Well this was fun! Jean Wahl, French philosopher and poet, gave a talk on the history of existentialism (or: the philosophy of existence) in 1948—when Heidegger was still alive and active, not to mention Sartre. This is history described while it’s still being written.

I was struck by our distance from mid-twentieth century France on the first page when Wahl comments on an article by Sartre in Vogue, and a feature on existentialist literature in Mademoiselle. Popular magazines used to engage philosophy. What a world.

Wahl explores the philosophy of existence, majoring on Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Sartre with significant reflection on how they overturned traditional philosophy which culminated in the work of Hegel.

At the end of the talk, other scholars including Emmanuel Levinas (once a student of Heidegger) chime in. Sparks fly. Georges Gurvitch rips into Heidegger, calling him “not an honest thinker, but an able constructor and calculator bereft of ethics and intellectual scruples” (38)! His final words are so acerbic, they prompt Wahl to jump back in with an apology for his friend “whose concluding words were perhaps more forceful than premeditated” (40).

In the end, A Short History of Existentialism is a very brief (55 page) yet enlightening look at the philosophy that upended millennia of tradition.

Wahl, Jean. A Short History of Existentialism. Translated by Forrest Williams and Stanley Maron. Philosophical Library, 1949.