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Common Misconceptions of Existential Philosophy
Is Existentialism Still Worth Studying?
Back when I was a freshman in college, I took an introductory philosophy course. My professor was a leading expert in French existential philosophy, and as such, her teachings had a heavy bias towards the French thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre.
I remember reading No Exit by Sartre, and all of a sudden, I realized that philosophy wasn’t just some search for remote empirical truths. Philosophy now revealed itself to me as a mode of being, a way of engagement with the world that felt itself vital, more alive, than how I was living at the time.
As I explored more philosophical writings, I started to read all of this criticism of Existential philosophy. From historians to philosophers of the analytical tradition, the criticism that I saw was a complete disregard for Existential philosophy. I had even read that Americans (like myself) cannot fundamentally understand Existential philosophy as it was simply a “reaction" to the strife and war of 20th century Europe.
It all seemed to say, “It had its moment, but it’s no longer relevant. On to science! On to truth!”
I then figured that I should stay away from pursuing or studying Existentialist philosophy any further lest I become an exiled philosopher like the ones I was reading.
However, I do believe that I have been vindicated. As I have gotten older, I started reading Existential philosophy again over the course of several years. I have experimented with the ideas contained therein, and I find that a lot of the common misconceptions come from people who fundamentally misunderstood philosophy itself, which raises the question of why I was listening to non-philosophers pass judgment on philosophical movements. That is a question for another day.
In this article, I’d like to explore some of the common misconceptions of Existential philosophy from a basic standpoint. Using the work of David E. Cooper, in his survey book Existentialism, I will lay out some of these misconceptions and address why they are misconceptions and not true judgments of the philosophical movement itself.
