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[http://www.knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509/images/sar.jpg]

"Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position...  Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. " (L’Existentialisme est un humanisme)

Following [Nietzsche|FriedrichNietzsche] and [Kierkegaard|SørenKierkegaard], Sartre became the leading proponent of [existentialism], attempting to define how one might live a meaningful life from the basis of the individual subjective experience of existence. Sartre held that existence precedes essence and that it is as a consequence of this the individual is condemned to be free. If there is no such thing as a universal conception of human nature, then it ceases to be possible to evaluate one's action against it. As such, without the possibility of predetermined codes of behaviour (or [dogma] as it would be expressed in Virian terms), one is not only condemned to freedom, one is condemned to responsibility for the legitimacy of one's own actions; since that responsibility cannot be reassigned or referred to another agency.

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See other PhilosophersAndBrigands.
