The philosophy of Existentialism

Welcome! I am so excited to dive into this philosophy with you. Before we chart our path through the radical freedom, deep angst, and beautiful meaning-making of existentialist thought, I would love to learn a little bit about what brings you here.

What brings you to existentialism today, and how familiar are you already with philosophy in general?

I've read some philosophy before but want to dive deeper into existentialism.

It's wonderful to have you here! Since you already have some footing in philosophy, we can skip the absolute basics and dive straight into the deep, rich waters of existentialist thought.

Your path

19th-Century Precursors and Origins

20th-Century French Existentialist Peak

German Phenomenology and Existential Thought

Legacy and Contemporary Relevance

The Recipe of You

To understand existentialism, we have to start with its most famous foundational mantra: "existence precedes essence." It was popularized by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the mid-20th century, and it completely flips traditional philosophy on its head. For thousands of years, classical philosophers argued the exact opposite—that essence precedes existence. To understand what they meant, imagine a paperknife or a modern smartphone. Before that phone was ever manufactured, an engineer designed its "essence"—its purpose, its shape, its software, and what it was built to do. Its purpose existed in the designer's mind before the physical phone was actually built. Under this traditional view, humans were thought of the same way: designed by God or nature with a pre-packaged, built-in purpose. But Sartre and the existentialists said: no, we aren't like smartphones.

A side-by-side comparison of the essence-precedes-existence principle illustrated by a smartphone blueprint becoming a manufactured phone, alongside existence-precedes-essence shown by a featureless human silhouette casting a shadow that diverges into artistic, literary, construction, and travel paths.

I've started generating a visualization to help contrast these two major worldviews. For humans, there is no blueprint. We are born first—we exist, turn up in the world, and only then do we define who we are through our actions. We are entirely self-authored. If you want to be a kind person, you don't look to a pre-written human nature; you must perform kind acts. Your character is the sum total of your choices. This means you aren't defined by your past or your "nature"—you're always a work in progress, which is both incredibly liberating and slightly terrifying.