Following the Second World War, existentialism became a well-known and significant philosophical and cultural
movement, mainly through the public prominence of two French writers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who
wrote best-selling novels, plays and widely read journalism as well as theoretical texts. These years also saw the
growing reputation of Heidegger's book Being and Time outside of Germany.
French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre
and Simone de Beauvoir
Sartre dealt with existentialist themes in his 1938 novel Nausea and the short
stories in his 1939 collection The Wall, and had published his treatise on
existentialism, Being and Nothingness, in 1943, but it was in the two years
following the liberation of Paris from the German occupying forces that he and
his close associates — Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
and others — became internationally famous as the leading figures of a
movement known as existentialism. In a very short space of time, Camus and
Sartre in particular became the leading public intellectuals of post-war France,
achieving by the end of 1945 "a fame that reached across all audiences." Camus was an editor of the most popular leftist (former French Resistance)
newspaper Combat; Sartre launched his journal of leftist thought, Les Temps
Modernes, and two weeks later gave the widely reported lecture on existentialism
and secular humanism to a packed meeting of the Club Maintenant. Beauvoir
wrote that "not a week passed without the newspapers discussing us"; existentialism became "the first media craze of the postwar era."
By the end of 1947, Camus' earlier fiction and plays had been reprinted, his new
play Caligula had been performed and his novel The Plague published; the first two novels of Sartre's The Roads to
Freedom trilogy had appeared, as had Beauvoir's novel The Blood of Others. Works by Camus and Sartre were
already appearing in foreign editions. The Paris-based existentialists had become famous.
By the end of 1947, Camus' earlier fiction and plays had been reprinted, his new
play Caligula had been performed and his novel The Plague published; the first two novels of Sartre's The Roads to
Freedom trilogy had appeared, as had Beauvoir's novel The Blood of Others. Works by Camus and Sartre were
already appearing in foreign editions. The Paris-based existentialists had become famous.
Heidegger read Sartre's work and was initially impressed, commenting: "Here for
the first time I encountered an independent thinker who, from the foundations up,
has experienced the area out of which I think. Your work shows such an
immediate comprehension of my philosophy as I have never before
encountered." Later, however, in response to a question posed by his French
follower Jean Beaufret, Heidegger distanced himself from Sartre's position
and existentialism in general in his Letter on Humanism. Heidegger's
reputation continued to grow in France during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s,
Sartre attempted to reconcile existentialism and Marxism in his work Critique of
Dialectical Reason. A major theme throughout his writings was freedom and
responsibility.
Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works
with existential themes including The Rebel, The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus,
and Summer in Algiers. Camus, like many others, rejected the existentialist label,
and considered his works to be concerned with facing the absurd. In the titular book, Camus uses the analogy of the
Greek myth of Sisyphus to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned for eternity to
roll a rock up a hill, but when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll to the bottom again. Camus believes that this
existence is pointless but that Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually
applying himself to it. The first half of the book contains an extended rebuttal of what Camus took to be existentialist
philosophy in the works of Kierkegaard, Shestov, Heidegger, and Jaspers.
Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist who spent much of her life as Sartre's partner, wrote about feminist
and existentialist ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity. Although often
overlooked due to her relationship with Sartre, de Beauvoir integrated existentialism with other forms of thinking
such as feminism, unheard of at the time, resulting in alienation from fellow writers such as Camus.
Paul Tillich, an important existentialist theologian following Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, applied existentialist
concepts to Christian theology, and helped introduce existential theology to the general public. His seminal work The
Courage to Be follows Kierkegaard's analysis of anxiety and life's absurdity, but puts forward the thesis that modern
humans must, via God, achieve selfhood in spite of life's absurdity. Rudolf Bultmann used Kierkegaard's and
Heidegger's philosophy of existence to demythologize Christianity by interpreting Christian mythical concepts into
existentialist concepts.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an existential phenomenologist, was for a time a companion of Sartre. His understanding of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology was far greater than that of Merleau-Ponty's fellow existentialists. It has been said that his
work Humanism and Terror greatly influenced Sartre. However, in later years they were to disagree irreparably,
dividing many existentialists such as de Beauvoir, who sided with Sartre.
Colin Wilson, an English writer, published his study The Outsider in 1956, initially to critical acclaim. In this book
and others (e.g. Introduction to the New Existentialism), he attempted to reinvigorate what he perceived as a
pessimistic philosophy and bring it to a wider audience. He was not, however, academically trained, and his work
was attacked by professional philosophers for lack of rigor and critical standards.
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