DE Weekly: Freedom, Responsibility, & Political Existentialism

Much like other philosophies, Existentialism carries with it a political dimension, insofar as it can be applied to the larger realm of groups of people and societies in general. For example, in the same ways that the arguments laid out in Plato’s The Republic have provided discourse for human politics, so have the writings of Existentialism been applied.

One does not need to look too far in the literature to see this: Albert Camus’s The Rebel and many of Jean-Paul Sartre’s short stories (“The Wall,” “The Childhood of a Leader,” and “Dirty Hands,” to name just a few) all have something to do with our political nature.