a configuration to the unshaped inner impulse. In comparison, Sartre insists on manÆs absolute freedom and rejects the influence of instinct and the existence of unconscious psychic forces.
Although strictly speaking, Nietzsche is not an existentialist, several of his concepts were pre-existential and his ideas influenced later philosophers such as Camus, Sartre, Jaspers and Heidegger.
Judged by our initial criteria, Nietzsche
might well be called an existentialist. The
refusal to belong to any school of thought, the
repudiation of the adequacy of any body of
beliefs whatever, opposition to philosophic
systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with
traditional philosophy as superficial, academic,
and remote from lifeùall this is eminently
characteristic of Nietzsche no less than of
Kierkegaaard, Jaspers, or Heidegger (Kaufmann
Sartre and Nietzsche are also in agreement regarding the key Existential view that God is dead, and that human beings must take responsibility for their own actions. Sartre claims that God is not necessary and is in fact nonexistent, therefore human beings are free in a way that not only imposes responsibility, but that imposes terror. SartreÆs implication is that freedom is a burden. ôMan being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for
...