Existentialism is something everyone has heard of. It belongs among those '-isms', like cubism and surrealism, whose succès de scandale make them part of the consciousness of our century. The popular image is, however, full of misconceptions which need to be scotched if understanding of the philosophy examined in this book is not to be prejudiced.

These misconceptions are prevalent among those who have picked up their existentialism from dictionaries, encyclopaedias and popular histories of ideas. Typical is the description of existentialism as 'the metaphysical expression of the spiritual dishevelment of a post-war age'. So, too, is one historian's description of it as 'the assertion that life is more than logic . . . that the subjective and personal must be more highly valued and the objective and intellectualized must be depreciated'. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary entry is particularly wayward: 'An anti-intellectual philosophy of life, holding that...