Existentialism

We explain what existentialism is, its history, characteristics and main authors. Furthermore, its currents in relation to the divine.

What is existentialism?

Existentialism is a philosophical movement that thinks that people first exist and then acquire their essence (what characterizes them). This idea is known thanks to the phrase by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980): “existence to essence”.

Existentialism emerged in the 19th century and had its greatest development during the first half of the 20th century. The literary movement derived from philosophical premises, represented by Albert Camus (1913-1960), was also called existentialism.

In addition to Sartre and Camus, among the main exponents of existentialism are Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). All of them made philosophy from the individual and their experiences of the world.

For existentialists, individuals are free and responsible for their actions. For this reason it is that many existentialist works focused on freedom, responsibility and morality that both concepts entail.

Characteristics of existentialism

As a philosophical current, existentialism is characterized by the time in which it emerged and by some common ideas that its members shared:

• It developed between the First and Second World Wars.
• He promoted the idea that existence precedes essence. This means that there is no essence that predetermines human beings, but rather that each one is free to construct their own way of being.
• He held a intimate relationship between freedom, responsibility what did it mean and the anguish that accompanied that feeling of responsibility.
• He did not have philosophers who agreed point by point in their positions. What brought them together was criticism of established values in the society of the time.
• I didn't trust any established belief system. Existentialists did not believe in explaining the essence of existence from general systems of thought.
• He was accused of proposing a profoundly individualistic.
• He opposed any doctrine that understood human beings as a complete reality self-explanatory.
• He opposed the idea of ​​destiny. For existentialists, human beings were responsible for themselves and master of their destiny.

According to Sartre, existentialism was a form of humanism: being an existentialist meant having empathy for others and advocating social responsibility.

History of existentialism

Existentialism emerged in the ideas of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche as well as in the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881).

Those who made up the existentialist movement began writing in the interwar period of the 20th century. Between the 1940s and 1950s, the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir emerged in France. His works of fiction, as well as his academic texts, addressed themes such as absurdity, nothingness, anguish, responsibility and freedom.

Because it emerged between the two great wars of the 20th century, existentialism accompanied the thinking of the time that rejected the current morality so far.

This rejection, added to the reading of the texts of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger, laid the intellectual foundations to found the philosophical thought of the existentialists. Furthermore, early existentialist works, such as Being and nothingness and The nauseaby Sartre, and The foreigner and The plagueby Camus, set the tone and direction of the movement.

In 1945, and after being accused of being pessimistic and anti-humanist by different social and academic sectors, existentialists defended themselves against intellectual attacks in the conference that Sartre gave at the Maintenant club, in Paris. From this talk came the book Existentialism is a humanismas well as a set of theoretical premises solid enough to mark a way of thinking different from the previous ones.

Representatives of existentialism

The main representatives of existentialism were:

• Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Danish philosopher and theologian, along with Nietzsche, he is considered the father of existentialism. His work focused on human existence, the individual, subjectivity, freedom, despair and anguish.
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). German philosopher, poet, musician and philologist, he is considered one of the most important thinkers in the Western world. His work covered topics as diverse as art, history, tragedy, religion and science. He is known as one of the three “masters of suspicion,” along with Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.
• Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). German philosopher, he was one of the most important of the 20th century and of the contemporary Western tradition. One of his greatest works,Being and timewas a decisive starting point for authors such as Sartre, Camus and De Beauvoir.
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). French philosopher, novelist, playwright and politician, he is one of the greatest exponents of existentialism. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, which he rejected, and partner of the philosopher and feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir, he developed a philosophical and literary work in which freedom and personal responsibility, as well as existential emptiness, occupied the central place.
• Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). French philosopher, writer and professor, her thought was fundamental for the emergence of feminist doctrine, as well as for the fight for women's rights and the decriminalization of abortion. He is part of existentialism and one of his most important works is The second sex.
• Albert Camus (1913-1960). French philosopher, playwright, journalist and writer born in Algeria, his work was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and German existentialism. He was part of the French resistance during the German occupation in World War II and in 1957 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Types of existentialism

It is considered that there were three existentialist schools, each one marked by its own position regarding the idea of ​​the existence of God.

• Christian existentialism. This school proposes that each person must make their decisions independently, since the decisions then constitute their essence. It is your actions that will be evaluated before God, since that is the only way to maintain constant scrutiny of your own actions.
  Apart from Kierkegaard, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), the Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), and the French philosophers and writers Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) are considered to belong to this form of existentialism. , Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), Pierre Butang (1916-1998), as well as
• atheistic existentialism. Atheistic existentialism maintained that, since there was no God who shaped the human essence, there was no way to know the essence of people in advance. Its representatives were Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus.
  This form of existentialism denied any form of transcendental, metaphysical or religious thought. In particular, because the Sartrean formulation (“existence precedes essence”), was opposed to the metaphysical tradition founded by Aristotle and inherited by Christianity. In this way, atheistic existentialism confronts the fear and anguish of death, without offering any type of final salvation at the hands of God or nature.
• agnostic existentialism. This aspect is associated more than anything with the work of Camus and his way of thinking. For Camus, the existence or nonexistence of God and the divine should not modify the existence of the human being in any sense, since divine reality did not solve any ethical problem, nor did it provide any consolation to the human being.

Continue with: Agnosticism

References

• Sartre, J.P. (2006). Existentialism is a humanism (Vol. 37). UNAM.
• Prini, P. (1975). History of existentialism. The Athenaeum.
• Marino, G. (Ed.). (2007). Basic writings of existentialism. Modern Library.
• Echeverría, B. (2006). The humanism of existentialism. Dianoia, 51(57), 189-199.
• Flynn, T. (2009). Existentialism. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.