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Existentialism asserts that people make decisions based on subjective meaning rather than pure rationality. The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the anxiety and dread that we feel in the face of our own radical free will and our awareness of death.
Meaning in existentialism is descriptive regarding "the meaning of life"; therefore it is unlike typical, prescriptive conceptions. [ citation needed ] Due to the methods of existentialism, prescriptive or declarative statements about meaning are unjustified.
The principal meaning of existential clauses is to refer to the existence of something or the presence of something in a particular place or time. For example, "There is a God" asserts the existence of a God, but "There is a pen on the desk" asserts the presence or existence of a pen in a particular place.
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]
In existentialism, bad faith (French: mauvaise foi) is the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals act inauthentically, by yielding to the external pressures of society to adopt false values and disown their innate freedom as sentient human beings. [1] Bad faith also derives from the related concepts of self-deception and ressentiment.
Existential psychotherapists, for example, usually try to resolve existential crises by helping the patient to rediscover meaning in their life. Sometimes this takes the form of finding a spiritual or religious purpose in life, such as dedicating oneself to an ideal or discovering God.
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.
The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), book II chapter IX, "The Everlasting Yea". [1]Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.