To what extent does existentialism constitute itself as a literary rather than a primarily philosophical phenomenon? Or, to put a slightly different but related question: what form does existentialism take when it is viewed as literature rather than as philosophy? Such questions arise as a fairly direct consequence of the fact that a number of key existentialist works (or works that have generally been regarded as such) have indeed been works of literature – Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (La Nausée, 1938) and Albert Camus's The Outsider (L'Étranger, 1939) being two excellent examples – while some of the key figures within or close to the existentialist tradition have been literary rather than philosophical – arguably this is true of Camus, and certainly of Beckett. Rather than simply provide an exploration of existentialism in literature, or a survey of those literary works that figure within existentialism, this essay will also examine the idea of existentialism as literature, sketching a picture of existentialism as it emerges in literary rather than solely philosophical terms.

Although it is sometimes argued that existentialism stands in a special relationship to literature – that it is an especially “literary” mode of philosophizing – David E. Cooper argues that over-reliance on existentialist fiction has actually been a source of misconceptions about existentialism. Refusing to include Camus among the existentialists, or to allow that he might be a philosopher, Cooper claims that “existentialism … is not a mood or a vocabulary, but a relatively systematic philosophy.”