From Sartre to Silence: How Existentialism Faded from Academic Philosophy

Once upon a time, in dimly lit cafés across Paris, a group of chain-smoking intellectuals declared that life had no inherent meaning.

And people listened.

They scribbled notes.

They quoted Sartre to impress lovers and annoy their parents.

Now? Sartre’s ghost still lingers in the philosophy department, but only as a cautionary tale.

Academia has moved on, leaving existentialism not just dead, but triumphantly dead—as if to make a point.

What happened?

How did existentialism, once the philosophical equivalent of a black leather jacket, end up in the attic of intellectual history?

Let’s break it down. Seven reasons. No mercy.

1. Existentialism vs. The Analytic War Machine

Academic philosophy has two major gangs: Analytic and Continental.

One likes logic and clarity. The other prefers ambiguity and metaphor.

Guess which one runs most philosophy departments?

Sartre’s ideas didn’t fit the neat, structured arguments that analytic philosophers loved.

His prose was a jungle of contradictions and poetic excess.

Sure, he got some nods—philosophers like Christine Korsgaard and David Velleman took some inspiration from him—but overall, analytic philosophy wasn’t buying what he was selling.

To them, existentialism was a chaotic drunk at a dinner party full of sober mathematicians.

Entertaining? Maybe. But not someone you invite back.

2. The Cold War and the Politics of Thought

If existentialism was a rock band, its members were the type to spit on the flag mid-performance.

Sartre was a Marxist, an anti-colonialist, and a general pain in the West’s ass.

Post-war America wasn’t about to embrace a philosophy that flirted with communism and encouraged people to question authority.

So, existentialism wasn’t just ignored—it was actively rejected.

Universities, eager for funding and stability, turned to safer, more “useful” philosophies.

Meanwhile, Sartre was out there endorsing revolutionaries like Che Guevara.

That didn’t exactly help his case in the halls of Harvard.

3. Too Much, Too Fast—Existentialism Burned Out

Like all great cultural movements, existentialism caught fire quickly and burned itself out. In the 1950s and ‘60s, everyone wanted a piece of it.

Then came the clichés.

The brooding, cigarette-smoking Frenchman became a parody of itself.

The ideas lost their spark, morphing into pop-culture nonsense.

By the time the counterculture faded, existentialism felt old, outdated, and a little embarrassing.

Philosophy moved on.

Enter Structuralism, and later, Post-Structuralism—shiny new toys with just as much jargon but way fewer cigarettes.

4. The “Poor Heidegger Scholarship” Accusation

Sartre had a dirty secret: his understanding of Heidegger was… let’s say, questionable.

Heidegger’s fans weren’t impressed with how Sartre borrowed from Being and Time and twisted it into existentialist terms.

Some accused him of misunderstanding Heidegger entirely.

And in academia, being accused of bad scholarship is like showing up to a black-tie event in clown shoes.

It didn’t help that Structuralists like Barthes and Derrida took shots at existentialism too, calling it outdated.

Before long, Sartre was out of fashion, like bell-bottoms and optimism.

5. Academia Likes Answers, Not Just Questions

Here’s the thing about existentialism—it asks big, terrifying questions.

Questions that can’t be neatly solved. And that’s a problem in academia.

University careers depend on publishing research. And publishing research means answering questions.

It’s tough to make a career out of “everything is meaningless, deal with it.”

So, young philosophers didn’t touch existentialism because it wasn’t a great way to get tenure.

Instead, they worked on things like epistemology, ethics, and other fields that actually produced answers.

Existentialism was too open-ended, too messy. And academia does not reward messiness.

6. Sartre Was Sartre

Let’s be honest. Sartre didn’t do himself any favors. He was brilliant, yes. But also arrogant, combative, and prone to making enemies.

Even Simone de Beauvoir, his lifelong partner-in-crime, had to deal with his relentless ego.

Many academics found him intolerable. And unlike, say, Foucault or Derrida, who played the academic game well, Sartre treated academia like a nuisance.

Professors like to teach philosophers they admire.

Sartre wasn’t exactly an easy guy to love.

7. Existentialism Got Absorbed Into Other Fields

Here’s the twist: existentialism never really died. It just mutated.

Its core ideas—agency, freedom, authenticity—got absorbed into other disciplines.

• Post-colonial studies took existentialism’s language of liberation and oppression (think Frantz Fanon).
• Psychology adopted existentialist themes, especially in existential therapy.
• Literature and film kept the existentialist spirit alive (hello, Fight Club).

Existentialism stopped being its own movement and became part of the academic background noise.

So while it’s “dead” in name, its ghost still whispers in the walls of academia.

Pros and Cons of Existentialism in Academia

Pros	Cons
Asks the biggest, most meaningful questions about life	Too open-ended for academic research
Inspires literature, psychology, and political theory	Rejected by analytic philosophy for being too vague
Encourages personal responsibility and agency	Lost credibility due to bad Heidegger scholarship
Influenced major post-colonial and feminist thinkers	Burned out too quickly, became a cliché

Conclusion: The Last Cigarette

Sartre leans back in his chair, exhales a long stream of smoke, and watches as the world moves on without him.

The irony? The very ideas that academia rejected—the ones that made existentialism too radical, too open-ended—are the same ideas people turn to when life falls apart.

Because when your job sucks, your relationships crumble, and the void stares back at you—no amount of analytic philosophy will help. Sartre will.

The joke’s on academia.

Existentialism isn’t dead.

It’s just waiting. In a book. In a bar. In the middle of the night, when you realize everything is meaningless, and you have to make meaning yourself.

Sartre wins.