Exploring the Core of Existentialism: A Philosophy of Existence

What does it really mean to exist? Not just to be alive – to breathe, to work, to go through the motions – but to genuinely confront your own existence with honesty and intention? This is the central question that existentialism dares to ask. Unlike traditional philosophies that seek universal truths or build abstract systems of thought, existentialism cuts straight to the concrete reality of human life: your anxiety, your choices, your freedom, and the burden of creating your own meaning. Born in the upheaval of 20th-century Europe, it remains one of the most personally relevant philosophical movements ever conceived.

What is existentialism? 🔗

Existentialism is a philosophical tradition that places the individual human being – their lived experience, freedom, and search for meaning – at the very center of philosophical inquiry. Rather than asking what reality is made of in the abstract, it asks: what does it mean to exist as a human being, here and now, in a world that offers no guaranteed purpose?

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, existentialism is best understood as a catch-all term for philosophers who treat the nature of the human condition as the central philosophical problem, and who believe it must be addressed through a study of being itself – what philosophers call ontology. What unites these thinkers is not a shared doctrine but a set of overlapping concerns: anxiety, freedom, authenticity, meaning, and the stubborn fact of human existence.

Importantly, existentialism is not merely an academic exercise. It is, as its thinkers insisted, a philosophy to be lived. For Søren Kierkegaard, the fundamental truths of existence are not abstract propositions – they are immediately felt, lived, and acted upon.

The historical roots of existentialism 🔗

As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, existentialism is often understood as a historically situated intellectual movement that exploded onto the scene in mid-20th-century France – emerging against the backdrop of World War II, the Nazi death camps, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a period that forced an entire generation to confront the anxiety-provoking facts of death, freedom, and meaninglessness head-on.

Yet the movement’s conceptual roots go much deeper. As the New World Encyclopedia notes, existentialism traces back to earlier thinkers like Blaise Pascal in the 17th century, and most significantly to Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century – both of whom emphasized subjective experience and the primacy of the human will over purely logical or rational thinking.

Why the 20th century became existentialism’s moment 🔗

The industrialization and scientific rationalism of modernity had steadily eroded the comfort of traditional religious frameworks. When the horrors of two world wars made the fragility and absurdity of human life undeniable, existentialism offered a philosophical vocabulary for that experience. People across Europe were grappling with alienation, despair, and the collapse of shared meaning – and existentialism spoke directly to those experiences, rather than retreating into theory.

The key thinkers who shaped existentialism 🔗

Existentialism is not the work of a single philosopher but a constellation of thinkers, each approaching the problem of existence from a distinct angle.

Søren Kierkegaard – the father of existentialism 🔗

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is widely regarded as the “father of existentialism.” He rejected the systematic rationalism of his time – particularly the grand philosophical architecture of Hegel – insisting instead that truth is something personally and subjectively appropriated. For Kierkegaard, what matters is not an abstract universal truth, but the truth that is true for me. He described human existence as passing through three stages: the aesthetic (focused on pleasure and immediate experience), the ethical (governed by duty and social rules), and the religious (a personal, passionate relationship with the infinite).

Friedrich Nietzsche – the will to power and the death of God 🔗

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) pushed existentialist themes in a radically different direction. A key element of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the will-to-power – the fundamental drive that he believed animates human life. His declaration that “God is dead” was not a triumphant atheist slogan but a sober diagnosis: with the death of the Christian God, the pre-modern moral framework that gave life its objective meaning had collapsed. Humanity was now left to create its own values – a task both terrifying and liberating.

Martin Heidegger – being-in-the-world 🔗

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) made one of the most technically rigorous contributions to existentialist thought. His central concept is Dasein – literally “being-there” – the idea that human existence is always already embedded in a concrete world, shaped by context, history, and relationships. Heidegger discovers authentic freedom by directly facing the concept of “thrownness” and our limited existence – the fact that we are thrown into a world we did not choose, in circumstances not of our making. For Heidegger, the confrontation with death is what ultimately summons us to live authentically.

Jean-Paul Sartre – existence precedes essence 🔗

No name is more synonymous with existentialism than Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). As philosopher Jonathan Webber argues, existentialism as defined by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir holds that freedom is at the core of human existence and is the foundation of all other values. Sartre’s most famous philosophical claim – existence precedes essence – inverts the traditional view that human nature is fixed in advance. Unlike a chair, which is designed for a purpose before it is built, a human being simply exists first, and then, through choices and actions, creates whatever “essence” – whatever kind of person – they become.

Sartre’s existentialist understanding of what it is to be human is rooted in consciousness as a desire for being. It is up to each individual to exercise their freedom without losing sight of their existence as a factual, situated, yet ultimately free human being. This understanding is only obtained through living authentically – avoiding the traps of self-deception.

Simone de Beauvoir – freedom and the ethics of ambiguity 🔗

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) extended existentialist thought into ethics and politics. She argued that genuine morality is not just about one’s own freedom, but about fostering the freedom of others. As the philosophical resource Philopedia notes, de Beauvoir articulated an ethics of ambiguity – condemning oppression as a denial of another person’s subjectivity and arguing that authentic moral life must seek to promote others’ ability to flourish and transcend their circumstances.

The core themes of existentialist philosophy 🔗

Across their differences, existentialist thinkers share a set of interconnected ideas that define the movement. Understanding these is essential to grasping what existentialism is really about.

Existence precedes essence 🔗

This is the philosophical core of existentialism. Traditional philosophy – from Aristotle to Aquinas – held that things have a fixed essence or nature that defines what they are. Existentialism reverses this: human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine their own meaning in life. There is no pre-given human nature. You are not born as a teacher, a coward, or a hero – you become one through the choices you make.

Radical freedom and responsibility 🔗

Existentialists hold that human beings are radically free – not free to do whatever they please without consequence, but free in the sense that they cannot escape choosing. Even refusing to choose is itself a choice. Sartre’s phrase “condemned to be free” captures the idea that there is no escape from responsibility for one’s stance toward circumstances, even under severe constraint. This radical freedom is both exhilarating and deeply unsettling – it is precisely what generates existential anxiety.

Anxiety and dread 🔗

A key existentialist idea is that human existence is in some way “on its own”; anxiety is the recognition of this fact. This is not the ordinary anxiety you feel before an exam. It is a deeper, structural unease that arises from confronting your freedom – the recognition that there is no cosmic script, no divine rulebook, and no guarantee that your choices will lead somewhere meaningful. Kierkegaard called it the “dizziness of freedom.” Heidegger called it Angst. For both, it is not a problem to be solved but a signal pointing toward authenticity.

Authenticity and bad faith 🔗

One of existentialism’s most powerful – and practically applicable – concepts is the distinction between authentic and inauthentic existence. Authenticity refers to a lucid, honest relationship with one’s freedom, finitude, and situation. Bad faith (mauvaise foi) designates self-deception – hiding behind social roles or deterministic excuses to avoid anxiety and responsibility.

Sartre illustrates bad faith memorably with the figure of a café waiter. The waiter is so intent on perfectly acting out his role that he defines himself entirely as a waiter and suppresses other parts of himself. He behaves like a thing – fixed, predictable, role-bound – rather than acknowledging that he is a free human being who has chosen this role and can choose otherwise. To live in bad faith is to deceive oneself about the nature and extent of one’s own freedom.

Authentic existence, by contrast, means owning your freedom and the responsibility it carries – even when that is uncomfortable. It means not hiding behind social roles, peer pressure, or the claim that “I had no choice.”

The absurd and the search for meaning 🔗

Closely related to existentialism – though technically a distinct position – is the philosophy of the absurd, most powerfully articulated by Albert Camus. Camus observed a fundamental mismatch: humans desperately seek meaning and order, but the universe offers none. This collision between human longing and cosmic silence is what he called the absurd. Rather than despairing, Camus argued that one must imagine Sisyphus – condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity – as happy. The defiant embrace of life despite its absurdity is itself an act of meaning-making.

How existentialism diverges from traditional philosophy 🔗

Most philosophical traditions before existentialism were preoccupied with universal truths – with what is true for all people, in all times and places. Existentialism makes a decisive break. According to Britannica, existentialism interprets human existence by stressing its concreteness and its problematic character – existence is always particular. It is always my existence, your existence, his existence. The abstract “human being” of traditional philosophy is replaced by the concrete, living, choosing, anxious individual.

This shift also changes the method of philosophy. For Kierkegaard, the fundamental truths of existence are not abstract representations but are immediately lived, felt, and acted. Philosophy is not done from a detached, neutral standpoint – it is done from inside a life, by someone who is themselves living, aging, and dying. Existentialists rejected the idea that a philosopher could simply “step outside” human experience to observe it neutrally.

The legacy and relevance of existentialism 🔗

Existentialism reached far beyond university lecture halls. Its emphasis on freedom and self-creation informed the emancipatory politics of figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and its penetrating analyses of anxiety shaped humanistic and existential approaches to psychotherapy in the work of thinkers like Viktor Frankl and Rollo May. In literature, the movement found expression in the novels of Camus, Kafka, and Dostoevsky. In film, its moods were captured by directors like Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa.

Today, existentialism’s core questions are arguably more urgent than ever. In an age of social media, consumerism, and information overload, many people find themselves performing curated identities for external validation – living, in Sartre’s terms, in a kind of digital bad faith. The existentialist demand to confront your freedom, own your choices, and resist the pull of inauthenticity is a challenge as alive today as it was in the cafes of post-war Paris.

Existentialism does not promise easy answers. It does not offer a manual for a happy life. What it offers instead is something harder and more valuable: the philosophical courage to face your existence honestly – with all its anxiety, freedom, and responsibility – and to take that existence seriously as the raw material from which a meaningful life must be built.

What do you think? In a world saturated with social media and curated identities, do you think most people are living in a kind of “bad faith” – hiding behind roles and expectations rather than confronting their true freedom? And if existentialism insists that we alone are responsible for creating our own meaning, what happens to people who live in conditions of severe oppression or poverty – can radical freedom ever be truly universal?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/existentialism
2. https://iep.utm.edu/existent/
3. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
4. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Existentialism
5. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Psychology/Culture_and_Community/Personality_Theory_in_a_Cultural_Context_(Kelland)/09:_Viktor_Frankl_Rollo_May_and_Existential_Psychology/9.02:_Understanding_the_Philosophy_of_Existentialism
6. https://wepub.org/index.php/TSSEHR/article/download/2671/2889/5284
7. https://philosophybreak.com/articles/what-is-existentialism-3-core-principles-of-existentialist-philosophy/
8. https://iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/
9. https://philopedia.org/schools/existentialism/
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
11. https://philosophybreak.com/articles/sartre-waiter-bad-faith-and-the-harms-of-inauthenticity/