Abstract

Among the first to seriously introduce Kierkegaard’s philosophy to the French reading public in the 1930s, Wahl, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane were also engaged in the debate about philosophy of existence. Critical of the existentialist philosophy developed in the 1940s beginning with Sartre, as well as of the existential philosophies promoted throughout Germany and France in the 1930s by Heidegger, Jaspers, and Marcel, Bespaloff, Fondane, Shestov, and Wahl nevertheless all claim to remain faithful to “their” philosophy of existence, inspired by Kierkegaard. This essay will sketch out their understanding of what philosophy of existence is, through their positions and critiques of their contemporaries and successors.