Existential philosophy gained a powerful voice and became more prominent in twentieth century intellectual history once it was dramatized in the plays of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The philosophy, emphasizing the concrete over the abstract, was better suited to dramatization than to conceptual discussion in philosophical texts.
In the late 1940’s, the new philosophy of existentialism captured the imagination of Europe and America. Though the roots of existentialism had preceded this period, the movement became a self-conscious philosophy in its own right only after World War II. Unlike both earlier and later philosophies, however, existentialism was not a coherent and dogmatic system but a mood—an outlook that embraced a related set of themes from a variety of perspectives. There were atheistic existentialists and religious ones, optimists and pessimists. Moreover, there were many artists and writers who, though not existentialists per se, were influenced by existentialism. All shared a concern with problems of the human condition.
What gave the existentialists a common ground was a similarity of outlook and a common approach to the problems of human existence. Despite the diversity of emphasis among existentialist writers and philosophers, all shared a belief that, as Jean-Paul Sartre asserted in 1947, “existence precedes essence”—that is, the concrete problems of human existence, as experienced by the unique individual thrown into a problematic world of unique situations, take precedence over abstract, fixed views of life. Human beings were seen as conscious subjects in flux rather than as abstract essences or objects.
Existentialists approached the whole person as a unity of thought and action and asserted that humans must define their own nature. They emphasized that men and women must courageously define their existence and then take the responsibility for making their own choices. In this view, humans are what they do. Despite the absence of a fixed view of human nature, the existentialists seemed to agree on the major problems that concerned human beings. These concerns centered on the uniqueness of individuals and their situations, on a preoccupation with anxiety, absurdity, crisis situations, value definition, and choice-making.
It is no coincidence that Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, the two greatest French existentialists, joined the French Resistance movement during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II. The unprecedented horrors of the war heightened the emphasis on people in extreme situations and raised vital questions about moral commitment to fighting radical evil.
Unlike other philosophies, existentialism lent itself perfectly to literary and dramatic expression. The graphic and powerful imagery and dialogue of the novel and the drama could portray the range of existential problems more effectively than abstract philosophical discourse. Thus, Camus and Sartre became famous largely because of their plays. The dramatic voice they gave to the ideas of existentialism and the absurd disseminated those ideas far more effectively than could more straightforward treatises.
Albert Camus became a towering moral philosopher and writer. Born in Algeria in 1913, he settled in Paris and studied philosophy and literature. Before writing his great philosophical works, he began to explore the nature of the absurd in the theater. In 1935, he helped found a theater company in which he acted, wrote, and produced.
Camus’s most famous and greatest play, Caligula
In his eloquent short piece Le Mythe de Sisyphe
Caligula was followed by Le Malentendu
L’État du siège
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris. He began writing plays as a prisoner of war in Germany in 1940. Sartre’s dramas differed somewhat in content and emphasis from those of Camus; rather than featuring eloquent characters, Sartre’s plays emphasized the depiction of average people in extreme situations and the ways in which those people responded, either by facing up to or by evading their responsibility for making choices. Sartre also turned to Marxism, with a resulting emphasis on social problems. For Sartre, the evocation of great truths was the task of the theater.
Beginning with Huis clos
The impact of the existentialist plays of Sartre and Camus manifested itself in a variety of ways. What seemed to appeal to the large audiences in Europe and America, as well as to drama critics, were the simple plots, the effectiveness of the dialogue and dramatic effects, and the extreme situations, dilemmas, and painful choices confronting the characters of the plays. The unprecedented horrors of World War II and the images of Auschwitz and Hiroshima had wounded much of the older faith in optimism, progress, and moral certainty. The plays of Sartre and Camus were bound to appeal to a generation searching for moral bearings after the upheavals of war.
Many of these plays were performed frequently in France and the United States. They became the ideal vehicles for the presentation of existential ideas; the depiction of extreme dramatic situations and the expression of the philosophies of the existentialists became inseparable. Thus, the existentialist dramas of Sartre and Camus were able to reach a far wider and more varied audience than their often difficult philosophical works.
Camus and Sartre directed their plays to their own time, the crisis-ridden twentieth century. Caligula was meant and taken as an evocation of the bloody and fanatical dictatorships of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Sartre’s play La Putain respectueuse
Thus, Sartre and Camus became two of the most popular figures of the cultural avant-garde of Europe. The versatile Sartre continued his prolific creativity and his political and social activism until his death in 1980. Camus received the Nobel Prize in Literature
The plays of Sartre and Camus also influenced the mainstream drama of the 1950’s and 1960’s and set the stage for the innovative works of the Theater of the Absurd
The dramas of the absurd tended to eliminate the coherent cause-and-effect of incidents and situations, created passive characters, and sometimes used incoherent language to heighten the atmosphere of meaninglessness and absurdity. For example, Samuel Beckett’s most famous play, En attendant Godot (pb. 1952, pr. 1953; Waiting for Godot, 1954), concerns two characters waiting for salvation and providing no real existentialist responses of choice and commitment. The waiting is terrifying and never ends. The Theater of the Absurd would not have been possible without the work of Sartre and Camus. The existentialist dramas of Sartre and Camus created and re-created tragic themes in a twentieth century context. In so doing, they created a theater of ideas that remains a permanently influential body of work.
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Aronson, Ronald. Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Charts the relationship, both personal and philosophical, between the two most influential French existentialists. -
Brosman, Catherine Savage. Jean-Paul Sartre. Boston: Twayne, 1983. A well-balanced study with excellent chapters on Sartre’s drama. Shows how Sartre’s plays emphasize that a person’s position in the world derives from a collision between the struggle for freedom and the obstacles presented by fate. Characterizes Sartre’s plays as dramas of extreme situations and judges Sartre as more pessimistic than Camus. -
Cruickshank, John. Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. Well-reasoned study showing how Camus evolved from a passive acceptance of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus to a measured revolt against the absurd in The Rebel. Views Camus as a major tragedian of the twentieth century and the characters of his plays as eloquent spokesmen for his “theater of ideas.” -
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Rev. ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969. The best single general work on the topic. Surveys the work of twenty-five dramatists in America and Europe, including Eastern Europe. Contains an intelligent evaluation of the influence of Sartre and Camus on the new drama while maintaining that the Theater of the Absurd departed from existentialism by emphasizing the absurd for its own sake. -
Guicharnaud, Jacques. Modern French Theatre: From Giraudoux to Genet. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967. Excellent survey, with fine chapters on Sartre and Camus and good bibliographies. Maintains that Sartre and Camus were in the traditions of the French moralists and both continued and departed from the traditions of classical tragedy. Concludes that Camus and Sartre succeeded admirably in fusing their dramatic talent with their ideas. -
Guignon, Charles, ed. The Existentialists: Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Collection of essays by renowned scholars on the central figures of existentialism. -
Kaufmann, Walter A., ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1975. One of the best comprehensive introductions to the existentialists. Contains an excellent introduction and well-chosen excerpts with fine prefaces. -
Sagi, Avi. Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd. Translated by Batya Stein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Discusses the philosophy of the absurd, its relationship to existentialism, and the role of Camus’s drama in defining his philosophy. -
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Sartre on Theater. Edited by Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka. Translated by Frank Jellinek. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. Invaluable collection of wide-ranging essays, interviews, and comments on his own plays by Sartre. Sartre stresses the importance of theater as a way of distancing the spectator and thus enabling the audience to grasp the truth. Also explores the theater’s ability to dramatize basic “myths” (for example, the Hell of No Exit) to this end. Sartre argues that theater serves a social function by evoking collective truths.
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