While each author who uses the word seems to be confident about what it means, the kaleidoscope of usages does not allow for a clear meaning. A near-infinite collection of quotations about which authors are, or are not, existentialists would yield a mass of contradictions.
Alasdair MacIntyre writes:
Existentialism is not easily definable. Its protagonists have traced it back to Pascal, to St. Augustine, even to Socrates. It has been alleged in our time to be the doctrine of writers as various as Miguel de Unamuno and Norman Mailer. At first sight, characteristics of the doctrine are almost as various. That two writers both claim to be existentialists does not seem to entail their agreement on any one cardinal point. Consequently, to define existentialism by means of a set of philosophical formulas could be very misleading. Any formula sufficiently broad to embrace all the major existentialist tendencies would necessarily be so general and so vague as to be vacuous, for if we refer to a common emphasis upon, for example, the concreteness of individual human existence, we shall discover that in the case of different philosophers this emphasis is placed in contexts so dissimilar that it is put to quite different and incompatible uses. How then is existentialism to be defined?
Yet MacIntyre bravely ventures forth to attempt some semblance of a definition. Voluntarism is a common theme among those who are frequently labeled as existentialists.
If any single thesis could be said to constitute the doctrine of existentialism, it would be that the possibility of choice is the central fact of human nature. Even the thesis that existence precedes essence often means no more than that people do not have fixed natures that limit or determine their choices, but rather it is their choices that bring whatever nature they have into being. As existentialists develop this thesis, they are involved in at least three separate contentions.
The theme of voluntarism runs through, and loosely connects, the writings of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen, and Dickens. In each, individuals are seen as making choices, or exhorted to make choices, with the awareness that the choices of individuals are significant.
This aspect of existentialism can perhaps be highlighted by contrasting it with those thinkers who oppose it. In the writings of Marx, Freud, Darwin, and sometimes Nietzsche, there is a certain mechanism or determinism which either denies choice to the individual, or minimizes its significance.
Maybe one could attempt to define existentialism by what it opposes. Marx argues that the individual human is the passive object which the grand forces of history and economics toss about like a cork on the ocean’s waves. Freud hypothesized that an individual’s thoughts and emotions were determined by experiences. Darwin constructed a system which saw choices as issuing from being who is the product of the impersonal forces of chemistry and physics.
Existentialism could be seen as a response to, or reaction against, Marx, Freund, Darwin, and similar thinkers. On the other hand, Kierkegaard, often cited as the father of existentialism, largely predated them.
By contrast, the existentialists would argue that human beings make numerous choices. Even when these choices seem to be dictated by a relatively rigid value system, that value system itself was chosen by the individual. These choices are not determined in any calculable way; therefore, any analogy to chemistry or physics is rejected.
This emphasis on choice is accompanied by a fondness, among at least some existentialist writers, for the words “free” and “freedom.”
Alasdair MacIntyre explains:
The first is that choice is ubiquitous. All my actions imply choices. Even when I do not choose explicitly, as I may not do in the majority of cases, my action bears witness to an implicit choice. The second contention is that although in many of my actions my choices are governed by criteria, the criteria which I employ are themselves chosen, and there are no rational grounds for such choices. The third is that no causal explanation of my actions can be given.
These partial hints about what existentialism might be, or about how the word ‘existentialism’ might be defined, notwithstanding, it remains difficult to answer questions like “Is Martin Heidegger an existentialist?” or “What does existentialism say about the afterlife?”
Existentialism is a construct, not a primary source. As such, it is of secondard concern relative to the actual texts of individual thinkers. Jean-Paul Sartre once famously remarked, “Existentialism? I don't know what that is. My philosophy is a philosophy of existence.”
The best and wisest route for scholarship is to treat each thinker as an individual, and to examine each thinker by means of the close reading of that philosopher’s texts.
