Quest2ReasonClimb the mountain, sharpen your mind.

Existence and experience · 1843 onward

Existentialism

Overview

We are not born with a fixed purpose; we make ourselves through our choices. Handing the choice to a crowd is still a choice.

This card holds two different pressures, and they should not be melted into one slogan. Kierkegaard writes about the dizziness of an open choice. You can hand the choice to a crowd, a fashion or a pious formula, and the handing is still yours. A truth that matters ethically, for him, is one you appropriate and live. It is not a hunch that outranks a date, a count or a measurement. Nothing on this mountain teaches his faith as a license to ignore evidence.

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Sartre’s pressure is different. He argues that for a human being, existence comes before a fixed essence handed down in advance. You find yourself already here, and the “what I am” is built in what you do. Bad faith, in his account, is pretending the role was issued so completely that no choice remains. Beauvoir takes that problem into her own book. She has her own page in Ideas.

What the two share is the refusal of a life that is only described from outside. A correct label is not yet a lived stance. What they do not share is a single religious answer, or a permission slip to skip the checkable fact. The climb’s lesson on dizziness stays with Kierkegaard. The measurement still gets checked.

Where it answers

Key terms

Existence precedes essence
We exist first and define ourselves by what we choose; no fixed nature comes first.
Anguish
The weight of knowing your choices are yours alone, with nothing outside to excuse them.
Bad faith
Pretending you have no choice, to escape responsibility.
Leap of faith
Kierkegaard’s commitment to God, which reason can neither reach nor justify.
Authenticity
Living by choices you own, rather than by what “one” is expected to do.

In their words

“Existence precedes essence.”
Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism

Further reading

  • Fear and Trembling · Søren Kierkegaard
  • Being and Nothingness · Jean-Paul Sartre
  • Existentialism Is a Humanism · Jean-Paul Sartre

Learn this

4 lessons on the climb

Søren KierkegaardThe Dizziness of FreedomExistence Before EssenceLived TruthThree Ways of Living

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A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:

Quest2Reason. “Existentialism.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/ideas/existentialism. Accessed 13 November 2026.