Existentialism: what it is, characteristics, authors and works

Sheikh Afjal

Specialist in arts, literature and cultural history

Existentialism is a philosophical and literary current oriented to the analysis of human existence. It emphasizes the principles of individual freedom and responsibility, which must be analyzed as phenomena independent of abstract categories, whether rational, moral or religious.

According to Nicola Abbagnano 's Dictionary of Philosophy , existentialism brings together various tendencies that, although they share their purpose, diverge in their assumptions and conclusions. That is why one can speak of two fundamental types of existentialism: religious or Christian existentialism and atheist or agnostic existentialism, to which we will return later.

As a historical current of thought, existentialism began in the 19th century, but it only reached its peak in the second half of the 20th century.

Characteristics of existentialism

Despite the heterogeneous character of existentialism, the tendencies that have manifested share some characteristics. Let's get to know the most important ones.

Existence precedes essence

For existentialism, human existence precedes essence. In this, he takes an alternate path compared to Western philosophy, which until then explained the meaning of life by postulating transcendental or metaphysical categories (such as the concept of the Idea, the gods, reason, progress or morality), all of them external and prior to the subject and its concrete existence.

Life prevails over abstract reason

Existentialism is opposed to rationalism and empiricism, focused on the valuation of reason and knowledge as a transcendent principle, whether this is postulated as the starting point of existence or as its vital orientation.

Existentialism opposes the hegemony of reason as the foundation of philosophical reflection. From the perspective of existentialists, human experience cannot be conditioned to the absolutization of one of its aspects, since rational thought as an absolute principle denies subjectivity, passions and instincts, as human as consciousness. This also gives it an anti-academic character as opposed to positivism.

Philosophical gaze on the subject

Existentialism proposes to focus the philosophical gaze on the subject itself and not on supra-individual categories. In this way, existentialism returns to the consideration of the subject and his way of existing in front of the universe as an individual and individualized experience. You will therefore be interested in reflecting on the motive of existence and the way to assimilate it.

Thus, he understands human existence as a situated phenomenon, which is why he intends to study the very condition of existence in terms of its possibilities. This encompasses, according to Abbagnano, "the analysis of the most common and fundamental situations in which man finds himself."

Freedom over outer determination

If existence precedes essence, the human being is free and independent of any abstract category. Freedom, therefore, must be exercised from individual responsibility, which would lead to a solid ethic, although independent of a previous imaginary.

Thus, for existentialism, freedom implies full awareness that personal decisions and actions influence the social environment, which makes us co-responsible for good and evil. Hence Jean-Paul Sartre's formulation, according to which freedom is total responsibility in absolute solitude , that is: "Man is condemned to be free" .

This pretension of the existentialists rests on the critical reading of the historical wars, whose crimes have been justified from abstract, suprahuman or supraindividual categories, such as the concepts of nation, civilization, religion, evolution, and stop counting.

existential angst

If fear can be defined as the fear of a specific danger, anguish is, on the other hand, fear of oneself, concern about the consequences of one's own actions and decisions, fear of an existence without consolation, fear of uttering irreparable damage because there are no excuses, justifications or promises. Existential anguish is, somehow, the closest thing to vertigo.

types of existentialism

We have said that, according to Abbagnano, the different existentialisms share the objective of analyzing human existence, but they differ in their assumptions and conclusions. Let's look at this in more detail.

Religious or Christian existentialism

Christian existentialism has as its forerunner the Danish Søren Kierkegaard. It is based on the analysis of the existence of the subject from a theological perspective. For Christian existentialism, the universe is paradoxical. He understands that subjects must relate to God regardless of moral prescriptions, in full use of their individual freedom. In this sense, the human being must face decision-making, a process from which existential anguish derives.

Among its most important representatives, in addition to Kierkegaard, are: Miguel de Unamuno, Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Mounier, Karl Jaspers, Karl Barth, Pierre Boutang, Lev Shestov, Nikolai Berdyaev.

atheist existentialism

Atheistic existentialism rejects any type of metaphysical justification of existence, therefore, it conflicts with the theological perspective of Christian existentialism and with Heidegger's phenomenology.

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Without metaphysics or progress, both the exercise of freedom in Sartre's terms, as well as existence, generate uneasiness, much in spite of its ethical aspiration and the value of human and social relations. In this way, atheistic existentialism opens the doors to the discussion about nothing, to the feeling of abandonment or helplessness and restlessness. All this in the context of existential anguish already formulated in Christian existentialism, although with other justifications.

Among the representatives of atheistic existentialism, the most prominent figures are: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

You may also be interested in: Simone de Beauvoir: who she was and her contributions to feminism .

Historical context of existentialism

The emergence and development of existentialism is closely related to the process of Western history. Therefore, to understand it, it is worth understanding the context. Let's see.

Background of existentialism

The eighteenth century witnessed three fundamental phenomena: the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the development of Enlightenment or Enlightenment, a philosophical and cultural movement that advocated reason as the universal principle and foundation of the vital horizon.

The Enlightenment saw in knowledge and education the mechanisms to free humanity from fanaticism and cultural backwardness, which implied a certain ethical rearmament advocated from the universality of reason.

However, since the 19th century in the Western world it was already notorious that those flags (reason, economic progress of industrialization, republican politics, among others) failed to prevent the moral decadence of the West. For this reason, the 19th century saw the birth of many critical movements of modern reason, both artistic, philosophical and literary.

See also Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment .

The 20th century and the formulation of existentialism

The rearrangement of the economic, political and thought systems of previous centuries, which predicted a rational, moral and ethical world, did not give the expected results. In their place, the world wars followed one another, unmistakable signs of the moral decadence of the West and all its spiritual and philosophical justifications.

Existentialism, from its beginnings, already noted the inability of the West to order that violent transformation. The existentialists of the 20th century who lived through the Second World War had before them the proofs of the decadence of the moral and ethical systems founded on abstract values.

Most representative authors and works

Existentialism began very soon, in the 19th century, but little by little it changed its tendencies. Thus, there are different authors from different generations, who start from a different point of view, partly as a consequence of their historical time. Let's see the three most representative in this section.

Soren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher and theologian born in 1813 and died in 1855, is the author who opens the way to existentialist thought. He will be the first to postulate the need for philosophy to look from the individual.

For Kierkegaard, the individual must find the truth in himself, outside the determinations of social discourse. That will be, then, the journey necessary to find his own vocation.

Thus, Kierkegaard advances towards subjectivity and relativism, even when doing so from a Christian perspective. Among his most notable works are The Concept of Anxiety and Fear and Trembling .

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher born in 1844 and died in 1900. Unlike Kierkegaard, he will reject any Christian and religious perspective in general.

Nietzsche proclaims the death of God when analyzing the historical development of Western civilization and its moral decline. Without god or the gods, the subject must find for himself the meaning of life, as well as its ethical justification.

Nietzsche's nihilism relativizes the transcendence of a single absolute value in the face of its inability to give a unified response to civilization. This constitutes favorable ground for inquiry and search, but it also entails existential anguish.

Among his most famous works can be mentioned: Thus speaks Zarathustra and The birth of tragedy .

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a philosopher, writer, and teacher. She stood out as a promoter of 20th century feminism. Among her most representative works are The Second Sex and The Broken Woman .

Jean Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre, born in France in 1905 and died in 1980, is the most emblematic representative of 20th century existentialism. He was a philosopher, writer, literary critic, and political activist.

Sartre defined his philosophical approaches as humanistic existentialism. He was married to Simone de Beauvoir and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964. He is known for having written the Pathways to Freedom trilogy and the novel Nausea .

Albert Camus

existentialism

Alberta Camus (1913-1960) stood out as a philosopher, essayist, novelist and playwright. Among her most important works, the following can be pointed out: The foreigner , The plague , The first man , Letters to a German friend .

You may also be interested in: The Stranger by Albert Camus

Miguel de Unamuno

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) was a philosopher, novelist, poet and playwright of Spanish origin, known as one of the most important figures of the generation of '98. Among his most important works we can mention Paz en la guerra , Niebla , Amor and pedagogy and Aunt Tula .

Other authors

There are many authors who are considered existentialists by critics, both at a philosophical and a literary level. Many of them can be seen as predecessors of this line of thought according to their generation, while others have emerged from Sartre's approaches.

Among other important names in existentialism we can mention the writers Dostoyevski and Kafka, Gabriel Marcel, the Spanish Ortega y Gasset, León Chestov and Simone de Beauvoir herself, Sartre's wife.

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