Tradition / schoolRoots1943

Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard Jean-Paul Sartre Simone de Beauvoir Albert Camus Martin Heidegger

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For everyone

Existentialism is a current of thought holding that humans have no predetermined essence and define who they become through their own choices. Sartre summed this up as "existence precedes essence". Freedom, responsibility, anxiety and the search for meaning are its main themes. Kierkegaard's existentialism was religious, Sartre's atheist.

For specialists

Existentialism is not a single doctrine but a family of views with shared themes. Kierkegaard's writings on the stages of existence (aesthetic, ethical, religious), Heidegger's analysis of Dasein and Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) are its main sources. For Sartre, bad faith (mauvaise foi) is denying one's own freedom by seeing oneself as an object. In The Second Sex (1949) de Beauvoir applied this framework to the social position of women: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

Claims

A human being first exists and then defines themselves through their actions, and is therefore wholly responsible for their choices.^[1][2]

Positions

Religious existentialism (Kierkegaard): The individual becomes a self before God through a "leap of faith" that reason cannot fully justify.^[3]
Atheist existentialism (Sartre): If there is no God there is no design fixing human nature; humans are "condemned to be free".^[1]
Camus: He rejected the existentialist label and proposed accepting the absurd, the mismatch between the human search for meaning and the silence of the world, and living on.^[2]

Connections

Parent

Philosophy

Influenced by

Nietzsche and the revaluation of values Phenomenology

Free will

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Sources

BookSartre, J.-P. (1946). L'existentialisme est un humanisme. Nagel, Paris
EncyclopediaCrowell, S.Existentialism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyplato.stanford.edu archive
EncyclopediaMcDonald, W.Søren Kierkegaard. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyplato.stanford.edu archive

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Cite this page

APA

Athena contributors. (2026). Existentialism. Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/varolusculuk/

BibTeX

@misc{athena_varolusculuk,
  title        = {Existentialism},
  author       = {{Athena contributors}},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/varolusculuk/}},
  note         = {Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Accessed: 2026-11-01}
}

Added: September 28, 2026 · Last changed: September 28, 2026 · Page history

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