Existentialism
Overview
Existentialism is the nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical movement that puts individual existence, freedom and choice before abstract systems. Its slogan, from Jean-Paul Sartre, is that "existence precedes essence": there is no blueprint for what a human being is for, so each person is thrown into the world and must decide what to make of it. The religious strand runs from Søren Kierkegaard, for whom the decision was a leap of faith; the atheist strand through Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Sartre and Albert Camus, for whom there is no one to leap to. Franz Kafka dramatised the mood without the doctrine.
"Existential", more loosely, means anything to do with existence, being, or what it is to be alive: purpose, identity, death and the human condition.
Notes
- The movement's central observation is one I accept: there is no cosmic Meaning, and the person who waits for one to be delivered will wait forever. Its central demand, that one must therefore create meaning by an act of will, I find overdramatic. Meaning in the ordinary sense does not need to be created; it turns up on its own in people, work and curiosity. Camus's absurd is only absurd if you expected something else.
- Existentialism is the honest form of the response to religion's departure. The dishonest form is to keep the god-shaped hole and fill it with the nation, the party or the self-help industry. See The human need for religion.
- Sartre's "bad faith", pretending that one's choices are forced, is a useful concept even for a determinist. I reject metaphysical free will (Freewill vs Determinism), but the person who says "I had no choice" is almost always describing a choice they would rather not own.
- The existentialist insistence on death as the fact that gives life its urgency is right, and it is the best secular answer to Life After Death: an endless life would be one in which nothing was ever at stake.
- The anxiety the movement is famous for is a real experience and, as with meaninglessness generally, often better treated than philosophised. See Happiness.