"Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position... Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. " (L’Existentialisme est un humanisme)
Following Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
, Sartre became the leading proponent of existentialism, attempting to define how one might live a meaningful life from the basis of the individual subjective experience of existence. Sartre held that existence precedes essence and that it is as a consequence of this the individual is condemned to be free. If there is no such thing as a universal conception of human nature, then it ceases to be possible to evaluate one's action against it. As such, without the possibility of predetermined codes of behaviour (or dogma as it would be expressed in Virian terms), one is not only condemned to freedom, one is condemned to responsibility for the legitimacy of one's own actions; since that responsibility cannot be reassigned or referred to another agency.
See other PhilosophersAndBrigands.