Existentialism
Freedom, responsibility, and meaning made through choice.
Portara, Naxos, at sunset (photo Manfred Werner / Tsui, 2020, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Origin
Developed in the 19th and 20th centuries from Kierkegaard through Sartre and Beauvoir.
Central claims
- Existence precedes essence: we are what we make of ourselves.
- Freedom is inseparable from responsibility and anxiety.
- Authenticity means refusing to hide behind roles.
Criticism
Critics argue that its emphasis on individual choice can understate how much circumstance, class, and history constrain freedom.
Development
Existentialism is not a single doctrine but a family of writings in sermons, novels, diaries, phenomenology and political essays. Its common pressure is on evasion: the ways people hide from freedom, death, guilt, desire and the demands of other people.
Legacy
It remains useful when inherited scripts fail, because it asks not what a person is in the abstract but what one is doing with a life already underway.
In their words
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
“Life must be understood backwards.”
“Existence precedes essence.”