ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what the individual existent is in so far as he is the actual subject of the philosophy of existence. All the essential existential concepts could be traced back to the influence of Kierkegaard. The idea of solitude, of dread, the idea of subjectivity, of forlornness, even that of care, the importance accorded to time, to possibility, to project, the idea of nothingness, the idea of paradoxical relations—all this is to be found in Kierkegaard’s meditations. From a rather similar standpoint one could note, particularly in Sartre’s philosophy, an attempt to attribute to man what is ordinarily attributed to God alone. It may be said that Sartre’s existentialism tends to put man in the place of God. What appeared to be a pessimistic philosophy first in Nausea and even in Being and Nothingness turned with The Flies, for example, or with some of Sartre’s political studies, into a doctrine of hope.
