Did the existentialists call themselves that?

Mostly not. Gabriel Marcel coined the term in the mid-1940s and applied it to Sartre at a colloquium in 1945; Sartre rejected it, then adopted it publicly on 29 October 1945 in a lecture published as Existentialism Is a Humanism. Marcel later rejected the label himself in favour of Neo-Socratic. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky all died before the word existed.

Where does the word existential come from?

Possibly from a poet. Erik Lundestad reports that Fredrik Christian Sibbern spoke with the Norwegian poet Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven and then with Kierkegaard in 1841, and that Welhaven had produced the word for a kind of thinking with a close and positive attitude to life. Rune Slagstad quotes Kierkegaard crediting Welhaven directly.

What does existence precedes essence mean?

That people are not perceptible through preconceived categories and shape themselves by existing, so the life actually lived constitutes the true essence rather than any attributed one. Jonathan Webber reads it teleologically: a house has an inbuilt purpose and therefore walls and a roof, and humans have none, which leaves them free to choose.

Does it mean a person can be anything they wish?

No, and an existentialist would call that wish bad faith. The claim is that people are defined only insofar as they act and are responsible for their actions, so someone who acts cruelly is by that act a cruel person, and cannot attribute it to genes or human nature.

Is existential dread a clinical condition?

There is no clinical literature under the phrase, no prevalence figure, no instrument and no diagnostic category. What it names is described and analysed at length in philosophy as a consequence of a position rather than a symptom of anything.

Existential Dread

Nobody who is now called an existentialist was called one at the time, and several of them objected. Gabriel Marcel, a French Catholic philosopher, coined the term in the mid-1940s, and applied it to Jean-Paul Sartre at a colloquium in 1945. Sartre rejected it, changed his mind, and adopted it publicly on 29 October 1945 in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in Paris, published as Existentialism Is a Humanism.

Documented Abstract & ExistentialVery common

Marcel subsequently rejected the label himself, preferring Neo-Socratic in honour of Kierkegaard's essay On the Concept of Irony.

The nineteenth-century figures now grouped under the word, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, all died before it existed. The labels are described in the material as historical conveniences, first applied to many of these thinkers long after their deaths.

Where the word existential came from

There is a decent case that Kierkegaard borrowed it. The Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad reports that Fredrik Christian Sibbern held two conversations in 1841, first with the Norwegian poet Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven and then with Kierkegaard. Welhaven is believed to have produced a word for a certain kind of thinking with a close and positive attitude to life, describing the relationship as existential, and Sibbern carried it to Kierkegaard.

The historian Rune Slagstad claims Kierkegaard said so himself, quoting him to the effect that Hegelians do not study philosophy existentially, using a phrase of Welhaven's from a conversation about philosophy.

A word now attached to the deepest anxieties available to a person may have come from a poet describing a positive attitude to life.

What the tradition actually holds

The central proposition, in Sartre's formulation and Frederick Copleston's summary, is that existence precedes essence. People are not perceptible through preconceived categories; they shape themselves by existing, and the actual life lived constitutes the true essence rather than any attributed one. Aristotle and Aquinas held the reverse.

Jonathan Webber reads Sartre's essence teleologically rather than modally: an essence is the relational property of having parts ordered so as to collectively perform some activity. A house has walls and a roof because it belongs to its essence to keep the weather out. Humans differ in having no built-in purpose, and are therefore free to choose one and shape their essence by it.

The freedom is where the dread enters, the weight decidophobia names, and Sartre's version is radical: nothing fixes a purpose but the person, and projects have no weight or inertia beyond that person's endorsement of them. Simone de Beauvoir's is not. She holds that sedimentation, the accumulated product of past choices, resists changes of direction. Sedimentations can be changed by choosing differently, and they change slowly, acting as a force of inertia that shapes how a person evaluates the world until the transition completes.

What bad faith actually means

Defining oneself is regularly misread as being able to wish to be anything. An existentialist would call that wish an inauthentic existence, or in Sartre's term bad faith. What it says is narrower: a person is whatever their actions make them, and those actions are theirs to answer for. Someone who acts cruelly is defined by the act as a cruel person, and is responsible for that identity rather than their genes or human nature.

Sartre's own wording puts the sequence in order:

the person exists
meets himself
arrives in the world
and only then settles what he is The therapeutic implication is in the material too: a person can choose to act differently.

What the absurd claims about meaning

The absurd holds that there is no meaning in the world beyond what meaning is given to it, and the meaninglessness extends to the world's amorality and unfairness. It stands against the Abrahamic position that life's purpose is the fulfilment of God's commandments.

Speaking in 1945, Sartre put it as taking a consistently atheist position and following every consequence of it through. Others reject that framing, holding that it need not involve rejecting God but examines a mortal search for meaning in a meaningless universe, and asks what life is good for rather than what the good life is.

What this entry cannot supply

There is no clinical literature under existential dread, no prevalence figure, no instrument and no diagnostic category. The clinical words nearest to it take an object, thanatophobia taking death and Eco-Anxiety taking the climate, and this one takes none. The phrase names an experience the philosophical tradition describes and analyses at length, and what it describes is a consequence of a position rather than a symptom of anything.

Steven Crowell argues that existentialism is better understood as a general approach used to reject certain systematic philosophies than as a systematic philosophy itself, which is the most honest available answer to what the tradition behind the phrase amounts to. Heidegger, on being told that Sartre had drawn conclusions from Being and Time, replied that the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement.

Told apart

Often confused with Existential Dread

Common questions

Questions about Existential Dread

Did the existentialists call themselves that?: Mostly not. Gabriel Marcel coined the term in the mid-1940s and applied it to Sartre at a colloquium in 1945; Sartre rejected it, then adopted it publicly on 29 October 1945 in a lecture published as Existentialism Is a Humanism. Marcel later rejected the label himself in favour of Neo-Socratic. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky all died before the word existed.
Where does the word existential come from?: Possibly from a poet. Erik Lundestad reports that Fredrik Christian Sibbern spoke with the Norwegian poet Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven and then with Kierkegaard in 1841, and that Welhaven had produced the word for a kind of thinking with a close and positive attitude to life. Rune Slagstad quotes Kierkegaard crediting Welhaven directly.
What does existence precedes essence mean?: That people are not perceptible through preconceived categories and shape themselves by existing, so the life actually lived constitutes the true essence rather than any attributed one. Jonathan Webber reads it teleologically: a house has an inbuilt purpose and therefore walls and a roof, and humans have none, which leaves them free to choose.
Does it mean a person can be anything they wish?: No, and an existentialist would call that wish bad faith. The claim is that people are defined only insofar as they act and are responsible for their actions, so someone who acts cruelly is by that act a cruel person, and cannot attribute it to genes or human nature.
Is there anything resisting the freedom?: In Simone de Beauvoir's account, yes. She describes sedimentation, the accumulated product of past choices, as offering resistance to changes of direction. Sedimentations can be changed by choosing differently and change slowly, acting as inertia on how a person evaluates the world. Sartre's version is more radical: nothing fixes a purpose but the person.
Is existential dread a clinical condition?: There is no clinical literature under the phrase, no prevalence figure, no instrument and no diagnostic category. What it names is described and analysed at length in philosophy as a consequence of a position rather than a symptom of anything.

Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26

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