Existentialism

Existentialism – A Definition
Existentialism in the broader sense is a 20th century philosophy that is centered upon the
analysis of existence and of the way humans find themselves existing in the world. The notion is
that humans exist first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence or
nature. 

In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of
life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching
to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their
experiences, beliefs, and outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of
an objective form of truth. An existentialist believes that a person should be forced to choose and
be responsible without the help of laws, ethnic rules, or traditions.

Existentialism – What It Is and Isn’t

Existentialism takes into consideration the underlying concepts:

 Human free will

 Human nature is chosen through life choices
 A person is best when struggling against their individual nature, fighting for life
 Decisions are not without stress and consequences
 There are things that are not rational
 Personal responsibility and discipline is crucial
 Society is unnatural and its traditional religious and secular rules are arbitrary
 Worldly desire is futile

Existentialism is broadly defined in a variety of concepts and there can be no one answer as to
what it is, yet it does not support any of the following:

 wealth, pleasure, or honor make the good life

 social values and structure control the individual
 accept what is and that is enough in life
 science can and will make everything better
 people are basically good but ruined by society or external forces
 “I want my way, now!” or “It is not my fault!” mentality

There is a wide variety of philosophical, religious, and political ideologies that make up
existentialism so there is no universal agreement in an arbitrary set of ideals and beliefs. Politics
vary, but each seeks the most individual freedom for people within a society.

Existentialism – Impact on Society

Existentialistic ideas came out of a time in society when there was a deep sense of despair
following the Great Depression and World War II. There was a spirit of optimism in society that
was destroyed by World War I and its mid-century calamities. This despair has been articulated
by existentialist philosophers well into the 1970s and continues on to this day as a popular way
of thinking and reasoning (with the freedom to choose one’s preferred moral belief system and
lifestyle). 

An existentialist could either be a religious moralist, agnostic relativist, or an amoral atheist.

Kierkegaard, a religious philosopher, Nietzsche, an anti-Christian, Sartre, an atheist, and Camus
an atheist, are credited for their works and writings about existentialism. Sartre is noted for
bringing the most international attention to existentialism in the 20th century. 

Each basically agrees that human life is in no way complete and fully satisfying because of
suffering and losses that occur when considering the lack of perfection, power, and control one
has over their life. Even though they do agree that life is not optimally satisfying, it nonetheless
has meaning. Existentialism is the search and journey for true self and true personal meaning in
life. 

Most importantly, it is the arbitrary act that existentialism finds most objectionable-that is, when
someone or society tries to impose or demand that their beliefs, values, or rules be faithfully
accepted and obeyed. Existentialists believe this destroys individualism and makes a person
become whatever the people in power desire thus they are dehumanized and reduced to being an
object. Existentialism then stresses that a person's judgment is the determining factor for what is
to be believed rather than by arbitrary religious or secular world values.

Introduction

Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is

the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational
decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human
existence, and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It
holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this
nothingness (and hence to find meaning in life) is by embracing existence.

Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal

responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound anguish
or dread). It therefore emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental, and holds that
the only way to rise above the essentially absurd condition of humanity (which is characterized
by suffering and inevitable death) is by exercising our personal freedom and choice (a
complete rejection of Determinism).

Often, Existentialism as a movement is used to describe those who refuse to belong

to any school of thought, repudiating of the adequacy of any body of beliefs or systems,
claiming them to be superficial, academic and remote from life. Although it has much in
common with Nihilism, Existentialism is more a reaction against traditional philosophies, such
as Rationalism, Empiricism and Positivism, that seek to discover an ultimate order and
universal meaning in metaphysical principles or in the structure of the observed world. It asserts
that people actually make decisions based on what has meaning to them, rather than what
is rational.

Existentialism originated with the 19th Century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich

Nietzsche, although neither used the term in their work. In the 1940s and 1950s, French
existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus (1913 - 1960), and Simone de
Beauvoir (1908 - 1986) wrote scholarly and fictional works that popularized existential themes,
such as dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment and nothingness.
Main Beliefs Back to Top

Unlike René Descartes, who believed in the primacy of conciousness, Existentialists assert that a
human being is "thrown into"into a concrete, inveterate universe that cannot be "thought
away", and therefore existence ("being in the world") precedes consciousness, and is
the ultimate reality. Existence, then, is prior to essence (essence is the meaning that may be
ascribed to life), contrary to traditional philosophical views dating back to the ancient Greeks.
As Sartre put it: "At first [Man] is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself
will have made what he will be."

Kierkegaard saw rationality as a mechanism humans use to counter their existential anxiety,

their fear of being in the world. Sartre saw rationality as a form of "bad faith", an attempt by the
self to impose structure on a fundamentally irrational and random world of phenomena ("the
other"). This bad faith hinders us from finding meaning in freedom, and confines us within
everyday experience.

Kierkegaard also stressed that individuals must choose their own way without the aid
of universal, objective standards. Friedrich Nietzsche further contended that the individual
must decide which situations are to count as moral situations. Thus, most Existentialists believe
that personal experience and acting on one's own convictions are essential in arriving at
the truth, and that the understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation
is superior to that of a detached, objective observer (similar to the concept of Subjectivism).

According to Camus, when an individual's longing for order collides with the real world's lack
of order, the result is absurdity. Human beings are therefore subjects in an indifferent,
ambiguous and absurd universe, in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but
rather can be created (however provisionally and unstably) by human actions and
interpretations.

Existentialism can be atheistic, theological (or theistic) or agnostic. Some Existentialists,

like Nietzsche, proclaimed that "God is dead" and that the concept of God is obsolete. Others,
like Kierkegaard, were intensely religious, even if they did not feel able to justify it. The
important factor for Existentialists is the freedom of choice to believe or not to believe.
History of Existentialism

Existentialist-type themes appear in early Buddhist and Christian writings (including those

of St. Augustine and St.Thomas Aquinas). In the 17th Century, Blaise Pascal suggested
that, without a God, life would be meaningless, boring and miserable, much as later
Existentialists believed, although, unlike them, Pascal saw this as a reason for the existence of a
God. His near-contemporary, John Locke, advocated individual autonomy and self-
determination, but in the positive pursuit of Liberalism and Individualism rather than in
response to an Existentialist experience.

Existentialism in its currently recognizable form was inspired by the 19th Century Danish

philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin
Heidegger, Karl Jaspers (1883 - 1969) and Edmund Husserl, and writers like the
Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881) and the Czech Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924). It can be
argued that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer were also
important influences on the development of Existentialism, because the philosophies
of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were written in response or in opposition to them.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, like Pascal before them, were interested in people's concealment of

the meaninglessness of life and their use of diversion to escape from boredom. However,
unlike Pascal, they considered the role of making free choices on fundamental values and beliefs
to be essential in the attempt to change the nature and identity of the chooser. In Kierkegaard's
case, this results in the "knight of faith", who puts complete faith in himself and in God, as
described in his 1843 work "Fear and Trembling". In Nietzsche's case, the much
maligned "Übermensch" (or "Superman") attains superiority and transcendence without
resorting to the "other-worldliness" of Christianity, in his books "Thus Spake
Zarathustra" (1885) and "Beyond Good and Evil" (1887).

Martin Heidegger was an important early philosopher in the movement, particularly his

influential 1927 work "Being and Time", although he himself vehemently denied being an
existentialist in the Sartrean sense. His discussion of ontology is rooted in an analysis of
the mode of existence of individual human beings, and his analysis
of authenticity and anxiety in modern culture make him very much an Existentialist in the usual
modern usage.

Existentialism came of age in the mid-20th Century, largely through

the scholarly and fictional works of the French existentialists, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert
Camus (1913 - 1960) and Simone de Beauvoir (1908 - 1986). Maurice Merleau-Ponty(1908 -
1961) is another influential and often overlooked French Existentialist of the period.

Sartre is perhaps the most well-known, as well as one of the few to have actually accepted being
called an "existentialist". "Being and Nothingness" (1943) is his most important work, and his
novels and plays, including "Nausea" (1938) and "No Exit(1944), helped to popularize the
movement.

In "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942), Albert Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth of
Sisyphus (who is condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, only to have it roll to the bottom
again each time) to exemplify the pointlessness of existence, but shows that Sisyphus ultimately
finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it.

Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist who spent much of her life alongside Sartre,
wrote about feminist and existential ethics in her works, including "The Second Sex" (1949)
and "The Ethics of Ambiguity" (1947).

Although Sartre is considered by most to be the pre-eminent Existentialist, and by many to be

an important and innovative philosopher in his own right, others are much less impressed by his
contributions. Heidegger himself thought that Sartre had merely taken his own work
and regressed it back to the subject-object orientated philosophy of Descartes and Husserl,
which is exactly what Heidegger had been trying to free philosophy from. Some see Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961) as a better Existentialist philosopher, particular for his
incorporation of the body as our way of being in the world, and for his more complete analysis
of perception (two areas in which Heidegger's work is often seen as deficient).

Criticisms of Existentialism Back to Top

Herbert Marcuse (1898 - 1979) has criticized Existentialism, especially Sartre's "Being and
Nothingness", for projecting some features of living in a modern oppressive society (features
such as anxiety and meaninglessness) onto the nature of existence itself.

Roger Scruton (1944 - ) has claimed that both Heidegger's concept

of inauthenticity and Sartre's concept of bad faith are both self-inconsistent, in that
they deny any universal moral creed, yet speak of these concepts as if everyone is bound to
abide by them.

Logical Positivists, such as A. J. Ayer and Rudolf Carnap (1891 - 1970), claim that

existentialists frequently become confusedover the verb "to be" (which is meaningless if used
without a predicate) and by the word "nothing" (which is the negation of existence and therefore
cannot be assummed to refer to something).

Marxists, especially in post-War France, found Existentialism to run counter to their emphasis on
the solidarity of human beings and their theory of economic determinism. They further argued
that Existentialism's emphasis on individual choice leads to contemplation rather than to action,
and that only the bourgeoisie has the luxury to make themselves what they are through their
choices, so they considered Existentialism to be a bourgeois philosophy.

Christian critics complain that Existentialism portrays humanity in the worst possible light,

overlooking the dignity and gracethat comes from being made in the image of God. Also,
according to Christian critics, Existentialists are unable to account for the moral dimension of
human life, and have no basis for an ethical theory if they deny that humans are bound by
the commands of God. On the other hand, some commentators have objected to Kierkegaard's
continued espousal of Christianity, despite his inability to effectively justify it.

In more general terms, the common use of pseudonymous characters in existentialist writing
can make it seem like the authors are unwilling to own their insights, and
are confusing philosophy with literature.
Existentialism, any of various philosophies, most influential in continental Europefrom about
1930 to the mid-20th century, that have in common an interpretation of human existence in the
world that stresses its concreteness and its problematic character.

Nature Of Existentialist Thought And Manner

According to existentialism: (1) Existence is always particular and individual—

always my existence, your existence, his existence, her existence. (2) Existence is primarily the
problem of existence (i.e., of its mode of being); it is, therefore, also the investigation of the
meaning of Being. (3) That investigation is continually faced with diverse possibilities, from
among which the existent (i.e., the human individual) must make a selection, to which he must
then commit himself. (4) Because those possibilities are constituted by the individual’s
relationships with things and with other humans, existence is always a being-in-the-world—i.e.,
in a concrete and historically determinate situation that limits or conditions choice. Humans are
therefore called, in Martin Heidegger’s phrase, Dasein (“there being”) because they are defined
by the fact that they exist, or are in the world and inhabit it.
With respect to the first point, that existence is particular, existentialism is opposed to any
doctrine that views human beings as the manifestation of an absolute or of an infinite substance.
It is thus opposed to most forms of idealism, such as those that stress Consciousness, Spirit,
Reason, Idea, or Oversoul. Second, it is opposed to any doctrine that sees in human beings some
given and complete reality that must be resolved into its elements in order to be known or
contemplated. It is thus opposed to any form of objectivism or scientism, since those approaches
stress the crass reality of external fact. Third, existentialism is opposed to any form of
necessitarianism; for existence is constituted by possibilities from among which the individual
may choose and through which he can project himself. And, finally, with respect to the fourth
point, existentialism is opposed to any solipsism(holding that I alone exist) or any
epistemological idealism (holding that the objects of knowledge are mental), because existence,
which is the relationship with other beings, always extends beyond itself, toward the being of
those entities; it is, so to speak, transcendence.

Starting from such bases, existentialism can take diverse and contrasting directions. It can insist
on the transcendence of Being with respect to existence, and, by holding that transcendence to be
the origin or foundation of existence, it can thus assume a theistic form. On the other hand, it can
hold that human existence, posing itself as a problem, projects itself with absolute freedom,
creating itself by itself, thus assuming to itself the function of God. As such, existentialism
presents itself as a radical atheism. Or it may insist on the finitude of human existence—i.e., on
the limits inherent in its possibilities of projection and choice. As such, existentialism presents
itself as a humanism.

Western philosophy: The existentialism of Jaspers and Sartre

Existentialism, true to its roots in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, was oriented toward

two major themes: the analysis of human existence, or Being, and the centrality of

human choice. Thus, its chief theoretical energies were devoted to ontology and

decision.

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From 1940 on, with the diffusion of existentialism through continental Europe, its directions
developed in keeping with the diversity of the interests to which they were subject:
the religious interest, the metaphysical (or nature of Being) interest, and the moral and political
interest. That diversity was rooted, at least in part, in the diversity of sources on which
existentialism draws. One such source is the subjectivism of the 4th–5th-century theologian St.
Augustine, who exhorted others not to go outside themselves in the quest for truth, for it is
within them that truth abides. “If you find that you are by nature mutable,” he wrote, “transcend
yourself.” Another source is the Dionysian Romanticism of the 19th-century German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who exalted life in its most irrational and cruel features and
made such exaltation the proper task of the “higher man,” who exists beyond good and evil. Still
another source is the nihilism of the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who, in his novels,
presented human beings as continually defeated as a result of their choices and as continually
placed before the insoluble enigma of themselves. As a consequence of the diversity of such
sources, existentialist doctrines focus on several aspects of existence.

They focus, first, on the problematic character of the human situation, through which the
individual is continually confronted with diverse possibilities or alternatives, among which he
may choose and on the basis of which he can project his life.

Second, the doctrines focus on the phenomena of that situation and especially on those that are
negative or baffling, such as the concern or preoccupation that dominates the individual because
of the dependence of all his possibilities upon his relationships with things and with other
people; the dread of death or of the failure of his projects; the “shipwreck” upon insurmountable
“limit situations” (death, the struggle and suffering inherent in every form of life, the situation in
which everyone daily finds himself); the guilt inherent in the limitation of choices and in the
responsibilities that derive from making them; the boredom from the repetition of situations; and
the absurdity of his dangling between the infinity of his aspirations and the finitude of his
possibilities.
Third, the doctrines focus on the intersubjectivity that is inherent in existence and is understood
either as a personal relationship between two individuals, I and thou, such that the thou may be
another person or God, or as an impersonal relationship between the anonymous mass and the
individual self deprived of any authentic communication with others.
Fourth, existentialism focuses on ontology, on some doctrine of the general meaning of Being,
which can be approached in any of a number of ways: through the analysis of the temporal
structure of existence; through the etymologies of the most common words—on the supposition
that in ordinary language Being itself is disclosed, at least partly (and thus is also hidden);
through the rational clarification of existence by which it is possible to catch a glimpse, through
ciphers or symbols, of the Being of the world, of the soul, and of God;
through existentialpsychoanalysis that makes conscious the fundamental “project” in which
existence consists; or, finally, through the analysis of the fundamental modality to which all the
aspects of existence conform—i.e., through the analysis of possibility.
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There is, in the fifth place, the therapeutic value of existential analysis that permits, on the one
hand, the liberating of human existence from the beguilements or debasements to which it is
subject in daily life and, on the other, the directing of human existence toward its authenticity—
i.e., toward a relationship that is well-grounded on itself, and with other humans, with the world,
and with God.

The various forms of existentialism may also be distinguished on the basis of language, which is
an indication of the cultural traditions to which they belong and which often explains the
differences in terminology among various authors. The principal representatives of German
existentialism in the 20th century were Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers; those of French
personalistic existentialism were Gabriel Marcel and Jean-Paul Sartre; that of
French phenomenology were Maurice Merleau-Ponty; that of Spanish existentialism was José
Ortega y Gasset; that of Russian idealistic existentialism was Nikolay Berdyayev (who, however,
lived half of his adult life in France); and that of Italian existentialism was Nicola Abbagnano.
The linguistic differences, however, are not decisive for a determination of
philosophical affinities. For example, Marcel and Sartre were farther apart than Heidegger and
Sartre; and there was greater affinity between Abbagnano and Merleau-Ponty than between
Merleau-Ponty and Marcel.
Historical Survey Of Existentialism

Many of the theses that existentialists defend or illustrate in their analyses are drawn from the
wider philosophical tradition.
Precursors of existentialism
The problem of what humans are in themselves can be discerned in
the Socraticimperative “know thyself,” as well as in the work of the 16th-century French
essayist Michel de Montaigne and Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French religious philosopher and
mathematician. Montaigne had said: “If my mind could gain a foothold, I would not write essays,
I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.” And Pascal had insisted
on the precarious position of humans situated between Being and Nothingness: “We burn with
the desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching
to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.”

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The stance of the internal tribunal—of one’s withdrawal into one’s own spiritual interior—which
reappeared in some existentialists (in Marcel and Sartre, for example) already belonged, as
earlier noted, to St. Augustine. In early 19th-century French philosophy, it was defended by a
reformed ideologue of the French Revolution, Marie Maine de Biran, who wrote: “Even from
infancy I remember that I marvelled at the sense of my existence. I was already led by instinct to
look within myself in order to know how it was possible that I could be alive and be myself.”
From then on, that posture inspired a considerable part of French philosophy.
The theme of the irreducibility of existence to reason, common to many existentialists, was also
defended by the German idealist F.W.J. von Schelling as he argued against G.W.F. Hegel in the
last phase of his philosophy; Schelling’s polemic, in turn, inspired the thinker usually cited as the
father of existentialism, the religious Dane Søren Kierkegaard.
The requirement to know humanity in its particularity and, therefore, in terms of a procedure
different from those used by science to obtain knowledge of natural objects was confronted
by Wilhelm Dilthey, an expounder of historical reason, who viewed “understanding” (Verstehen)
as the procedure and thus as the proper method of the human sciences. Understanding, according
to Dilthey, consists in the reliving and reproducing of the experience of others. Hence, it is also a
feeling together with others and a sympathetic participation in their emotions. Understanding,
therefore, accomplishes a unity between the knowing object and the object known.
Immediate background and founders
The theses of existentialism found a particular relevance during World War II, when Europe
found itself threatened alternately by material and spiritual destruction. Under those
circumstances of uncertainty, the optimism of Romantic inspiration, by which the destiny of
humankind is infallibly guaranteed by an infinite force (such as Reason, the Absolute, or Mind)
and propelled by it toward an ineluctable progress, appeared to be untenable. Existentialism was
moved to insist on the instability and the risk of all human reality, to acknowledge that the
individual is “thrown into the world”—i.e., abandoned to a determinism that could render
his initiatives impossible—and to hold that his very freedom is conditioned and hampered by
limitations that could at any moment render it empty. The negative aspects of existence, such as
pain, frustration, sickness, and death—which 19th-century optimism refused to take seriously
because they do not touch the infinite principle that those optimists believed to be manifest in
humans—became for existentialism the essential features of human reality.
The thinkers who, by virtue of the negative character of their philosophy, constituted the
exception to 19th-century Romanticism thus became the acknowledged masters of the
existentialists. Against Hegelian necessitarianism, Kierkegaard interpreted existence in terms of
possibility: dread—which dominates existence through and through—is “the sentiment of the
possible.” It is the feeling of what can happen to a person even when he has made all of his
calculations and taken every precaution. Despair, on the other hand, discovers in possibility its
only remedy, for “If man remains without possibilities, it is as if he lacked air.” The German
philosopher and economist Karl Marx, in holding that the individual is constituted essentially by
the “relationships of work and production” that tie him to things and other humans, had insisted
on the alienating character that those relationships assume in capitalist society, where private
property transforms the individual from an end to a means, from a person to the instrument of an
impersonal process that subjugates him without regard for his needs and his desires. Nietzsche
had viewed the amor fati (“love of fate”) as the “formula for man’s greatness.” Freedom consists
in desiring what is and what has been and in choosing it and loving it as if nothing better could
be desired.

Emergence as a movement
Modern existentialism reproduced such ideas and combined them in more or less coherent ways.
Human existence is, for all the forms of existentialism, the projection of the future on the basis of
the possibilities that constitute it. For some existentialists (Heidegger and Jaspers, for example),
the existential possibilities, inasmuch as they are rooted in the past, merely lead every project for
the future back to the past, so that only what has already been chosen can be chosen
(Nietzsche’s amor fati). For others (such as Sartre), the possibilities that are offered to existential
choice are infinite and equivalent, such that the choice between them is indifferent; and for still
others (Abbagnano and Merleau-Ponty), the existential possibilities are limited by the situation,
but they neither determine the choice nor render it indifferent. The issue is one of individuating,
in every concrete situation and by means of a specific inquiry, the real possibilities offered to
humans. For all the existentialists, however, the choice among possibilities—i.e., the projection
of existence—implies risks, renunciation, and limitation. Among the risks, the most serious is the
descent into inauthenticity or alienation, the degradation from being a person into being a thing.
Against that risk, for the theological forms of existentialism (e.g., Marcel, the Swiss
theologian Karl Barth, and the German biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann), there is the guarantee
of transcendent help from God, which in its turn is guaranteed by faith.
Existentialism, consequently, by insisting on the individuality and nonrepeatability of existence
(following Kierkegaard and Nietzsche), is sometimes led to regard one’s coexistence with other
humans (held to be, however, an ineluctable fact of the human situation) as a condemnation or
alienation of humanity. Marcel said that all that exists in society beyond the individual is
“expressible by a minus sign,” and Sartre affirmed, in his major work L’Être et le
néant (1943; Being and Nothingness), that “the Other is the hidden death of my possibilities.”
For other forms of existentialism, however, a coexistence that is not anonymous (as that of a
mob) but grounded on personal communication is the condition of authentic existence.
Existentialism has had ramifications in various areas of contemporary culture. In literature, Franz
Kafka, author of haunting novels, walking in Kierkegaard’s footsteps, described human existence
as the quest for a stable, secure, and radiant reality that continually eludes it (Das
Schloss [1926; The Castle]) or as threatened by a guilty verdict about which it knows neither the
reason nor the circumstances but against which it can do nothing—a verdict that ends with death
(Der Prozess[1925; The Trial]).
The theses of contemporary existentialism were then diffused and popularized by the novels and
plays of Sartre and by the writings of the French novelists and dramatists Simone de Beauvoir—
an important philosopher of existentialism in her own right—and Albert Camus. In L’Homme
révolté (1951; The Rebel), Camus described the “metaphysical rebellion” as “the movement by
which a man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation.” In art,
the analogues of existentialism may be considered to be Surrealism, Expressionism, and in
general those schools that view the work of art not as the reflection of a reality external to
humans but as the free immediate expression of human reality.

Existentialism made its entrance into psychopathology through Jaspers’s Allgemeine

Psychopathologie (1913; General Psychopathology), which was inspired by the need to
understand the world in which the mental patient lives by means of a sympathetic participation in
his experience. Later, the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger, in one of his celebrated
works, Über Ideenflucht (1933; “On the Flight of Ideas”), inspired by Heidegger’s thought,
viewed the origin of mental illness as a failure in the existential possibilities that constitute
human existence (Dasein). From Jaspers and Binswanger, the existentialist current became
diffused and variously stated in contemporary psychiatry.
In theology, Barth’s Römerbrief (1919; The Epistle to the Romans) started the “Kierkegaard
revival,” the emblem of which was expressed by Barth himself; it is “the relation of this God
with this man; the relation of this man with this God—this is the only theme of the Bible and of
philosophy.” Within the bounds of that current, on the one hand, there was an insistence upon the
absolute transcendence of God with respect to the individual, who could place himself in
relationship with God only by denying himself and by abandoning himself to a gratuitously
granted faith. On the other hand, there was the requirement to demythologize the religious
content of faith, particularly of the Christian faith, in order to allow the message of
the eschatological event (of salvation) to emerge from among human existential possibilities.
Methodological Issues In Existentialism

The methods that existentialists employ in their interpretations have a presupposition in

common: the immediacy of the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted, between
the interrogator and the interrogated, between the problem of being and Being itself. The two
terms coincide in existence: the person who poses the question “What is Being?” cannot but pose
it to himself and cannot respond without starting from his own being.

That common ground notwithstanding, each existentialist thinker has defended and worked out
his own method for the interpretation of existence. Heidegger, an existentialist with ontological
concerns, availed himself of the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology,
which employs speech that manifests or discloses what it is that one is speaking about and that is
true—in the etymological use of the Greek word alētheia (i.e., the sense of uncovering
or manifesting what was hidden). The phenomenon is, from Heidegger’s point of view, not
mere appearance, but the manifestation or disclosure of Being in itself. Phenomenology is thus
capable of disclosing the structure of Being and hence is an ontology of which the point of
departure is the being of the one who poses the question about Being, namely, the human being.

On the other hand, Jaspers, an authority in psychopathology as well as in the philosophy of

human existence, employed the method of the rational clarification of existence; he maintained
that existence, as the quest for Being, is humanity’s effort of rational self-understanding, or
universalizing, and of communicating—a method that presupposes that existence and reason are
the two poles of the being of humans. Reason is possible existence—i.e., existence that, as
Jaspers wrote in his Vernunft und Existenz (1935; Reason and Existenz), becomes “manifest to
itself and as such real, if, with, through and by another existence, it arrives at itself.” Such
activity, however, is never consummated. Thus, when the impossibility of its achievement is
recognized, it is changed into faith, into the recognition of transcendence as providing the only
possibility of its final achievement.

According to Sartre, the foremost philosopher of mid-20th-century France, the method of

philosophy is existential psychoanalysis—i.e., the analysis of the “fundamental project” in which
human existence consists. In contrast to the precepts of Freudian psychoanalysis, which stop
short at the irreducibility of the libido, or primitive psychic drive, existential psychoanalysis tries
to determine the “original choice” through which humans construct their world and decide in a
preliminary way upon particular choices (which, however, may place in crisis
the primordial choice itself).
According to Marcel, the method of philosophy depends upon a recognition of the mystery of
Being (Le Mystère de l’être [1951]; The Mystery of Being)—i.e., of the impossibility of
discovering Being through objective or rational analyses or demonstrations. Philosophy should
lead humanity up, however, to the point of making possible “the productive illumination of
Revelation.”

Finally, according to humanistic existentialism, as represented by Abbagnano and Merleau-

Ponty, the method of philosophy consists of the analysis and the determination—by employing
all available techniques, including those of science—of the structures that constitute existence—
i.e., of the relations that connect the individual with other beings and that figure, therefore, not
only in the constitution of the individual but in the constitution of other beings as well.