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Existentialism

Existentialism & Literature

More than any other recent philosophical movement, the existentialists communicated their ideas through plays, novels and short stories. Peter Rickman asks: why did existentialism resort to literary expression?

Jean-Paul Sartre was a professional philosopher who taught the subject and wrote substantial works on it. However he also wrote, and is widely known for, novels, short stories and plays. It is no accidental link, as a man might be both a doctor and a golfer. Sartre’s literary work embodied, and thereby made widely known and even fashionable, his philosophical ideas. In this he instensified a tendency of the movement known as existentialism.

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