Defining the Uniqueness of Existentialism

Most philosophical traditions begin by asking: What is the nature of reality? or What can we know? Existentialism starts somewhere far more personal – it asks what it means for you, as a specific, concrete individual, to exist right now. That shift in starting point is what makes existentialism so distinctive, and why it continues to resonate well beyond academic philosophy. It is not a single, unified system of thought. It is, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it, a movement best understood through a set of overlapping ideas that bind otherwise very different thinkers together. Understanding those shared ideas – its general characteristics – is the key to understanding what existentialism actually is.

What makes existentialism different from other philosophies 🔗

Western philosophy, from Plato onward, has largely privileged rational detachment – the idea that truth is best discovered from a neutral, objective standpoint, free from the distortions of personal experience and emotion. Existentialism rejects this approach entirely. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, existentialism begins in medias res – right in the middle of our own situated, first-person experience. The human condition is not revealed through abstract theorizing but through careful attention to how we actually live, struggle, and make meaning in our everyday lives.

This is not a minor methodological difference. It is a fundamental reorientation of what philosophy is supposed to do. Rather than stepping back from life to examine it from the outside, existentialism insists that the philosopher is always already inside life – embodied, historically situated, and personally implicated in the questions being asked. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy captures this well: for thinkers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, it is essential to recognise that the philosopher investigating human existence is, themselves, an existing human.

Existence precedes essence: the cornerstone idea 🔗

If there is one idea that defines existentialism more than any other, it is the claim that existence precedes essence. Jean-Paul Sartre, the most prominent self-described existentialist, made this the centerpiece of his philosophy – and it is the point that all existentialists are said to share.

What does it mean? In traditional philosophy and theology, things were thought to have a fixed essence – a pre-given nature or purpose – before they actually existed. A chair exists to be sat on; a knife exists to cut. This logic was extended to humans: we were created with a purpose already defined by God or by Nature. Existentialism completely inverts this. As the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, we first simply exist – we find ourselves born into a world not of our own choosing – and it is then up to each of us to define who we are through the course of our lives. Our essence, our set of defining traits, is not given in advance. It is chosen.

This idea has serious consequences. It means there is no pre-written script for what a human being is supposed to be. There is no divine blueprint assigning you a role or a purpose. You come into existence first, and only through your actions, choices, and commitments do you gradually become someone. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, we are contingently thrown into existence and burdened with the task of creating ourselves.

The radical primacy of the individual 🔗

Existentialism is not a philosophy of humanity in the abstract. It is resolutely focused on the particular individual – on my existence, your existence, in specific concrete situations. According to Britannica, existence is always particular and individual. It is never a general fact about the species; it is always someone’s experience of being alive.

This is why existentialism broke away from philosophical systems that treat humans as instances of universal laws or members of a general category. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that existentialism arose as a backlash against systems that conceal from us the deeply personal task of trying to achieve self-fulfilment. What matters philosophically, for existentialists, is not what humans are in general but what it is like to be this person, in this situation, making these choices.

This focus also means that existentialism takes first-person experience – emotions, moods, anxiety, dread – as philosophically serious data. Feelings like angst are not just psychological states to be managed. They are disclosures about the nature of existence itself.

Freedom: the unavoidable burden 🔗

For existentialists, freedom is not a privilege or a pleasant condition – it is the inescapable structure of human existence. You cannot opt out of being free. Even choosing not to choose is itself a choice. Sartre’s famous phrase captures this sharply: man is condemned to be free.

This is radical freedom in a very specific sense. It does not mean you can do anything without limits. It means that, no matter what circumstances you find yourself in, you are always the one interpreting those circumstances, giving them meaning, and deciding how to respond. As ScienceDirect notes, the experience of the first-person “I” is, for Sartre, the only reliable standpoint – and that experience is always one of freedom and responsibility.

Simone de Beauvoir deepened this further. Writing in The Ethics of Ambiguity, she described freedom not merely as a value but as the very condition from which all values and meaning arise. Without freedom, nothing can be meaningful. But this freedom always comes paired with full responsibility. Because no external authority – no God, no nature, no society – defines who you are, you alone are responsible for what you make of yourself.

Anxiety as a philosophical signal 🔗

The flip side of radical freedom is existential anxiety (or anguish). When you truly confront the fact that you are radically free and that no blueprint exists for how to live, the response is not relief – it is dread. This anxiety is not a sign of weakness or neurosis. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, anxiety is the recognition that human existence is, in some fundamental sense, on its own. It reveals both the weight of freedom and the absence of any guaranteed foundation for our choices.

Existentialists, particularly Heidegger and Sartre, treat this anxiety as philosophically revealing. It strips away comfortable illusions and forces a more honest confrontation with what we actually are: self-creating beings without a fixed nature, thrown into a world we did not choose, and responsible for finding – or making – meaning within it.

Authenticity: living as your own self 🔗

Given that freedom and responsibility define the human condition, existentialism asks: how should one live in light of this? Its answer is through authenticity. An authentic life, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it, is one willing to break with tradition and social convention when necessary and to courageously affirm the freedom and contingency of our condition – living with urgency and commitment to the projects and values that genuinely matter to us as individuals.

Authenticity does not mean self-indulgence or doing whatever one feels like. It means clearly acknowledging your freedom, owning your choices, and taking genuine responsibility for the person you are becoming. It also means resisting the pull toward what Heidegger called das Man – the anonymous “they” of social conformity, the unthinking drift into living according to how one simply does things. Most of us, much of the time, allow external roles, social expectations, and peer pressure to define us. Existentialists call this inauthenticity.

Bad faith: the flight from freedom 🔗

Sartre gave inauthenticity its most precise formulation with the concept of bad faith (mauvaise foi). In his 1943 work Being and Nothingness, he illustrated it with a now-famous example: a café waiter whose movements are slightly too precise and too eager, as if he has completely absorbed himself into the role of being a waiter, as if being a waiter exhausts what he is. As Philosophy Break explains, to be consumed by such a role – to limit our view of ourselves entirely to it – is to live as a thing rather than as a self-making person.

Bad faith is the self-deception by which we convince ourselves that we have no choice, that we are fully determined by our circumstances, our job, our biology, or our social role. It is, in Sartre’s terms, a denial of the freedom that is always already ours. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it as a lack of proper coordination between our facticity (the givens of our situation) and our transcendence (our capacity to always be more than those givens). Authenticity, by contrast, means holding both in view – accepting the facts of our situation while refusing to let them fully define us.

The rejection of moral absolutes and objective detachment 🔗

Because existentialism begins with the particular individual and not with universal laws, it also challenges the idea that there are objective, universal moral truths that apply to everyone regardless of context. This does not mean existentialism promotes nihilism – the view that nothing matters. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is explicit on this point: existentialism should not be dismissed as moral nihilism. A meaningful, praiseworthy life is possible. It is one in which we own our freedom, take full responsibility for our choices, and act in ways that also respect the freedom of others.

What existentialism rejects is the comfort of a pre-packaged moral system that tells you exactly what to do in every situation. Moral life, for existentialists, requires constant engagement, honest self-examination, and the courage to make choices without any guarantee of being right. This is why Sartre’s idea of absolute freedom carries with it absolute individual responsibility – there is no one else to blame, and no external standard to which you can fully defer.

Why existentialism still matters 🔗

Existentialism emerged as a movement during one of the most turbulent periods in modern history. The devastation of two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb forced an entire generation to confront the fragility of meaning and the reality of human freedom in the face of death. But the questions it raised are not historically limited. They are structural features of human existence itself.

Every person faces the fact that they were thrown into a world they did not choose, that they must decide who to be, that no authority will make those decisions for them, and that they will die. Existentialism is the philosophical tradition most directly and honestly engaged with these facts. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it as a tradition in which philosophy is not an academic exercise but a way of life – an attempt to think seriously about what it means to be alive, to be free, and to take responsibility for who you are.

Its key characteristics – the priority of individual existence, the doctrine that existence precedes essence, the centrality of freedom and responsibility, and the demand for authenticity – are not separate doctrines. They form an integrated picture of the human condition: one that refuses easy comfort, demands honesty, and insists that each person is the ultimate author of their own life.

What do you think? If existence truly precedes essence and there is no pre-given human nature, does that make life more liberating – or more terrifying? And in your own daily life, how often do you think you act from genuine choice versus the pull of social roles and external expectations?

References

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
2. https://iep.utm.edu/existent/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
4. https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/existentialism/v-1
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/existentialism
6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/existentialism
7. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/notes.html
8. https://philosophybreak.com/articles/sartre-waiter-bad-faith-and-the-harms-of-inauthenticity/
9. https://iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/