Existentialism is a philosophical movement that developed during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the first things one may notice about existentialism is the confusion and disagreement of what it actually is. Dissertations have been written on the expanse of the topic, but I shall only give an overview of the philosophy. Walter Kaufmann, one of the leading existential scholars says, "Certainly, existentialism is not a school of thought nor reducible to any set of tenets. The three writers who appear invariably on every list of existentialists, Heidegger, and Sartre -- are not in agreement on essentials. By the time we consider adding Rilke, Kafka, and Camus, it becomes plain that one essential feature shared by all these men is their perfervid individualism." Some of the difficulty in defining existentialism results from the characteristics of the philosophy itself. “For example, most existentialists deny that reality can be neatly summarized into a system, and so they reject all-inclusive views like Hegels,” says Diane Barsoum Raymond. This does not mean that existentialists are unsystematic, but rather that they tend to emphasize the richness of human experience rather than construct a tidy framework. Therefore, a precise definition is impossible; however, it suggests one major theme: a stress on individual existence and the subsequent development of personal essence. Existentialists attempt to direct our attention to ourselves as individuals. “They force us to think about our relation to such topics as the existence and nature of God, what it is to be Christian, the nature of values, and the fact of one’s own death. Existentialists encourage us to consider, in a personal way, the meaning of living authentically and inauthentically”(Oaklander ix). Man is the only known being, according to the philosophers, that defines itself merely through the act of living. In other words, first you exist, a...
