This post is a list of influential existential philosophers. There are 36 philosophers listed below chronologically by date of birth. License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"[Schopenhauer] is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and insatiable metaphysical will." (Wikipedia: Arthur Schopenhauer, 8.17.21 UTC 04:49)
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
"Much of [Kierkegaard's] philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a 'single individual', giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment." (Wikipedia: Soren Kierkegaard, 8.8.21 UTC 22:35)
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
"Dostoevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes." (Wikipedia: Dostoevsky, 8.16.21 UTC 20:44)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Prominent elements of [Nietzsche's] philosophy include... genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and related theory of master-slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of existence in response to the 'death of God' and profound crisis of nihilism; notion of the Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power." (Wikipedia: Friedrich Nietzsche, 8.13.21 UTC 22:51)
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)
"Husserl is a German philosopher of Jewish origin, who established the school of phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic based on analyses of intentionality." (Wikipedia: Edmund Husserl, 8.7.21 UTC 15:10)
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)
"Unamuno's philosophy was not systematic but rather a negation of all systems and an affirmation of faith 'in itself'. He developed intellectually under the influence of rationalism and positivism..." (Wikipedia: Miguel de Unamuno, 8.7.21 UTC 16:44)
Lev Shestov (1866-1938)
"Shetov maintains that no theory can solve the mysteries of life. Fundamentally, his philosophy is not 'problem-solving' but problem-generating, with a pronounced emphasis on life's enigmatic qualities." (Wikipedia: Lev Shestov, 7.15.21 UTC 06:04)
Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948)
"Berdyaev was a Russian political and also Christian religious philosopher who emphasized the existential spiritual significance of human freedom and the human person." (Wikipedia: Nikolai Berdyaev, 7.22.21 UTC 19:55)
Martin Buber (1878-1965)
"Buber was an Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship." (Wikipedia: Martin Buber, 8.12.21 UTC 21:21)
Ladislav Klima (1878-1928)
"Klima... suggests that the individual creates the world with their own will. Where the highest achievement for Schopenhauer is the man who denied his will, Klima conversely suggests that the realization of one's own will is the primary achievement." (Wikipedia: Ladislav Klima, 8.8.21 UTC 07:44)
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969)
"...Jaspers points out that as we question reality, we confront borders that an empirical (or scientific) method simply cannot transcend. At this point the individual faces a choice: sink into despair and resignation, or take a leap of faith towards what Jaspers called Transcendence." (Wikipedia: Karl Jaspers, 8.7.21 UTC 15:40)
Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976)
"Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations... Bultmann relied on demythologization, an approach interpreting the mythological elements in the New Testament existentially." (Wikipedia: Rudolf Bultmann, 6.14.21 UTC 17:41)
Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)
"[Ortega y Gasset] suggests that there is no 'me' without things, and things are nothing without me: 'I' (human being) cannot be detached from 'my circumstance' (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim: 'Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia'." (Wikipedia: Jose Ortega y Gasset, 7.31.21 UTC 16:33)
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
"[Kafka's work] typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers... exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety guilt and absurdity." (Wikipedia: Franz Kafka, 8.14.21 UTC 01:02)
Paul Tillich (1886-1965)
"[Tillich] is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology (1951-1963), in which he developed his 'method of correlation', an approach that explores the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by contemporary existential analysis." (Wikipedia: Paul Tillich, 7.31.21 UTC 19:53)
Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929)
"Rosenzweig's major work is The Star of Redemption (first published in 1921). It is a description of the relationships between God, humanity and the world, as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption." (Wikipedia: Franz Rosenzweig, 8.11.21 UTC 11:31)
Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973)
"The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on the modern individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing society." (Wikipedia: Gabriel Marcel, 8.18.21 UTC 01:02)
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
"In presenting 'being as inseparable, Heidegger introduced the term Dasein (literally: being there), intended to embody a 'living being' through their activity of 'being there' and 'being-in-the-world." (Wikipedia: Martin Heidegger, 8.14.21 UTC 13:00)
Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990)
"Zapffe's view is that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill (understanding, self-knowledge) which does not fit into nature's design... The tragedy, following this theory, is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore is a paradox." (Wikipedia: Peter Wessel Zapffe, 6.14.21 UTC 13:39)
Fernando Gonzalez (1895-1964)
"Gonzalez is called the 'philosopher of authenticity' and his thought is related to the experience of his life as a man. He used to say that we must live in the simple but bringing awareness of the essentials." (Wikipedia: Fernando Gonzalez, 7.12.21 UTC 17:32)
Benjamin Fondane (1898-1944)
"Fondane was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated neo-romantic and expressionist themes..." (Wikipedia: Benjamin Fondane, 6.20.21 UTC 20:53)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an 'authentic' way of 'being' became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (1943)." (Wikipedia: Jean-Paul Sartre, 8.16.21 UTC 09:26)
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995)
"Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt." (Wikipedia: Emmanuel Levinas, 7.18.23 UTC 14:27)
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
"[Arendt's] works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism." (Wikipedia: Hannah Arendt, 8.8.23 UTC 15:38)
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
"[Beauvoir] was known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism..." (Wikipedia: Simone de Beauvoir, 8.17.21 UTC 09:36)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)
"Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other." (Wikipedia: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 7.17.21 UTC 07:00)
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
"Much of [Wright's] literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the 19th to mid-20th centuries, who suffered discrimination and violence." (Wikipedia: Richard Wright, 8.8.21 UTC 11:39)
Emil Cioran (1911-1995)
"Pessimism characterizes all of his works... Cioran's works encompass many other themes as well: original sin, the tragic sense of history, the end of civilization, the refusal of consolation through faith, the obsession with the absolute, life as an expression of man's metaphysical exile, etc." (Wikipedia: Emil Cioran, 8.18.21 UTC 00:26)
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)
"Mahfouz's prose is characterized by the blunt expression of his ideas. His written works cover a broad range of topics, including... socialism, homosexuality and God." (Wikipedia: Naguib Mahfouz, 8.5.21 UTC 23:03)
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
"The absurdity of life, the inevitable ending (death) is highlighted in his acts. His belief was that the absurd - life being void of meaning, or man's inability to know that meaning if it were to exist - was something that man should embrace." (Wikipedia: Albert Camus, 8.12.21 UTC 04:05)
John Macquarrie (1919-2007)
"Macquarrie is often categorized as both an existentialist and a systematic theologian... Macquarrie remains one of the most important commentators and explainers of Heidegger's work." (Wikipedia: John Macquarrie, 7.6.21 UTC 04:26)
Vilem Flusser (1920-1991)
"[Flusser's] main topics of interest were: epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, ontology, language philosophy, semiotics, philosophy of science, the history of Western culture, the philosophy of religion, the history of symbolic language, technology, writing, the technical image, photography, migration, media and literature and especially in his later years, communication and artistic production." (Wikipedia: Vilem Flusser, 7.5.21 UTC 15:14)
Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980)
"[Kaufmann] is renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche. He also wrote a 1965 book on Hegel and published a translation of Goethe's Faust." (Wikipedia: Walter Kaufmann, 8.3.21 UTC 22:02)
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"...Fanon was a political radical, Pan-Africanist and Marxist humanist concerned with the psychopathology of colonization and the human, social and cultural consequences of decolonization." (Wikipedia: Frantz Fanon, 8.15.21 UTC 06:03)
Colin Wilson (1931-2013)
"[The Outsider (1956)] examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works by various key literary and cultural figures... and discusses Wilson's perception of social alienation in their work." (Wikipedia: Colin Wilson, 8.16.21 UTC 17:00)
Gonzalo Arango (1931-1976)
"In 1958 [Arango] led a modern literary movement known as Nadaismo (Nothing-ism)... Nadaismo was Arango's creation and inspiration, and his goal was 'not leaving intact any faith or any idol in place' according to the Primer Manifiesto nadaista." (Wikipedia: Gonzalo Arango, 8.7.21 UTC 03:25)
