Existentialist Identity Questions

Origins

There are two sets of philosophical influences that shape the current manifestation of existentialism. The first is the philosophical school known as phenomenology, founded by the philosopher Edmund Husserl. Phenomenologists are concerned with human experience and consciousness. The works of Husserl that focused on the lifeworld were especially important to 20th-century existentialists. The second influence for the current understanding of existentialism is the revolutionary philosophers whose works have caused them to be identified as early existentialists. These thinkers include the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal, the 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the 19th-century Russian writer and philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Thinkers

The 20th-century philosophers most connected with existentialism are the German philosophers Martin Heidegger (although he was one of the most fervent to resist the application of the label existentialism to his work) and Karl Jaspers. In France, along with Sartre, the philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel, Jean Wahl, and Paul Ricőur are all commonly identified as existentialists. The Spanish philosophers José Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno are also commonly labeled as existentialists. In Russia, Nikolai Berdyaev and Lev Shestov are the philosophers most commonly connected with existentialism. John Wild is often credited for bringing Continental philosophy to the U.S. academy, thus creating a space for American existentialist thinkers Maurice Natanson, Calvin Schrag, Walter Kaufmann, Robert Solomon, William McBride, William Earle, James Eadie, George Schrader, Don Ihde, Richard Zaner, and Lewis Gordon.

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