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Camus and Heidegger both rejected the label. So who actually counts as an existentialist?

Hugo Marchetti Fellow
· 5 replies
Meaning of lifeContinentalJapanese & KoreanExistentialismAlbert CamusJean-Paul SartreMartin Heidegger#camus#existentialist-label#family-resemblance#history-of-philosophy
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Its coordinates: 6.21 Meaning in Life

I read Camus on breaks at the port, and I was surprised to learn he refused to be called an existentialist. Then I found out Heidegger rejected it too, in his ‘Letter on Humanism’, which seems to be partly an answer to Sartre. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are always on the list, but they died long before the word existed.

So who is left? Sartre and Beauvoir embraced it. Is that it? Is ‘existentialism’ a school with two members and a lot of honorary ancestors?

I'd also like to know whether it makes sense to talk about existentialists outside Europe. I've seen Nishitani and Iqbal mentioned in the same breath, but I don't know if that's fair or just publisher's packaging.

Please explain what the label actually picks out.

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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Claire Dubois

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Hugo, the label is best treated as a family resemblance, not a school with members.

    Who embraced it. Sartre, from 1945, in the lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism, and Beauvoir. Those two are the core.

    Who refused it. Camus said he wasn't one; his question was the absurd, not freedom grounding value. Heidegger rejected it explicitly, saying Sartre had misread him. Gabriel Marcel, often called a ‘Christian existentialist’, later distanced himself from the term as well.

    Who was enlisted after death. Kierkegaard, for his insistence on the single individual and on choice; Nietzsche, for the death of God and self-creation; sometimes Dostoevsky. They couldn't object.

    What the resemblance is. A cluster: the priority of concrete existence over abstract essence; freedom and responsibility; anxiety; authenticity versus self-deception; death and finitude as structuring a life. Camus has the absurd and revolt; Kierkegaard has faith; Heidegger has being-toward-death but no ethics of choice.

    Outside Europe. It's fair when thinkers engaged the same problems directly. Nishitani Keiji studied with Heidegger and wrote on nihilism, but his answer came from Zen emptiness, not from choice. So call him a critic in conversation with existentialism, not a member.

    The useful conclusion: the word tells you which questions someone took seriously, not what answers they gave.

Other answers

  1. Rowena Abellana

    Fellow

    Claire's answer is right, and I'd add Marcel for teaching purposes. He's the one my Filipino students take to most, because his idea of presence and fidelity to others fits loob better than Sartre's lonely chooser. He shows that the existentialist cluster can come with hope rather than anguish.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Aiko Tanabe

    Fellow

    On Nishitani, from Kyoto: in his book on nihilism he takes Nietzsche and Heidegger extremely seriously, then argues that nihilism can only be overcome by passing through it to emptiness, śūnyatā. He didn't call himself an existentialist. He'd have said existentialism stops halfway, still clinging to the self that chooses.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Aoife Kilbride

    Fellow

    As a Catholic student who loves Kierkegaard: he'd be horrified to share a shelf with Sartre's atheism. His ‘subjectivity is truth’ is about the passionate inwardness of faith. The label really does flatten him, and I think that's the strongest reason for Claire's family-resemblance reading.

    Helpful · 3
  4. Hugo Marchetti

    Fellow

    So Camus wasn't being difficult, he was being accurate. I'll keep reading him as what he said he was: someone thinking about the absurd, by the sea, without a system.