What is existentialism sartre camus

Existentialism is one of those words that everyone uses and almost nobody can define. You have seen it on coffee shop walls, in song lyrics, in self-help books promising to help you "live authentically." The word has been stretched so thin it has become nearly meaningless.

Which is a shame — because the actual philosophy is genuinely extraordinary. Existentialism is one of the most urgent, most personal, and most challenging intellectual traditions of the 20th century. It asks questions that no other philosophy asks with the same directness: What does it mean to be free? What are we responsible for? How do we live without certainty? What do we do when there is no God to tell us who we are?

This guide explains the real ideas — and introduces the two thinkers at the heart of the tradition: Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

What existentialism actually means

The simplest definition of existentialism is this: existence precedes essence. This is Sartre's formulation, and it is worth unpacking carefully because it is the key to everything.

In the traditional view — religious or Platonic — every human being has an essence: a fixed nature, a soul, a purpose defined before birth by God or by nature. You are born already being something. Your task is to discover and fulfil that predetermined nature.

Existentialism reverses this completely. There is no predetermined human nature, no essence that precedes your existence. You are born first — a bare, raw, undefined consciousness — and then you create yourself through your choices. You are not born courageous or cowardly, honest or dishonest, good or bad. You become these things through what you do. And because you become them through choice, you are entirely responsible for what you become. There is no excuse — not your childhood, not your circumstances, not your genes. You chose. You are what you chose.