The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. The idea can be found in the works of Averroes in the 12th century, Mulla Sadra in the 17th century, Søren Kierkegaard in the 19th century, and was later more explicitly formulated by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th century.

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dbpprop:abstract
  • The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. The idea can be found in the works of Averroes in the 12th century, Mulla Sadra in the 17th century, Søren Kierkegaard in the 19th century, and was later more explicitly formulated by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th century. Simone de Beauvoir also uses this concept in her feminist existentialism to develop the idea that "one is not born a woman, but becomes one". In Islamic philosophy, whereas previous methods of philosophical thought held that "essence precedes existence", a concept which dates back to Avicenna and Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra substituted a metaphysics of existence for the traditional metaphysics of essences, giving priority ab initio to existence over quiddity. In western philosophy Sartre flips this around arguing that for humans, existence precedes essence. The three-word formula originates with Sartre in his 1945 lecture "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (though antecedent notions can be found in Heidegger's Being and Time).
  • 「実存は本質に先立つ」という表現は、哲学において、存在には本質がない、とする考え方、観念、ものごとの捉え方、を現したものである。フランスの哲学者ジャン＝ポール・サルトルが自身の講演「実存主義はヒューマニズムであるか」において最初にこの概念が提起され、実存主義における基礎的な観念・概念となっている。サルトルの妻シモーヌ・ド・ボーヴォワールはこの考えを基に、「人は女に生まれるのではない、女になるのだ」という言葉を残した。
dbpprop:first
  • Mehdi Amin
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dbpprop:isbn
  • 700704124 (xsd:integer)
dbpprop:last
  • Razavi
dbpprop:p
  • 129 (xsd:integer)
  • 130 (xsd:integer)
dbpprop:pp
  • 129-30
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dbpprop:title
  • Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination
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dbpprop:year
  • 1997 (xsd:integer)
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  • The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. The idea can be found in the works of Averroes in the 12th century, Mulla Sadra in the 17th century, Søren Kierkegaard in the 19th century, and was later more explicitly formulated by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th century.
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  • Existence precedes essence
  • 実存は本質に先立つ
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