ABSTRACT
A quarter of a century has passed since existentialism exploded on the American scene, filtering down to the mass culture in the form of existentialist literature, psychologies, theologies and literary theories. The conception of our predicament as involving a tension or fundamental ambiguity that must be resolved by the individual reappears in most existentialist writings. Existentialism as a philosophical movement is for all practical purposes dead. Its death is due, in part, to the widespread conclusion that it breeds subjectivism and nihilism, and that it ‘makes ethics impossible.’ The chapter aims to examine the thought of four influential thinkers – Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and Heidegger – and to argue that existentialism has something worthwhile to contribute to debates in ethics. If an ethical theory is understood as a set of principles dictating in advance how one should act in any situation, then existentialism can not provide an ethical theory.
