ABSTRACT
The individual forms the realms of existence; God, that of transcendence. These two concepts—existence and transcendence—are among the key concepts of the philosophers of existence. What these philosophers are concerned with is existence in its relation to transcendence. Out of his non-systematic, existential thought they have sought to evolve a system, and one may well ask whether their undertaking is not contrary to the essence-if that is here the word-of the philosophies of existence. The philosophy of existence has, at least in present-day France, developed into the rival forms of J. P. Sartre's non-religious or irreligious existentialism and Gabriel Marcel's religious existentialism, known as Christian existentialism. One might, by taking Sartre’s philosophy as a terminal point, describe the evolution of the philosophies of existence as going from a purely religious thought with Kierkegaard to a non-religious and at times even an anti-religious thought with Sartre.
