School
Existentialism
Movement centred on human existence, freedom and responsibility, which reached its height in France after the Second World War and looked back to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Existentialism flourished in France in the middle of the twentieth century, in the shadow of the Second World War, and its best-known names are Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Its thinkers begin from the situation of the individual who exists before any fixed essence or purpose, and must take responsibility for the self they make through their choices. They looked back to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as forerunners and drew heavily on Heidegger.
- Tradition
- Western
Philosophers
- Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855
- Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty1908–1961
- Simone de Beauvoir1908–1986
Sources
- Kevin Aho, Existentialism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy