Life as a Work of Art

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates why creativity is a persistent theme in existentialist thought. It shows why creativity may be required, as Nietzsche says, to become who we are, and who we may want to be. It considers why Kierkegaard and Nietzsche made philosophy into an inherently creative enterprise and why Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus wrote fiction themselves and gave tribute to literature or art as crucial to existential understanding. The chapter addresses Heidegger’s view that art and especially poetry served to reveal the world and established a form of truth. In this context it is considered why human beings may strive to make art under conditions of oppression. This chapter shows that while existentialists express diverging views about many topics, they all invite individuals to live life with creativity, that existentialist thinking encourages living life as a work of art.