The Top 5 Women Existentialists
So when you hear about the most influential existentialists, it’s typically: Sartre, Kierkegaard, Camus, Nietzche; and even your more contemporary ones, like Jordan Peterson or Mark Manson — But all dudes.
And so it begs the question: Where are the women?
You don’t hear much about them, but they’re definitely out there, and while I only cover 5 in this post, I’d love to hear who you might think deserves more hype.
#5: Anais Nin
In Paris during the 1920’s & 30’s, she struggled to be taken seriously as a writer. But despite this, she never gave up or submitted to what was conventional for a woman to write. And after having moved to America in 1939, she eventually became known for her written works of fiction. The Delta of Venus being perhaps the most popular.
But what’s interesting about her fictional stories is that they came out more so as products of her actual life, from what she had written in her diaries.
Most notably, her diaries include thoughts of how she experienced the tensions of being a female writer in male dominated artistic circles; all the while being bffs with one of the most provocative writers at the time, Henry Miller; she also wrote in great detail about her life in Paris and NY; and most controversy, about her decidedly complicated relationships (one of which was with her father…).
But all in all, after reading her journals you can’t help but relate to her in her quest for understanding human identity. It’s in fact the primary characteristic of hers that make her such an interesting existentialist.
And so for that, along with her brilliant blend of prose and poetry, she earns a spot on this list.
#4: Esther Perel
After being born into a family of holocaust survivors in Antwerp Belgium, she grew up among a jewish community where she noticed a profound distinction in lifestyles — there were those who did not die, and those who came back to life.
And for Esther, it was this coming back to life, this mode of revival, that would have a major impact on not only the way she lived, but how she would shape her practice as a psychotherapist.
Now I know this is a little abstract so to quickly clarify, this mode of revival that Esther is getting at is this sense of vitality that comes with taking risks and exploring the unknown. which again is the opposite of what she saw in some of the Jews in her neighborhood who clammed up and were overly cautious — those who were simply trying not to die.
Now to get on the opposite side of that coin, in her book, Mating in Captivity, Esther coined the phrase “erotic intelligence,” which was a concept that practically made the book an international bestseller.
And what Esther means by erotic “is not sex per se, but the qualities of vitality, curiosity, and spontaneity that make us feel alive.” So here we have again the attributes of those who Esther saw come back to life, rather than just not die.
Now, throughout her career, Esther has done a lot to contribute to the world of psychology, but It’s for her vivacious energy for life, her embracing of the ‘erotic’ and helping others do the same, that she earns a spot in my top 5 women existentialists.
#3: Adeline Virginia Woolf
Despite the unfavorable conditions of being a woman in the 19th-20th century, Woolf was able to create something extraordinary through them by wrestling with the details of her experience.
For example, in her work, A Room of One’s Own, she writes of a world deprived of works of genius due to exclusion and inequality. And in being subjected to inequality herself simply by being a woman at the time, she explored a new way of writing that focused on her streams of internal dialogue.
Now this might not sound like anything new, but it was actually in this way that Woolf became the pioneer of a new narrative device called, Stream of Consciousness.
Which can be simply stated as describing in detail what’s appearing in the narrator’s consciousness as it occurs. It sounds something like this:
“For having lived in Westminster — how many years now? Over twenty, — one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.” — Virginia Woolf
So to sum it up, it’s her writing innovation, her impact on women’s rights and her talent for detailed descriptions that made Virginia Woolf an outstanding existentialist woman.
#2: Hannah Arendt
During the wake and aftermath of Nazi Germany, Arendt became a thought provoking critique of governmental systems and morality through her written contributions.
But this was after a crazy decade-long journey through Europe: going from having a 4 year affair with a future Nazi, to being imprisoned by the Gestapo, to running away to Czechoslovakia and then Switzerland, eventually landing in Paris, getting divorced, then getting married again, then being detained by the French for being an alien — despite having been stripped away of her German citizenship, to then finally escaping to New York, where she remained for the rest of her life.
So yeah, she had a few things to say about that.
And when you’re like Hannah, having the rare combo of both genius and the experience of living through 2 world wars, you’re going to write something good.
And by good I mean phenomenal.
So it’s no surprise that her reflections on totalitarianism, evil, and labour have had such a huge impact for decades — and in fact, it was only back in 2016, after the election, that Arendt’s book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, saw an increase in sales by 1600%.
And so because of this sustained influence that her work’s had on politics and ethics, and the fact that she lived and acted with a deep consideration for the human condition, that she earns a spot here at number 2.
(ANNNDD ddrum roll please…)
#1: Simone De Beauvoir
Of course I couldn’t make this list without mentioning the queen of pop-existentialism.
This is the woman that you always see next to Jean-Paul Sartre in photos. They were in what you call nowadays an “ethical non-monogamous relationship.” And they remained loyal companions till the very end.
But this isn’t to say that Simone’s fame is by mere association to Sartre.
Like not even.
Simone was an intellectual in her own right. She was a novelist, essayist, short story writer, philosopher, political activist — basically all the things.
But her pinnacle achievement was in bringing to the world a 766-page book called, The Second Sex.
And while there’s plenty of criticism to go along with it, this book revolutionized feminism by outlining the disparity between men and women, where men are the subjects, the central figures, and women the ‘Other’, a term which could also be understood here as ‘the incomplete’.
“Thus,” Simone writes, “humanity is male and man defines woman not herself but as relative to him.”
This distinction of women as Other was basically the axis point for the second wave of feminism. And just to quickly explain, the first wave of feminism earlier in the century just had to do with women’s voting rights. That’s it.
And so with issues like equal pay, abortion rights, and education reforms for women — those are all in large part a manifestation of the impact of The Second Sex.
So yeah, it kinda goes without saying that Simone was a boss.
