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The Philosopher's Shirt

Definition of an Existentialist

Set as a dictionary entry, which is quietly funny for a movement whose whole claim is that you define yourself and nothing else will.

Dictionary layout means it reads clearly at any size, on anything. The whole range: tees, women's tees, sweatshirts and hoodies, printed to order as you buy them. An existentialist gift for philosophy students. Existence precedes essence. The footnote is up to you.

Questions about this design

What does the Definition of an Existentialist design mean?
It is set like a dictionary entry – Existentialist (adj. & n.), Optimistic Nihilist – followed by the line Just because we’re all doomed, doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time. The joke compresses existentialism into one cheerful shrug – the universe hands out no meaning, so we are free to make our own and enjoy it while it lasts.
What is optimistic nihilism?
A popular modern label, not a classical school. It accepts the nihilist premise that life has no built-in cosmic meaning, but draws a cheerful conclusion – if nothing ultimately matters, there is no script to fail, so we can enjoy what we have and choose what matters to us. Philosophically it sits close to existentialism and to Camus’s absurdism.
What is nihilism?
The view that life, morality or knowledge have no objective foundation or meaning. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi used the term philosophically in his 1799 open letter to Fichte, and Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons (1862) made it famous through the nihilist Bazarov. Nietzsche later treated nihilism as the crisis of a culture whose highest values have lost their force.
What is the difference between existentialism and nihilism?
Both start from the claim that the world gives us no ready-made meaning. Nihilism can stop there. Existentialism treats it as a starting point – because there is no given purpose, each of us is free and responsible for creating meaning through choices and actions. That is why the design can call an existentialist an optimistic nihilist.
What does existence precedes essence mean?
It is Jean-Paul Sartre’s summary of existentialism in his 1945 lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism (published 1946). A paper knife is designed for a purpose before it exists; a human being first exists and only then defines themselves through what they do. There is no fixed human nature to fall back on, so we are, in Sartre’s words, condemned to be free.
Was Albert Camus an existentialist?
He rejected the label. In a November 1945 interview he said plainly that he was not an existentialist and that The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) was aimed against the so-called existentialist philosophers. Camus called his position the philosophy of the absurd – facing a silent universe without hope of final answers, and still choosing to live fully. Hence one must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Was Nietzsche a nihilist?
Not in the sense of preaching meaninglessness. Nietzsche diagnosed nihilism as the coming condition of European culture after the death of God, and he wanted to overcome it through a revaluation of all values, amor fati and the affirmation of life. He is usually counted as a forerunner of existentialism rather than a nihilist himself.
Who are the main existentialist philosophers and what should I read first?
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are seen as forerunners; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are the core existentialists, with Camus as a close neighbour who refused the name. Good first reads are Sartre’s Existentialism Is a Humanism, Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) and Camus’s The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus (both 1942).
Is this a good gift for existentialists or philosophy students?
Yes, especially for anyone who has survived a first-year course on Sartre, quotes Camus at parties or treats their own existential crisis with humour. It comes as a unisex classic T-shirt, a women’s T-shirt, a sweatshirt, a premium hoodie, a mug and a sticker.