Existentialists drew on lived experience that philosophy itself had structured.
Evidence
In asking these two questions, most (not all) of the existentialists drew on their own life experience. But this experience was itself structured around philosophy. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty summed up this relationship, ‘Life becomes ideas and the ideas return to life.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 99
Categorization
- DEFINE: Gives the trademark existentialist circularity between philosophy and life in Merleau-Ponty’s one-line formula.
- XREF: connects to: Philosophies are inhabited and lived in rather than merely followed as rules — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 104; Existentialism holds that philosophy grows out of concrete lived experience — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 54; Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1025 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems
#corroborates(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1025 - Existentialism holds that philosophy grows out of concrete lived experience
#expands(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 54 - Beauvoir viewed philosophy as a lens on lived experience, not systematic construction.
#exemplifies(0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 330 - Existentialism is by nature applied to real individual lives
#expands(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 687 - Ancient philosophical formation built universality from concrete experience; modernity finds it ready-made and truncated.
#qualifies(0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1016