The Christian-Existentialist Synthesis in Nicolae Steinhardt’s Work

Abstract

One of the most fertile dimensions of Steinhardt’s discourse (literary, essayistic, theological, and critical) is the personal assimilation and reformulation of a religious philosophy closely related to Christian existentialism. Steinhardt articulates, especially after his political imprisonment, a synthesis between the Orthodox ethos and the thought of Western authors such as Kierkegaard, Gide, Camus, Bonhoeffer, Sartre, Weil, and others. This synthesis fosters a subversive ethical perspective, deeply ecumenical in nature, and a critical attitude toward the ideological clichés of his time. Our study explores how this Christian-existentialist synthesis is reflected in Jurnalul fericirii [ The Journal of Joy ] and in his postwar essay collections, analyzing the convergences between suffering, conversion, subjectivity, and resistance through culture. The study also explores the initial impulses of this synthesis, its difficulties, as well as the specific ways in which it is articulated, and the manner in which the core existentialist conceptual vocabulary is reinterpreted and perceived through a Christian lens: contingency ( le hasard ), the absurd, the gratuitous act ( l’acte gratuit ), anguish ( l’angoisse ), risk, failure, and the authenticity–imposture binomial. This article was published open access under a CC BY-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/