existentialism — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A 20th-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices; also (generally), a philosophy which emphasizes existence over essence.

   Usage

   • Uncountable

   Antonyms

   noumenalism

   Examples

   The heyday of existentialism occurred in the mid-twentieth century.

   More examples (3)

   This [dialectal] theology takes sides against idealism and for ‘existentialism’, in other words, for a philosophy which makes being its starting-point. But in the idealists there are already highly significant elements of existentialism, as [Eduard] Spranger convincingly urges.

   [page 288] [W]e can begin by saying that existentialism, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity. […] [page 290] Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man or, as [Martin] Heidegger has it, the human reality. What doe we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards.

   This is a matter of coincidence rather than historical continuity; there is, however, a link between Stirner and modern existentialism through Nietzsche, who had read Stirner's work though he nowhere expressly refers to it.

2. The philosophical views of a particular thinker associated with the existentialist movement.

   Usage

   • Countable

   Examples

   Sartre’s existentialism is atheistic, but the existentialism of Marcel is distinctly Christian.

   More examples (2)

   In the "existentialisms" of [Martin] Heidegger, [Karl] Jaspers, [Jean-Paul] Sartre, [Gabriel] Marcel, etc., no less than in the "dialectal" or "crisis" theology of Karl Barth and his associates, [Søren] Kirkegaard's thought lives on as a challenge to the twentieth century.

   Instead of Existentialism, we should speak of Existentialisms. […] [M]y contention is that to speak of Existentialism means something, but that every one of the so-called Existentialists treads now his own path in his own direction.

3. Synonym of structuralism (“a school of thought that focuses on exploring the individual elements of consciousness, how they are organized into more complex experiences, and how these mental phenomena correlate with physical events”).

   Usage

   • Historical
   • Uncountable

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   I sought to 'psychologise' [Franz] Brentano's act as being, existentially, the temporal factor intrinsic to psychological subject-matter. […] My attempt sprang, indeed, from a rather desperate desire somehow to bring intentionalism and existentialism together at close quarters, and to transcend the mere calling of names.

   [T]here was the argument of existentialism that the qualities of experience, or of the contents of gnomic mind, rather than acts constitute the subject matter of psychology.

Noun

1. (philosophy) a 20th-century philosophical movement chiefly in Europe; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves

   Synonyms

   existential philosophyexistentialist philosophy

   Broader terms

   philosophical doctrinephilosophical theory