Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.
Wiktionary
- n. philosophy, not countable A twentieth-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices.
- n. philosophy, countable The philosophical views of a particular thinker associated with the existentialist movement.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Philosophy) a philosophical theory or attitude having various interpretations, generally emphasising the existence of the individual as a unique agent with free will and responsibility for his or her own acts, though living in a universe devoid of any certain knowledge of right and wrong; from one's plight as a free agent with uncertain guidelines may arise feelings of anguish. Existentialism is concerned more with concrete existence rather than abstract theories of essences; is contrasted with
rationalism andempiricism ; and is associated with Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre, as well as others.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (philosophy) a 20th-century philosophical movement chiefly in Europe; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves
Examples
“Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point.”
“My existentialism is about always, always seeing it as one's own choice at the end of the day.”
“and that my friends is your latest lesson in Polish existentialism”
“Now I do understand the idea of existentialism whereby the viewer makes up their own mind but LOST takes the piss.”
“But literature, I warn them (contrast Sartre and Camus here), is about people, not ideas, and the novel at hand is just that, a novel, an attempt to let us inside one man's head, and by no means a primer in existentialism.”
“Parshley knew French only from his years as a student at Boston Latin School and Harvard, and had no training in philosophy — certainly not in the new movement known as existentialism, of which Beauvoir was an adherent.”
“Auerbach tries later to combine two contradictory conceptions of realism; first something which might be called existentialism: the agonizing revelations of reality in moments of supreme decisions, in “limiting situations”: Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, Madame du Chastel deciding not to rescue her son from execution, the Duke of”
“This is nearly the opposite of the philosophical connotation of "existentialism" of being as happy with nothing as you would be with whatever wealth you might accumulate”
“This is nearly the opposite of the philosophical connotation of "existentialism" of being as happy with nothing as you would be with whatever wealth you might accumulate.”
“If anything, I thought the United States was experiencing existentialism, meaning a change in its subjective view of the world, which causes anxiety and a great deal of fear.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘existentialism’.
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phrontistery - e
from phrontistery.info
eagre, earing, earwig, easement, eau-de-nil, ebberman, ebeneous, ?boulement, ebriection, ?brillade, ebrious, ebullioscope and 616 more...
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-ism's -logies
acosmism, absurdism, absolutism, ableism, aestheticism, alarmism, allotheism, anachronism, animalculism, analogism, animatism, animism and 464 more...
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philosophical concepts
Different concepts and branches of philosophy which haven't become independent fields of investigation. For example, "physicalism" is valid but not "physics", "scientism" but not "science", "cogni...
philosophy, ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic, nominalism, analytic philosophy, semiotics, structuralism, deconstructionism, postmodernism, skepticism and 40 more...
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-isms
fascism, anarchism, satanism, racism, racialism, nordicism, nazism, socialism, catholicism, national socialism, paganism, hinduism and 67 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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betweeness
cognitive, dissonance, connotation, existentialism, interstitial, enigmatic, floater, interrobang, ampersand, intermittent
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Favorites
machiavellian, mercurial, deus ex machina, synecdoche, litotes, phallic, freudian, metonymy, chrestomathy, falsifiable, gestalt, truthiness and 211 more...
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Favorite Words
quixotic, assonance, palindrome, plebeian, mezzanine, propinquity, etymology, antihero, intrepid, refractions, lawless, sesquipedalian and 237 more...
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solarider's Words
maelstrom, leviathan, apiology, deconstruction, confluence, minutiae, onomatopoeia, tardy, ad infintum, tocophobia, cuckold, oblique and 110 more...
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dienekes's Words
chutzpah, lexicon, intrepid, pedagogical, schlemiel, schism, erudite, anathema, pugilist, jaunty, paradigm, automaton and 949 more...
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eekspaceship's Words
quixotic, literacy, phantasmagoria, ersatz, anachronism, macabre, soliloquy, ensorcelled, coalesce, ephemera, apothegm, zephyr and 120 more...
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thricedotted's Words
schadenfreude, vanquish, calumny, obsequious, rhapsody, expostulate, promontory, bordello, quintessence, catharsis, recapitulation, myriad and 937 more...
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Philosophical Jargon
Words philosophical writers use to give the illusion of technical competence, including up-trippingly specialised senses of words that have other jobs during daylight hours.
akrasia, akrates, particularism, particularist, mereology, deontology, cognitivism, naturalism, anti-naturalism, ethics, phenomenology, metaethics and 220 more...
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Theological Words
a priori, adiaphora, advent, agnosticism, amillennialism, anabaptists, postmillennialism, angel, animism, annihilationism, anthropic principle, anthropomorphic and 96 more...
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lil_grammar_nazi's list
Main list
acerbic, spiteful, vindictive, curmudgeon, dog in the manger, pious, histrionic, unprecedented, bumptious, abscond, abject, accost and 161 more...
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_mark's list
Words I like!
( personal list, favorite words, randomness )psy, nanobot, success, smack, vibration, microcosmic, springgraph, marksmanship, estranged, homoerotic, flex, fiasco and 1707 more...
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