Existentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry)

This is Kevin Aho's Existentialism entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, maintained by the Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University and published in 2023. As a peer-reviewed, continuously revised scholarly reference by a specialist in continental philosophy it surveys existentialism as a movement across Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and other figures, distinguishing what they actually shared from the looser popular sense of the term. Its strength is that Stanford Encyclopedia entries undergo editorial review by recognized specialists, unlike a general-purpose reference. Its limit is that as a survey of a broad movement it necessarily treats each individual thinker briefly, so a claim needing depth on one existentialist philosopher specifically needs a monograph addressing that thinker directly.