There are two famous trios of existentialists; other
existentialists are grouped with these trios of “leaders” as appropriate.
The first trio of Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich
Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger is grouped
together intellectually. These men are the fathers of existentialism and
dedicated themselves to the study of the human condition. While they expressed
political views, especially Heidegger, their primary interest was metaphysical.
The second trio of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert
Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir is viewed
as a political trio. They were a social trio until Sartre and Camus proved
that petty squabbles and pride cannot be overcome by basic philosophy.
While other individuals moved in and out of these two groups, literally
and figuratively, these six individuals define existentialism.
Any attempt to divide existential thinkers into groups
is bound to result in oversimplification of their writings, lectures, and
public statements. Still, we tend to group related thinkers for purposes
of study. St. Elmo Nauman, writing in The
New Dictionary of Existentialism, offers the following groupings
of existential thinkers:
Existentialism has exerted a profound unifying influence
on the usually diverse disciplines of philosophy, theology, literature,
and psychology.
The immediate foundations of existentialism were laid
by Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844–1900), and to some extent by the phenomenologist Edmund
Husserl (1859–1938). The major formulations of existentialism are
by Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), Martin
Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In addition
to these thinkers, the most commonly acknowledged existentialists are
Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Migeul
de Unamuno y Jugo (1864–1936), and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874–1948).
The literary existentialists, in addition to many of
the above, are Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881),
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), Frank Kafka (1883–1924), Albert
Camus (1913–1960), André Gide (1869–1951) and André Malraux.
The most noted men in the field of existential psychology,
in addition to Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Sartre, are Viktor
Frankl, Rollo May, Ludwig Binswanger,
and Roland Kuhn.
Do not use this site as a study
guide. The Existential Primer is a “living” academic
project, unlike a static text. This primer is only a shallow introduction
to the thinkers profiled. The incomplete nature of this website might result
in misunderstanding the profiled individuals.
These pages are revised often because scholarship is never ending. Consult any citations
included because within them is where you will find the experts.
Read their works!
NOTE: Citations are not in MLA or APA format to prevent “borrowing”
from The Existential Primer. Full lists of citations appear at the end of each page. Present tense is used when referencing a published work, while past tense is favored on these pages because the major figures are… dead. Inline citations take the form (Author p. page) with no year. A title is included if there might be confusion as to the work. Quoted long passages appear indented with the <blockquote> tag and cited in the format:
— Work;
Author, p. Page
From Metaphysics
The early thinkers associated with existentialism concentrated
their writings and lectures upon the metaphysical. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
and Heidegger are the primary intellectual
and metaphysical existentialists, even though Heidegger claimed to be rejecting metaphysics in
his works. The novelist Dostoevsky also
emphasized metaphysical questions in
his writings.
… [T]here is a very strong spiritual current that carries through into
Existentialist writing well into the twentieth century and why there
is often a desire to go beyond the present material, physical being and
to achieve some kind of transcendence.
— Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed;
Steven Earnshaw, p. 5
What Are Metaphysics?
Literally, “metaphysics” are those disciplines that
are “beyond physics.” In practice, metaphysics is the study of abstract
concepts and the very nature of abstract thinking.
Interestingly, the metaphysicians associated with existentialism
were so dedicated to thought that they were generally asocial, while caring
a great deal about mankind.
Metaphysical Questions
The most basic, and complex, metaphysical questions include:
What is “truth” and is anything irrefutably true?
What is “real” and how can we know reality with any certainty?
Questions of Faith
Reference works indicate that Nietzsche (1844–1900)
was not a reader of Kierkegaard’s essays
(1813–1855), but they both pursued the same general question: What, short
of a fear of a Creator, limits the actions of an individual? Kierkegaard
approached the problem from the possibility that Christianity, and faith
in general, is irrational. Kierkegaard argued that proving the existence
of a single, supreme entity was not a useful pursuit. Instead, Kierkegaard
believed, the important test of a man was his commitment to faith despite
the absurdity of that faith.
Nietzsche, often characterized
as an atheist, was more precisely a critic of organized religion and the
doctrines of his time. He believed that organized religion, especially
the powerful Catholic church, was opposed to anyone gaining power or self-reliance
without consent. Nietzsche used the phrase herd to describe the
populous, which followed the churches willingly. Nietzsche argued that
proving the existence of a Creator was neither possible nor important.
However, while Kierkegaard considered devotion in the absence of
proof courageous, Nietzsche considered the pursuit of personal excellence
a sign of courage. Nietzsche’s philosophy can be compared to Milton’s Lucifer in Paradise Lost.
Lucifer said, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
Some twentieth-century theologians have debated these
differing views of man's relationship with the Creator. The writers addressing
this issue include Karl Barth, Martin
Buber, and Paul Tillich. This group is referred to as
the religious or theological existentialists.
Tillich was one of the most influential members of this group. Because
he emigrated to the United States after opposing the National Socialists
in Germany, Tillich was embraced by the American intellectual community.
Political Thinkers
It might be a bit unfair to call the French Existentialists
politicians, but they were politically active and often politically motivated.
France was the center of political existentialism, as noted in the included history. German philosophers, until World War II,
were isolated from daily political struggles. Even during the two world
wars, the German philosophers could only imagine the horrors of concentration
camps. The French Resistance, meanwhile, was the refuge of some of France’s
leading thinkers.
There is certainly nothing in Existential thought itself which
necessitates political engagement, although it can certainly be argued,
especially in the Sartrean line of thought, that 'to exist' is 'to act',
is to be engaged in a manner with the world and others and is therefore
not like Kierkegaard's view of existence as a deepening inwardness which
has the result of removing the individual from the public realm.
— Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed;
Earnshaw, p. 12
Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert
Camus, recognized as the two most influential 20th-century existential
writers, were both active in the French Resistance. Camus had been politically
active in his native Algeria. Camus had been born into poverty. As a
result, he was drawn into socialist groups while attending college. Sartre,
in comparison, was more political after World War II. His family’s prominent
social standing had isolated him from most political matters. The war
galvanized these two men into activists. Sartre became a leading defender
of the Soviet Union for a time, while Camus promoted what he called “humanistic
socialism” or socialism with compassion.
It was over political stances that Camus and Sartre fell out,
and Sartre is often seen as abandoning Existentialism for socialism.
It is Sartre again who articulates the difficulty his brand of intellectual
finds when it comes to committing to political activity; it is dramatized in a number of his creative pieces, for example the play Dirty
Hands (1948), The Roads to Freedom novel trilogy (1945-9), and in his
essay ‘Search for a Method’ (1957) which had originally begun as a piece
on the situation of Existentialism in the latter half of the 1950s.
— Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed;
Earnshaw, p. 14
Other thinkers associated with existentialism also shifted
towards political affairs at the expense of academic philosophical pursuits. The
shift from primarily philosophical to primarily political concerns among
the “original” existentialists was completed by de Beauvoir.
Simone de Beauvoir in her novel The Blood of Others (1945)
explores the relationship between individual authenticity and our being-in-the-world-with-others.
The significance of choice and freedom is all the more dramatic for being
set among the French Resistance in the Second World War and so the choices
facing the individual are political. For de Beauvoir there is the inescapable
fact that when we choose for ourselves we choose for others, to the point
where we may be responsible for the deaths of others. With her book The
Second Sex (1949), however, she too began to move away from a more central
Existentialist perspective to a primarily political one. In the narrative
that puts Sartre and others closely associated with him at the centre
of Existentialism, it is indeed politics which brings about the end of
that particular driving force.
— Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed;
Earnshaw, p. 14
European texts as well as the writings of Marx and
Lenin help clarify communism and socialism as understood by the political
existentialists. The writings of Camus, Sartre,
and other existentialists who claimed to be either Communist Party supporters
or socialists add to this understanding.
Marx and Existentialism
The American public has been taught that the “real” definition
of Marism is communal living. This is not the case in most writings contemporary
to Karl Marx himself. In 1847, Marx explained
to the Communist League of London that a strong central power was needed
to manage the production and distribution of goods for the benefit of all. Marx abandoned
Engels’ idea that utopia was all working for each other, with no central
structure.
Marx stated that
a dictatorship was a step toward the “classless” society, stating in 1852
that “class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Remember that Marx’s famous quote, from about 1880, is “I am not a Marxist,”
referring to the misinterpretation of his writings.
Marx would have,
in fact, considered the Soviet Union a Marxist nation, in that he defined
Marxism in his letters as a belief that a few men can and should decide
issues for the masses, freeing them from the problems of capitalism. In
other words, Marx thought it honorable that some men would
sacrifice their freedom to worry about the business of production, leaving
the masses equal and free to pursue their interests. Marx was
asked what these men would do if everyone wanted to go fishing when the
society needed wheat. His answer was to state that Marxism was not freedom
to do anything, but freedom from things, such as worries about money, food,
and shelter.
In other words, sacrifice your freedom to do things in
favor of a freedom from things. That is, in its simplest form, the promise
that Marx, not necessarily Engels, saw in a single-party,
dictatorial government. His biggest concerns were the basics of life. This
makes sense, as he saw that European culture was very exclusive, with the
poor always worrying about basic needs. Communism has come to mean Marxism,
which his own writings indicate was not a utopian society in which men
were free to do as they wanted. Only his early writings were so idealistic
as to dream of worker-owners. By the 1850s, Marx was an authoritarian.
Lenin and Stalin took these later writings to justify killing “enemies
of the state.”
Camus and Sartre,
both originally supporters of Marxist ideas, used their fame as writers
of fiction to promote their ideals. The metaphysicians would have avoided
most direct political engagement. Camus accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1957, considering it a tool to argue for human rights. Curiously, Sartre,
who loved to be the center of attention, refused to accept the award in
1964. His public refusal probably attracted more attention for him.
Public perception of existentialism was furthered (and
tainted) by the political existentialists. For many Americans, the existentialists
are Sartre and Camus, with Nietzsche symbolizing an even darker image.
