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The term existentialism (French: L'existentialisme) was coined by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s. [13] [14] [15] When Marcel first applied the term to Jean-Paul Sartre, at a colloquium in 1945, Sartre rejected it. [16]
The proposition that existence precedes essence (French: l'existence précède l'essence) is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence (the nature) of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence (the mere fact of its being). [1]
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 ...
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.
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.
Søren Kierkegaard. Christian existentialism relies on Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity.Kierkegaard addressed themes such as authenticity, anxiety, love, and the irrationality and subjectivity of faith, rejecting efforts to contain God in an objective, logical system.
So Sartre claims at the end of his first nonfiction book that, given that life is without meaning, as he spent the whole book arguing, we, as individuals, must make an existential leap, which is our pretense that life is meaningful. It doesn't matter what you believe or who you are or your money or race or sexuality.
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.