Schools of Philosophy
Existentialism
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A twentieth century philosophical movement holding that existence precedes essence: a human being first simply exists, thrown into a world without a pre-given purpose, and only afterward defines what they are through the choices they make and take responsibility for. Jean-Paul Sartre gave the movement its clearest slogan and its most systematic statement in Being and Nothingness, arguing that human freedom is total and inescapable, so that even refusing to choose is itself a choice. Simone de Beauvoir extended existentialist method to the situation of women in The Second Sex and worked out its ethical implications in The Ethics of Ambiguity, and the movement drew on and reinterpreted earlier writers, especially Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, who are widely read as its philosophical forerunners though neither used the term. Existentialism's emphasis on radical freedom, anxiety, and the individual's confrontation with a world that supplies no ready made meaning influenced literature, psychology, and theology as much as academic philosophy.
Facts
Disputed
Start YearExistentialism is usually dated to the 1940s, when Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) and Beauvoir's early work gave the movement its name and its clearest statement, but its philosophical roots are commonly traced to Kierkegaard in the 1840s, so no single start year commands full agreement. RegionFrance, with roots in Denmark and Germany 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Held Differently
Associated With
Closely associated with the movement through friendship with Sartre and Beauvoir and a shared preoccupation with freedom, contingency and the absurd human condition, though Camus publicly and repeatedly rejected the existentialist label himself, stating in a November 1945 interview that his one work of philosophical ideas, The Myth of Sisyphus, was written against the existentialist philosophers he was said to belong to.
Nietzsche is widely read as a formative precursor of existentialism through his emphasis on self-created value in the absence of any given cosmic order, though the atlas records Simone de Beauvoir, not Nietzsche, as Existentialism's founder on record.
Founding figure; Being and Nothingness (1943) gave the movement its systematic philosophical statement, and his 1945 lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism, published in 1946, became its most widely read manifesto.
Widely read as a philosophical forerunner of existentialism alongside Nietzsche, though he wrote decades before the term existed and never used it himself; see the dissent on this edge.
Founded By
Why this is disputed. Existentialism has no single founder. Kierkegaard is widely read as its philosophical forerunner and Sartre coined the term's modern usage and gave the movement its systematic statement; Beauvoir, recorded here as the school's figure among this atlas' founding roster, was a central and independently original architect of its ethics, not its sole originator, and scholars differ on how the credit should be divided among the three.
In Branch
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationQuote
The word, first introduced by Marcel in 1943, is certainly not a reference to a coherent system or philosophical school.
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Friedrich Nietzsche, entry: Friedrich NietzscheView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationFounded By: Jean-Paul Sartre, entry: Existentialism; Being and Nothingness, 1943View the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Friedrich Nietzsche, entry: Existentialism (forerunner, did not use the term)View the Source Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAssociated With: Jean-Paul SartreView the Source Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAssociated With: Albert CamusView the Source Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAssociated With: Absurdism, Myth of Sisyphus, 42Quote, Associated With: Absurdism, Myth of Sisyphus, 42
starting from a philosophy of the world's lack of meaning, it ends up by finding a meaning and depth in it
Existentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAssociated With: Soren Kierkegaard
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAssociated With: Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Dissenting Readings (2 dissenting readings)
Founded By: Simone de Beauvoir
The standard account for decades credited Sartre, with Heidegger and Kierkegaard behind him, as existentialism's real originator and cast Beauvoir chiefly as Sartre's interpreter and companion. Kate Kirkpatrick's 2019 biography Becoming Beauvoir: A Life argues from Beauvoir's own student diaries and notebooks that she had independently developed core existentialist positions on freedom, ambiguity and ethical responsibility before her philosophical partnership with Sartre deepened, and that Sartre drew on her thinking as much as she drew on his. This atlas records the founding attribution to Beauvoir as debated for that reason: not because her contribution is now doubted, but because the older, Sartre-centered account it corrects is still the one most readers meet first.
A dissenting reading, from Kate Kirkpatrick and the reassessment of Beauvoir's originalityStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Information
Associated With: Soren Kierkegaard
The standard, popular account credits Kierkegaard, often called the father of existentialism, as its founding figure alongside Nietzsche. Crowell's Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry pushes back on that label, arguing it obscures at least as much as it reveals: Kierkegaard's thought is developed within, and remains answerable to, a specifically Christian religious framework, which sets him apart from the atheistic humanism of Sartre and Beauvoir, the only two major figures in the tradition who actually adopted the label existentialist for themselves. On this reading Kierkegaard is better understood as a precursor whose analyses of anxiety, subjectivity and authentic selfhood later existentialists took up and transformed, not as an existentialist proper.
A dissenting reading, from Steven Crowell, author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on ExistentialismExistentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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