Get Your Smart On
Existentialism, a philosophy centered on individual existence and freedom, traces its roots to the 19th-century thinkers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Though differing significantly in their approaches, both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche emphasized the importance of individual authenticity in a world increasingly devoid of traditional meaning. The idea of the self emerges from this rejection of pre-determined values and a call to confront the singularity of one's existence, ultimately leading to the creation of one's own values and meaning. The individual self will become the ultimate source of meaning and value in a world increasingly stripped of traditional structures of authority. What is astounding is that this is a wholly modern idea, that of the individual self, no such thing exists in the ancient world or in periods preceding modernity. Existentialism is just one lens through which we can see this emergence.
“There are two kinds of existentialists; first, those who are Christian, among whom I shall mention Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both Catholic; and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom we must place Heidegger, as well as the French existentialists and myself." — Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
Sartre mentions, in "Existentialism Is A Humanism," that there are Christian-Catholic and atheist existentialist camps, placing himself in the latter camp. I wanted to track that down, and so here we have two different origins for existentialist thought, one lies with Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) the other with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and a devout Christian, was up against the Enlightenment thinkers of his time, who championed reason and objective truth as the ultimate guiding forces. Instead, Kierkegaard emphasized the personal, subjective experience of faith. For him, faith was not a matter of logical proof but an intensely personal "leap of faith." Even the non-religious will relate to this experience of needing to take that leap at crucial junctures of life: quitting your stable, corporate job, to pursue a writing career, or to become a chef, or to follow some other passion. For him, that leap comes from having to confront "the unknown," and this encounter with the unknown is also an encounter with God, and all of the attendant mystery. Taking that leap means embracing paradox, such as the paradox of how something that is eternal can exist in time.
Kierkegaard argued that the most profound truths about existence cannot be captured by pure logic alone. Rather than attempting to rationalize about God, Kierkegaard insisted that such mysteries must be embraced through faith. This idea challenges the Enlightenment's "cold, hard logic" and instead invites us to confront the unknown with passion and courage. You can make all the pro-con lists you want, but at the end of the day, you might just have to go with what you feel is right, and that feeling can't be argued with. If you are having a hard time making those leaps in your life, you might have been abused by rationalists regimes of being, and should seek help with an existentialist coach or counselor asap.
Kierkegaard maps out the journey towards authentic existence, comprised of three stages of life: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. In the aesthetic stage of life, individuals pursue sensory pleasures and live for the moment. It’s an existence rooted in material pursuits and self-indulgence, much like the reflections found in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, where the pursuit of worldly desires ultimately leads to emptiness. It's a life full of vanity and "vexation of spirit."
Then you grow up a little bit, start taking on responsibilities and playing by society's rules like a good Kantian citizen. This is the ethical stage, where individuals commit to a life of duty and moral integrity. But for Kierkegaard, even this stage is not the final destination. Despite following all the rules, one may still experience a profound existential crisis — what he called the "sickness unto death." This existential dread is not a physical illness but a deep, nagging sense of despair, a recognition that something vital is still missing from life. It’s the feeling many experience in moments of existential reflection, those moments in which we find ourselves asking, "Is this all there is?" It is a yearning for something deeper. Finding true meaning in one's life brings us face to face with the unknown (e.g., death).
The religious stage is Kierkegaard’s final and most transformative stage. To reach it, one must confront the existential dread or angst and embrace a leap of faith. Here, one faces the unknown and accepts the paradoxes of existence. Faith becomes a personal, passionate commitment, a path to deeper understanding and true meaning. That it is personal means that each of us must make that leap for ourselves, and alone. For Kierkegaard, living authentically requires taking this leap — it is not given but earned through struggle. Faith is an achievement in a meaningful life, reachable only after suffering a terrible psychic sickness. The existential angst is what opens you up to taking that leap of faith, embracing the paradox.
Friedrich Nietzsche, you probably already know, is the German philosopher who famously declared that God is dead. He didn't actually mean it literally, but rather, he was pointing to the decline of religion as the central moral authority in Western societies. He did not see traditional religious values as sufficient to guide humanity in a rapidly changing world. Unlike Kierkegaard, Nietzsche had the 20th Century "breathing down his neck." He was not wrong. He was a witness, in his time, to the scientific revolution. Specifically, Darwin's theory of evolution challenged traditional religious explanations of the world, but science in general was giving religion a run for her money. The industrial revolution and the rise in urbanization, changing labor dynamics, and a new social order, ate into the church's influence. Finally, powerful monarchies that were closely aligned with the Church were giving way to more secular forms of government and nation states. His was a tumultuous age, leading into two world wars.
Instead of relying on faith, Nietzsche introduces the concept of the will to power. Unlike brute force or domination, Nietzsche's will to power refers to the drive for self-mastery, personal growth, and the pursuit of one's highest potential. It’s about striving to become the most authentic version of oneself, unconstrained by societal norms or religious dogma. Central to this pursuit is Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch (often translated as "Overman" or "Superman"). The Übermensch rejects conformity and creates their own system of values. They break free from societal expectations, forging their own unique path in life. In this way, Nietzsche calls on individuals to become creators of meaning rather than passive followers of inherited morality. This is a rallying call heard by many a teenage rebel, usually of the masculine persuasion. But it is also understood by German nationalists in racialized terms to mean the rise of the Aryan folk, and is embraced by Nazis in the Third Reich.
To understand this concept fully, it’s important to examine Nietzsche's critique of morality, particularly his ideas about master and slave morality. We are already familiar with Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic. According to Nietzsche's appropriation, morality is born from these asymmetrical Master/Slave dynamics. Master morality is the morality of the strong — those who value strength, nobility, and self-affirmation. In contrast, slave morality emerges from the perspective of the oppressed. It prioritizes values like humility, compassion, and self-denial, which Nietzsche believed were tools used by the weak to control the strong. By flipping traditional notions of "good" and "evil" on their head, Nietzsche forces us to question the origins of our moral beliefs.
This should sound very familiar to you even if you have never encountered Nietzsche's philosophy before, because the political right and left (here speaking about the United States, but even more broadly speaking) is built along these lines. Morality on the right is in line with a "survival of the fittest" winner takes all, zero sum game of conquering and dominating the weak for the good of all, in the name of human progress. It assumes a Hobbesian interpretation of human nature as based in self-interest, and considers itself a realist in adopting this attitude. While on the left, morality is about extending grace and compassion to society's weakest, outcasts, and downtrodden, framed by the cooperative and generous view of human nature set out by Rousseau.
Although Nietzsche emphasized individual freedom, he also highlighted the darker side of human nature. One such example is his exploration of ressentiment, a French term meaning "resentment." Nietzsche viewed ressentiment as a corrosive force that arises when individuals, feeling powerless, direct their anger toward others. It festers as envy and bitterness, leading to self-destructive behavior and a desire to "bring down" those in positions of strength. There was a brief period in this last election cycle when any critique of Trump was framed as a obsession and bitter envy of his success. This is completely in line with that attitude - reading Nietzsche makes the moves the nationalist fascist right makes legible and predictable.
Nietzsche was a big believer in the aesthetic point of view, and in a pursuit of pleasure that might correspond to Kierkegaard's first stage of moral development, except that Nietzsche had a very different take on it. For him, the voluptuous materialism of life teaches us to embrace creative individuality, in an effort to find beauty and meaning. Even in the face of suffering and tragedy we find beauty and meaning. It's about saying yes to all of life, affirming one's choices with the full weight of existence, even if unpopular or looked-down on. Do you ever feel stifled by society's rules? Do you ever feel that urge to break free and forge your own path? Then embrace your will to power. Question everything, even morality itself. That is the road to authenticity.
For both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, authenticity is key to forging a meaningful existence. Kierkegaard calls us to leap into faith, accepting life's paradoxes and striving for meaning through a personal relationship with the divine. Nietzsche, on the other hand, urges us to confront the "death of God" and become creators of our own values, driven by the will to power. Kierkegaard emphasizes humility, submission, and faith, while Nietzsche celebrates strength, vitality, and self-creation. Their approaches are so different, could they be reconciled? Is it even appropriate to try?
Clearly, both hold that life is not about blindly accepting established dogma or following pre-written scripts, but are there limits to individual freedom? A commonly suggested reconciliation is to assert freedom within limits: True freedom is not the absence of constraints but the ability to make choices that align with one’s deeper values. But this leads us straight into the paradox of freedom of the will - that we are free so long as we choose to do what is "right," but that is for another time. Besides, there are no "deeper values" that we can lean into, if after rejecting received wisdom, we create those value in and through the choices we make, through our actions.
Before closing, I want to return to Sartre because it occurs to me that this Nietzschean individualism is what confuses people approaching Sartrean Existentialism and calling it solipsistic and unable to support moral choice. You might recall, this is the moment when he reviews the theory of intersubjectivity that grounds the Sartrean subject. So the question becomes, how do these two existentialist pre-theories get filtered into the 20th Century into these two camps - theist and atheist?
Jean-Paul Sartre references Jaspers and Marcel, both of whom reflect Kierkegaard's influence in existential philosophy. Karl Jaspers’ "Existenzphilosophie" emphasizes the individual's encounter with existential limits like suffering and death, drawing upon Kierkegaard's focus on subjective experience and "boundary situations" that compel transcendence beyond limitations, even as Jaspers distances himself from explicit Christian theology. Gabriel Marcel, in contrast, directly embraces Christian existentialism, paralleling Kierkegaard through his emphasis on personal experience, love, and faith as foundational to human existence. As an avowed Catholic philosopher, Marcel explores how relationships and the "mystery of being" unveil profound spiritual truths, akin to Kierkegaard’s focus on personal engagement with faith and God.
Heidegger rejected the theological framework of Kierkegaard’s existentialism, he absorbed Kierkegaard’s focus on individual existence, anxiety (Angst), and the leap into authenticity. Heidegger's concept of Angst (existential anxiety) reflects Kierkegaard’s notion of the "sickness unto death" — an awareness of one's finite and contingent existence. However, unlike Kierkegaard, Heidegger frames this anxiety not as a call to faith but as a recognition of the "thrownness" (Geworfenheit) of human beings into a world that lacks pre-given meaning.
While also influenced by Kierkegaard, Heidegger's own existential philosophy is significantly shaped by Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics and his declaration that "God is dead." Nietzsche's rejection of absolute values and his emphasis on the will to power and the creation of new values resonated with Heidegger's project of rethinking human existence. Heidegger took Nietzsche's critique of Western metaphysics further by challenging the philosophical tradition from Plato to Descartes and rethinking being as something more fundamental than abstract categories or divine principles. Heidegger’s famous concept of being toward death parallels Nietzsche’s call for humans to confront the "abyss" of nihilism and create meaning for themselves.
And of course, we have Heidegger to thank for the reframing of these proto-existentialists as a phenomenological project, one that reworks the subject who is free as one that is socially imbricated and dependent on intersubjective encounters with otherness for intelligibility. Personally, I still want to get behind Nietzsche's affirmation of pleasure and beauty as guiding an authentic morality, while being addicted to the drama of Kierkegaardian angst.