Existentialism — Philosophical movement of the 19th–20th centuries affirming the primacy of concrete, singular individual existence over any abstract essence or totalising system. Sartre’s formula “existence precedes essence” encapsulates its central thesis: human beings possess no fixed nature but constitute themselves through free choices. Kierkegaard is considered the precursor, opposing passionate subjectivity to the Hegelian system, emphasising anxiety, the leap of faith, and the irreducibility of the individual. Heidegger, though rejecting the label, provides decisive ontological foundations with the existential analytic of Dasein (Being and Time, 1927). Sartre systematises atheistic existentialism in Being and Nothingness (1943): consciousness (the for-itself) is pure freedom condemned to choose, without excuses or refuge in bad faith. Simone de Beauvoir applies the existentialist framework to the female condition (“one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”). Camus, though distancing himself from the label, elaborates the theme of the absurd — the confrontation between the human demand for meaning and the world’s silence. Marcel and Jaspers represent Christian existentialist currents.
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