Since linguistic philosophy tends to be considered by its proponents to be a method or a group of methods, internal diversity within the area of concern is not surprising. Similarly, Existentialism, which is less of an "-ism" than an attitude, expresses itself in a variety of ways. The most influential modern Existentialists have been the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and the French philosopher, dramatist, and novelist Jean Paul Sartre (1905-80); the former was especially important in the development of modern continental theology, particularly for the use made of some of his ideas by Rudolf Bultmann.According to Heidegger, man's existence is characterized as "care." This care is shown first in possibility: man makes things instrumental to his concerns and so projects forward. Secondly, there is his facticity, for he exists as a finite entity with particular limitations (his "thrownness"). Thirdly, man seeks to avoid the anxiety of his limitations and thus seeks inauthentic existence. Authenticity, on the other hand, involves a kind of stoicism (positive attitude toward life and suffering) in which death is taken up as a possibility and man faces the "nothing." The structure of man's world as analyzed by Heidegger is revealed, in a sense, affectively--i.e., through care, anxiety, and other existential attitudes and feelings.
Sartre's thought has had less direct impact on the study of religion, partly because his account of human existence represents an explicit alternative to traditional religious belief. Sartre's analysis begins, however, from the human desire to be God: but God is, on Sartre's analysis, a self-contradictory notion, for nothing can contain the ground of its own being. In searching for an essence man fails to see the nature of his freedom, which is to go beyond definitions, whether laid down by God or by other human beings.
