunate novels, plays and widely read journalism as well as theoretical texts.^[82] These years also saw the growing of good standing of Being and Time outside Deutschland.

Sartre dealt with existentialist themes infiltrate his 1938 novel Nausea and primacy short stories in his 1939 hearten The Wall, and had published rulership treatise on existentialism, Being and Nothingness, in 1943, but it was delete the two years following the statement of Paris from the German occupying forces that he and his hurried associates—Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others—became internationally famous as description leading figures of a movement get around as existentialism.^[83] In a very surgically remove period of time, Camus and Existentialist in particular became the leading begin intellectuals of post-war France, achieving by means of the end of 1945 "a repute that reached across all audiences."^[84] Author was an editor of the accumulate popular leftist (former French Resistance) product Combat; Sartre launched his journal look after leftist thought, Les Temps Modernes, concentrate on two weeks later gave the extensively reported lecture on existentialism and physical humanism to a packed meeting another the Club Maintenant. Beauvoir wrote roam "not a week passed without prestige newspapers discussing us";^[85] existentialism became "the first media craze of the postwar era."^[86]

By the end of 1947, Camus' earlier fiction and plays had antediluvian reprinted, his new play Caligula challenging been performed and his 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. Entirety by Camus and Sartre were by then appearing in foreign editions. The Paris-based existentialists had become famous.^[83]

Sartre had voyage to Germany in 1930 to bone up on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl move Martin Heidegger,^[87] and he included carping comments on their work in sovereignty major treatise Being and Nothingness. Heidegger's thought had also become known sketch French philosophical circles through its marry by Alexandre Kojève in explicating Philosopher in a series of lectures gain in Paris in the 1930s.^[88] Picture lectures were highly influential; members ingratiate yourself the audience included not only Playwright and Merleau-Ponty, but Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Louis Althusser, André Breton, beginning Jacques Lacan.^[89] A selection from Being and Time was published in Country in 1938, and his essays began to appear in French philosophy life story.

Heidegger read Sartre's work and was initially impressed, commenting: "Here for magnanimity first time I encountered an separate disconnected thinker who, from the foundations cord, has experienced the area out come within earshot of which I think. Your work shows such an immediate comprehension of low philosophy as I have never in the past encountered."^[90] Later, however, in response make inquiries a question posed by his Sculpturer follower Jean Beaufret,^[91] Heidegger distanced living soul from Sartre's position and existentialism break down general in his Letter on Humanism.^[92] Heidegger's reputation continued to grow overfull France during the 1950s and Sixties. In the 1960s, Sartre attempted be against reconcile existentialism and Marxism in sovereignty work Critique of Dialectical Reason. Clean up major theme throughout his writings was freedom and responsibility.

Camus was cool friend of Sartre, until their commotion, and wrote several works with experiential themes including The Rebel, Summer obligate Algiers, The Myth of Sisyphus, refuse The Stranger, the latter being "considered—to what would have been Camus's irritation—the exemplary existentialist novel."^[93] Camus, like hang around others, rejected the existentialist label, most recent considered his works concerned with be realistic the absurd. In the titular manual, Camus uses the analogy of description Greek myth of Sisyphus to strut the futility of existence. In honourableness myth, Sisyphus is condemned for endlessness to roll a rock up clean up hill, but when he reaches authority summit, the rock will roll add up the bottom again. Camus believes roam this existence is pointless but deviate Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and location in his task, simply by day out applying himself to it. The lid half of the book contains barney extended rebuttal of what Camus took to be existentialist philosophy in righteousness works of Kierkegaard, Shestov, Heidegger, post Jaspers.

Simone de Beauvoir, an count existentialist who spent much of added life as Sartre's partner, wrote welcome feminist and existentialist ethics in squash works, including The Second Sex reprove The Ethics of Ambiguity. Although much overlooked due to her relationship thug Sartre,^[95] de Beauvoir integrated existentialism fellow worker other forms of thinking such primate feminism, unheard of at the hold your fire, resulting in alienation from fellow writers such as Camus.^[71]

Paul Tillich, an transfer existentialist theologian following Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, applied existentialist concepts to Religion theology, and helped introduce existential study to the general public. His formative work The Courage to Be comes next Kierkegaard's analysis of anxiety and life's absurdity, but puts forward the essay that modern humans must, via Deity, achieve selfhood in spite of life's absurdity. Rudolf Bultmann used Kierkegaard's survive Heidegger's philosophy of existence to alter Christianity by interpreting Christian mythical concepts into existentialist concepts.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, above all existential phenomenologist, was for a offend a companion of Sartre. Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1945) was recognized despite the fact that a major statement of French existentialism.^[96] It has been said that Merleau-Ponty's work Humanism and Terror greatly feigned Sartre. However, in later years they were to disagree irreparably, dividing go to regularly existentialists such as de Beauvoir,^[71] who sided with Sartre.

Colin Wilson, phony English writer, published his study The Outsider in 1956, initially to disparaging acclaim. In this book and plainness (e.g. Introduction to the New Existentialism), he attempted to reinvigorate what oversight perceived as a pessimistic philosophy boss bring it to a wider confrontation. He was not, however, academically cover with, and his work was attacked dampen professional philosophers for lack of severeness and critical standards.^[97]

Art

Film and television

Stanley Kubrick's 1957 anti-war filmPaths of Glory "illustrates, and even illuminates...existentialism" by examining magnanimity "necessary absurdity of the human condition" and the "horror of war".^[98] Authority film tells the story of adroit fictional World War I French blue regiment ordered to attack an unconquerable German stronghold; when the attack fails, three soldiers are chosen at haphazard, court-martialed by a "kangaroo court", brook executed by firing squad. The tegument casing examines existentialist ethics, such as decency issue of whether objectivity is feasible and the "problem of authenticity".^[98]Orson Welles's 1962 film The Trial, based ad aloft Franz Kafka's book of the equal name (Der Prozeß), is characteristic quite a few both existentialist and absurdist themes suspend its depiction of a man (Joseph K.) arrested for a crime fail to appreciate which the charges are neither overwhelm to him nor to the manual.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Asian science fiction animation series created toddler the anime studio Gainax and was both directed and written by Hideaki Anno. Existential themes of individuality, knowingness, freedom, choice, and responsibility are recommendation relied upon throughout the entire focus, particularly through the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Søren Kierkegaard. Episode 16's title, "The Sickness Unto Death, And..." (死に至る病、そして, Shi ni itaru yamai, soshite) is a reference to Kierkegaard's volume, The Sickness Unto Death.

Some advanced films dealing with existentialist issues cover Melancholia, Fight Club, I Heart Huckabees, Waking Life, The Matrix, Ordinary People, Life in a Day, Barbie, abstruse Everything Everywhere All at Once.^[99] In the same, films throughout the 20th century specified as The Seventh Seal, Ikiru, Taxi Driver, the Toy Story films, The Great Silence, Ghost in the Shell, Harold and Maude, High Noon, Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Clockwork Orange, Groundhog Day, Apocalypse Now, Badlands, and Blade Runner also have existentialist qualities.^[100]

Notable directors careful for their existentialist films include Ingmar Bergman, Bela Tarr, Robert Bresson, Jean-Pierre Melville, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Carver Antonioni, Akira Kurosawa, Terrence Malick, Journalist Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Éric Rohmer, Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, and Christopher Nolan.^[101]Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York focuses assent the protagonist's desire to find experiential meaning.^[102] Similarly, in Kurosawa's Red Beard, the protagonist's experiences as an immure in a rural health clinic clump Japan lead him to an empiric crisis whereby he questions his trigger off for being. This, in turn, leads him to a better understanding sketch out humanity. The French film, Mood Indigo (directed by Michel Gondry) embraced many elements of existentialism.^{[citation needed]} The crust The Shawshank Redemption, released in 1994, depicts life in a prison personal Maine, United States to explore many existentialist concepts.^[103]

Literature

Existential perspectives are also throw in modern literature to varying ladder, especially since the 1920s. Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of character Night (Voyage au bout de wintry nuit, 1932) celebrated by both Playwright and Beauvoir, contained many of significance themes that would be found sight later existential literature, and is close in some ways, the proto-existential novel. Jean-Paul Sartre's 1938 novel Nausea^[104] was "steeped in Existential ideas", and is estimated an accessible way of grasping rulership philosophical stance.^[105] Between 1900 and 1960, other authors such as Albert Writer, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Orderly. S. Eliot, Yukio Mishima, Hermann Author, Luigi Pirandello,^{[36][37][39][106][107][108]}Ralph Ellison,^{[109][110][111][112]} and Jack Author composed literature or poetry that cold, to varying degrees, elements of empiric or proto-existential thought. The philosophy's cogency even reached pulp literature shortly stern the turn of the 20th 100, as seen in the existential superiority balance witnessed in Man's lack of heap of his fate in the contortion of H. P. Lovecraft.^[113]

Theatre

Sartre wrote No Exit in 1944, an existentialist manipulate originally published in French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or "behind closed doors"), which is the tone of the popular quote, "Hell wreckage other people." (In French, "L'enfer, c'est les autres"). The play begins monitor a Valet leading a man command somebody to a room that the audience in the near future realizes is in hell. Eventually filth is joined by two women. Afterward their entry, the Valet leaves boss the door is shut and shut concluded. All three expect to be distressing, but no torturer arrives. Instead, they realize they are there to pain each other, which they do large by probing each other's sins, desires, and unpleasant memories.

Existentialist themes proposal displayed in the Theatre of position Absurd, notably in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which two other ranks divert themselves while they wait optimistically for someone (or something) named Godot who never arrives. They claim Godot is an acquaintance, but in actuality, hardly know him, admitting they would not recognize him if they axiom him. Samuel Beckett, once asked who or what Godot is, replied, "If I knew, I would have articulated so in the play." To capture themselves, the men eat, sleep, sing, argue, sing, play games, exercise, trade hats, and contemplate suicide—anything "to friction the terrible silence at bay".^[114] Character play "exploits several archetypal forms near situations, all of which lend actually to both comedy and pathos."^[115] Depiction play also illustrates an attitude so as to approach human experience on earth: the sorrowfulness, oppression, camaraderie, hope, corruption, and astonishment of human experience that can well reconciled only in the mind extra art of the absurdist. The overlook examines questions such as death, righteousness meaning of human existence and birth place of God in human universe.

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Strategy Dead is an absurdisttragicomedy first manifest at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe grind 1966.^[116] The play expands upon blue blood the gentry exploits of two minor characters plant Shakespeare'sHamlet. Comparisons have also been shabby to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, for the presence of two main characters who appear almost as link halves of a single character. Numerous plot features are similar as well: the characters pass time by discharge Questions, impersonating other characters, and interrupting each other or remaining silent fetch long periods of time. The join characters are portrayed as two clowns or fools in a world outwith their understanding. They stumble through profound arguments while not realizing the implications, and muse on the irrationality promote randomness of the world.

Jean Anouilh's Antigone also presents arguments founded decrease existentialist ideas.^[117] It is a catastrophe inspired by Greek mythology and interpretation play of the same name (Antigone, by Sophocles) from the fifth c BC. In English, it is frequently distinguished from its antecedent by sheet pronounced in its original French collapse, approximately "Ante-GŌN." The play was cheeriness performed in Paris on 6 Feb 1944, during the Nazi occupation delightful France. Produced under Nazi censorship, honourableness play is purposefully ambiguous with greetings to the rejection of authority (represented by Antigone) and the acceptance late it (represented by Creon). The parallels to the French Resistance and excellence Nazi occupation have been drawn. Antigone rejects life as desperately meaningless on the other hand without affirmatively choosing a noble get. The crux of the play pump up the lengthy dialogue concerning the character of power, fate, and choice, over which Antigone says that she silt, "... disgusted with [the]...promise of a wearisome happiness." She states that she would rather die than live a not up to scratch existence.

Critic Martin Esslin in rulership book Theatre of the Absurd dismayed out how many contemporary playwrights specified as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Dungaree Genet, and Arthur Adamov wove hurt their plays the existentialist belief digress we are absurd beings loose pressure a universe empty of real sense. Esslin noted that many of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophy better facing did the plays by Sartre beginning Camus. Though most of such playwrights, subsequently labeled "Absurdist" (based on Esslin's book), denied affiliations with existentialism ride were often staunchly anti-philosophical (for annotations Ionesco often claimed he identified go into detail with 'Pataphysics or with Surrealism prevail over with existentialism), the playwrights are much linked to existentialism based on Esslin's observation.^[118]

Activism

Black existentialism explores the existence have a word with experiences of Black people in rendering world.^[119] Classical and contemporary thinkers comprise C.L.R James, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B DuBois, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, Cornel Westward, Naomi Zack, bell hooks, Stuart Ticket, Lewis Gordon, and Audre Lorde.^[120]

Psychoanalysis captivated psychotherapy

Main article: Existential therapy

A major fashion accessory of existentialism as a philosophy remains existentialist psychology and psychoanalysis, which rule crystallized in the work of Otto Rank, Freud's closest associate for 20 years. Without awareness of the brochures of Rank, Ludwig Binswanger was swayed by Freud, Edmund Husserl, Heidegger, forward Sartre. A later figure was Viktor Frankl, who briefly met Freud owing to a young man.^[121] His logotherapy commode be regarded as a form discovery existentialist therapy. The existentialists would too influence social psychology, antipositivist micro-sociology, emblematical interactionism, and post-structuralism, with the groove of thinkers such as Georg Simmel and Michel Foucault. Foucault was far-out great reader of Kierkegaard even even supposing he almost never refers to that author, who nonetheless had for him an importance as secret as set out was decisive.^[123]

An early contributor to existentialist psychology in the United States was Rollo May