---
date: '2024-02-29'
description: Choice, responsibility, and the limits of freedom in existentialist philosophy
id: Existentialism
modified: 2026-10-12 09:08:09 GMT-04:00
seealso:
  - '[[thoughts/Camus#absurd freedom|absurdism]]'
socials:
  sep: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
tags:
  - philosophy
title: Existentialism
created: '2024-02-29'
published: '2024-02-29'
pageLayout: default
slug: thoughts/Existentialism
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/Existentialism.md
generator:
  quartz: v4.6.0
  hostedProvider: Cloudflare
  baseUrl: aarnphm.xyz
full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt
---
Existentialist philosophers ask how to live when a person has to choose what to make of their life. They disagree about God, ethics, and the extent of freedom. Sartre and Beauvoir adopted the label; the wider grouping includes their influences and critics. [The SEP entry](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/) gives that history.

## existence precedes essence

For Sartre, there is no purpose assigned to a person before they exist. A life acquires its direction through what the person does. Calling oneself generous, for example, requires acts that give that description substance. His claim concerns the responsibility for making a life, including the gap between what someone wishes to be and what they actually undertake. See [_Existentialism Is a Humanism_](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm).

Sartre’s student has to decide whether to stay with his dependent mother or leave to join the Free French forces. Both choices express a commitment to others. An instruction to help people leaves the conflict unresolved: which people, through which action? Even choosing an adviser involves a judgment about whose advice to trust. Sartre uses this case to explain anguish: the student must act while accepting responsibility for a decision that no general rule settles for him.

## freedom in a situation

_Facticity_ names the circumstances already given: a body, a past, and a social position. _Transcendence_ is the capacity to take up possibilities from that situation. A person can reconsider a commitment; the consequences and constraints remain real. Sartre calls it _bad faith_ when someone evades this tension, treating a role as a complete definition of themselves or treating their past actions as irrelevant to who they are. [SEP, sections 3–5](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/).

Beauvoir makes the conditions of choice an ethical problem. In [_The Ethics of Ambiguity_, part II](https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch02.htm), she examines how oppression and enforced ignorance restrict the possibilities someone can recognize and pursue. Taking freedom seriously therefore requires attention to other people’s opportunities to act. Describing someone as free gives us no warrant to ignore the conditions that keep them dependent.

## reading connections

- Nineteenth-century precursors: Søren Kierkegaard and [[thoughts/Philosophy and Nietzsche|Friedrich Nietzsche]].
- Phenomenological and existential foundations: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, José Ortega y Gasset, and Miguel de Unamuno.
- Twentieth-century discussions: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, [[thoughts/Camus|Albert Camus]], Gabriel Marcel, and Paul Tillich. These names span religious and atheist positions; each needs to be read on its own terms.