Existentialism
The philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche foreshadowed existentialism.
Existentialism is a term that has been applied to the
work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century
philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differ-
ences,[1][2] took the human subject — not merely the
thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human
individual[3][4] and his or her conditions of existence —
as a starting point for philosophical thought. Existential
philosophy is the "explicit conceptual manifestation of
an existential attitude"[5] that begins with a sense of dis-
orientation and confusion in the face of an apparently
meaningless or absurd world.[6][7] Many existentialists
have also regarded traditional systematic or academic
philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract
and remote from concrete human experience.[8][9] One
gives one’s life meaning through action; life has no value
unless one gives it value.
History
Existentialism emerged as a movement in twentieth-
century literature and philosophy, foreshadowed most
notably by nineteenth-century philosophers Søren Ki-
erkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, though it had fore-
runners in earlier centuries. In the 20th century the Ger-
man philosopher Martin Heidegger influenced other ex-
istentialist philosophers such as Sartre, Simone de Beau-
voir and Albert Camus. Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Franz
Kafka also described existential themes in their literary
works. Although there are some common tendencies
amongst "existentialist" thinkers, there are major differ-
ences and disagreements among them (most notably the
divide between atheistic existentialists like Sartre and
theistic existentialists like Tillich); not all of them accept
the validity of the term as applied to their own work.[10]
Origins
The term "existentialism" seems to have been coined by
the
French philosopher Gabriel Marcel
around
1943[11][12][13] and adopted by Jean-Paul Sartre who, on
October 29, 1945, discussed his own existentialist posi-
tion in a lecture to