Life as a Work of Art

This chapter demonstrates why creativity is a persistent theme in existentialist thought. It shows why creativity may be required, as Nietzsche says, to become who we are, and who we may want to be. It considers why Kierkegaard and Nietzsche made philosophy into an inherently creative enterprise and why Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus wrote fiction themselves and gave tribute to literature or art as crucial to existential understanding. The chapter addresses Heidegger’s view that art and especially poetry served to reveal the world and established a form of truth. In this context it is considered why human beings may strive to make art under conditions of oppression. This chapter shows that while existentialists express diverging views about many topics, they all invite individuals to live life with creativity, that existentialist thinking encourages living life as a work of art.

On Seeking and Taking (and Giving) Advice

In light of existentialism as a concrete philosophy for living, this chapter examines Sartre’s argument that in contemplating and making ethical decisions one must invent new values. It suggests that seeking advice in such a situation is already part of the process of valuation. Alongside the examples Sartre gives in his “Existentialism” lecture, Rilke’s advice to a young poet is considered.

World

This chapter begins by examining the existentialist challenge to claims of absolute objective knowledge about the world and their rejection of any god’s-eye view of reality in favor of the world as a source of existential wonder. The situatedness of the subject is shown to be constitutive of the world as existentially described. In this context are presented Heidegger’s notions of being-in-the-world, and the attunement with which the world is accessed by an existential subject. Beauvoir’s notion that we experience the world as a detotalized totality is traced to the phenomenological notion of a world horizon and likened to Nietzsche’s promotion of perspectivism. The threat of nihilism and fragmentation, and the possibility of experiencing the world as inhospitable, alienating, or uncanny are also considered in existentialist terms through Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Camus, while existential wonder in the face of the world is considered in light of Camus and Marcel.

Historical Roots of Existentialism

This chapter shows the inheritance by existentialism of ideas from the philosophical tradition. Socrates serves for Kierkegaard and Marcel as a model for the authentic practice of philosophy and for initiating interior reflection of the self. Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus debated Stoicism’s understanding of freedom from external circumstances. Husserl and Heidegger interpreted Augustine’s conception of time, while Heidegger along with Beauvoir adapted, in a secular context, features of his conception of religious conversion. Augustine, Shakespeare, and Montaigne explored inner reflection and the nature of the self which came to be critically echoed in existentialist conceptions. The Enlightenment generated a philosophy of human freedom, defending the rational autonomy of the individual. Critical engagement of these ideas is shown to have shaped existentialist conceptions of authenticity, subjectivity, inwardness, freedom, and responsibility.

Prologue

Introduces some of the central ideas of existentialism—including subjective truth, finitude, being-in-the-world, facticity, transcendence, inwardness, and the self as becoming—as relevant to an individual living in the contemporary moment. Highlights existentialist concern both for human individuality and for commonly-shared features of the human condition. Emphasizes existentialist attention both to the despairing aspects of human life and to the affirmation of existence as worthy of wonder. Introduces a few key thinkers—Kierkegaard, Marcel, Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche—while also indicating the diversity of existentialism to be emphasized throughout the book. Addresses what existentialism may have to offer in the context of contemporary challenges to objective truth and communal forms of meaning.

On Being and Waiting (Tables), or, The Roles We Play

This chapter critically engages Sartre’s view that adopting roles in the performance of life’s tasks is inherently inauthentic. It examines Sartre’s critique in Being and Nothingness of the waiter and other professions that engage in “public ceremony.” It poses the question whether Sartre inadvertently endorses an overly purified vision of authenticity, overlooking the necessity of taking up multiple particular roles in our social interactions with others. This chapter asks whether there are circumstances in which role-playing is not only necessary but authentic, expressing different ways of being-in-the-world in different contexts.

On Imitation, Inspiration, and Authenticity

This chapter considers the existentialist conception of authenticity and how it may be possible to achieve despite the natural human capacity for imitation and in light of inspiration for which one might look to others. It argues against taking any existentialist philosopher’s life as a model for authentic living, while also considering the inspiration Kierkegaard found in Socrates and Nietzsche found in Schopenhauer. Apart from the unremarkability, from an external point of view, of some existentialist philosopher’s lives, others may be ethically problematic, as exemplified by Heidegger and his entanglement in nationalist politics. This chapter suggests that the ethical failure on Heidegger’s part contradicts the existentialist conception of authenticity, which demands singularity and responsibility over and above group identification.

Earth

Existentialism’s focus on the individual and the human condition may appear to be alien to ecological thinking. Existentialism has been criticized for its anthropocentrism and egocentrism, and as this chapter describes, Sartre often described nature as a threat to human subjectivity and freedom. Yet other existentialist thinkers, particularly Nietzsche, Camus, and Heidegger, along with the poet Rilke, urged concern for the earth, critically rethinking the human role in nature. The critique of human arrogance and of idealist dismissal of the earthly realm by Nietzsche, reverent descriptions of nature by Camus and Rilke, and the critique of technology in Heidegger are shown to all contribute to reconsidering existentialism as an ecologically minded philosophy.

The Self

This chapter explores the existentialist dimension of the self. It shows how existentialist thinkers insist on the irreducible nature of subjectivity while also considering critically the nature of the self. While Kierkegaard affirms an inward self, Heidegger and the phenomenologically inspired existentialists describe the self as always outside itself, extended in its interactions with the world. While Sartre may vigorously defend the self’s intrinsic autonomy, other existentialists, including Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Beauvoir, paint a more ambiguous picture of freedom. This chapter shows that despite these divergences, existentialist thinkers tend to agree on a few core ideas concerning the self, including its nature as activity, as relational, as a process of becoming, and as the basis for choice or commitment.

A Philosophy for Human Existence

This chapter identifies the classical philosophical concepts with which existentialism is concerned—being, non-being, and becoming, existence, and essence. It shows how existentialist philosophers transform these abstract ideas to consider the concrete existence of the human individual from a subjective point of view. Starting from Whitman’s recognition of the here and now, and proceeding through Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Beauvoir, it is demonstrated how traditional philosophical categories first conceived by ancient philosophers echo through the existentialist movement. Kierkegaard’s rejection of idealist rationalism, Nietzsche’s retrieval of Heraclitus’s theory of becoming, Heidegger’s understanding of the human being as Dasein or “being there,” Sartre’s notion of “existence precedes essence,” and Beauvoir’s comparison of existentialist conversion to the phenomenological reduction are discussed in light of existentialist affirmation of the transience and particularity of the human self.