Existence

In the course of the phenomenological movement, the concept of existence refers prima facie to the “existential analytic” that Heidegger elaborates in Being and Time (1927). “Existence” is thus intended in the light of Dasein, as “human existence”, and represents a key notion in the fundamental ontology that permits Heidegger to formulate the “question of being” (Seinsfrage), whose sense is at once conveyed and hidden by the history of metaphysics. As part of a conceptual plot constituted by related notions like “transcendence”, “world”, “freedom”, “responsibility”, “authenticity” and so forth, the concept of existence occupies an even more relevant position in existentialist philosophy through an appropriation of the phenomenological method that generally stands in critical opposition to the rationalism of Western tradition. This raises the related issue of the affinity between these two multifaceted forms of thought, phenomenology and existentialism, giving way to composite interpretations that have been tending to antithetical outcomes: the association that, on the one hand, legitimates a form of “existentialist phenomenology” and the differentiation that, on the other hand, does not allow phenomenology for compatibility with the so called “philosophies of existence”.