Existentialism is a philosophy which emphasises that each individual person is free and responsible for their own actions and self. We are not - as far as we can know - ultimately accountable to anyone or anybody else. We don't have a fixed, essential self which is imposed up on us, but instead, we first are a person, and then we develop our self. This is summed up be Sartre as 'Existence precedes essence'. Sarah Bakewell suggests an even shorter manta: 'No excuses!'
In her book, At The Existentialist Cafe, Sarah Bakewell defines existentialism as follows:
‘Existentialists concerns themselves with individual, concrete human existence.
They consider human existence different from the kind of being other things have. Other entities are what they are, but as a human I am whatever I choose to make of myself at every moment. I am free -
and therefore I'm responsible for everything I do, a dizzying fact which causes
an anxiety inseparable from human existence itself.
On the other hand, I am only free within situations, which can include factors in my own biology and psychology as well as physical, historical and social variables of the world into which I have been thrown.
Despite the limitations, I always want more: I am passionately involved in personal projects of all kinds.
Human existence is thus ambiguous: at once boxed in by borders and yet transcendent and exhilarating.’
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