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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]
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.
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 Humanism has been "a popular starting-point in discussions of existentialist thought," [4] and in the philosopher Thomas Baldwin's words, "Seized the imagination of a generation." [ 5 ] However, Sartre himself later rejected some of the views he expressed in the work, and regretted its publication. [ 4 ]
[6] [clarification needed] In the 20th century, Anglo–American preoccupations with authenticity centered on the writings of existentialist philosophers whose native tongue is not English; therefore, the faithful, true, and accurate translation of the term existentialism was much debated, to which end the philosopher Walter Kaufmann assembled ...
Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no objective meaning or purpose. [1] The inherent meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism, where one can potentially create their own subjective "meaning" or "purpose".
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, such as that propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre, was the dominant European intellectual movement. Structuralism rose to prominence in France in the wake of existentialism, particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of structuralism in France led to its spread across the globe.