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Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that prioritize the existence of the human individual, study existence from the individual's perspective, and conclude that, despite the absurdity or incomprehensibility of the universe, individuals must still embrace responsibility for their actions and strive to lead authentic lives.
Existentialism is a movement within continental philosophy that developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries. As a loose philosophical school, some persons associated with existentialism explicitly rejected the label (e.g. Martin Heidegger ), and others are not remembered primarily as philosophers, but as writers ( Fyodor Dostoyevsky ) or ...
Some theorists use the terms existential vacuum and existential neurosis to refer to different degrees of existential crisis. [ 4 ] [ 25 ] [ 3 ] [ 37 ] On this view, an existential vacuum is a rather common phenomenon characterized by the frequent recurrence of subjective states like boredom , apathy , and emptiness.
"Existence precedes essence" means that humans exist first before they have meaning in life. Meaning is not given, and must be achieved. Meaning is not given, and must be achieved. With objects—say, a knife, for example—there is some creator who conceives of an idea or purpose of an object, and then creates it with the essence of the object ...
Existentiell and existential are key terms in Martin Heidegger's early philosophy.Existentiell refers to the aspects of the world which are identifiable as particular delimited questions or issues, whereas existential refers to Being as such, which permeates all things, so to speak, and can not be delimited in such a way as to be susceptible to factual knowledge.
Martin Heidegger attacked Sartre's concept of existential humanism in his Letter on Humanism of 1946, accusing Sartre of elevating Reason above Being. [5]Michel Foucault followed Heidegger in attacking Sartre's humanism as a kind of theology of man, [6] though in his emphasis on the self-creation of the human being he has in fact been seen as very close to Sartre's existential humanism.
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Existentialism is often summed up by Jean-Paul Sartre's statement that for human beings "existence precedes essence", which he understood as a repudiation of the philosophical system that had come before him. Instead of "is-ness" generating "actuality," he argued that existence and actuality come first, and the essence is derived afterward.