ABSTRACT
The Existentialist Imagination IKierkegaard and Nietzsche Existentialism is, above all else, a philosophy of human finitude. It describes man in his concrete situation in the world. Thus while it inherits the romantic cult of subjectivity, it exposes the existential limits of man’s creative powers. As such, existentialism tempers the initial optimism of romantic idealism. It clips the wings of the transcendental imagination and lays bare the everyday obstacles which obstruct its flights and fiats. Against romanticism’s claim for the unlimited and quasi-divine potential of imagination, the existentialist sounds a note of irony-even pessimism. He brings imagination back to earth. The operative terms of existentialist philosophy speak for themselves: anguish, dread, bad faith, absurdity, nothingness, nausea. In short, existentialism speaks of the creative imagination less in terms of a plenitude than of a predicament.
