existentialism

American  

[eg-zi-sten-shuh-liz-uhm, ek-si-] / ˌɛg zɪˈstɛn ʃəˌlɪz əm, ˌɛk sɪ- /

noun

Philosophy.

1. a philosophical movement that stresses the individual's unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for making meaningful, authentic choices in a universe seen as purposeless or irrational: existentialism is associated especially with Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, and Sartre, and is opposed to philosophical rationalism and empiricism.

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existentialism British  

/ ˌɛɡzɪˈstɛnʃəˌlɪzəm /

noun

1. a modern philosophical movement stressing the importance of personal experience and responsibility and the demands that they make on the individual, who is seen as a free agent in a deterministic and seemingly meaningless universe

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existentialism Cultural  

1. A movement in twentieth-century literature and philosophy, with some forerunners in earlier centuries. Existentialism stresses that people are entirely free and therefore responsible for what they make of themselves. With this responsibility comes a profound anguish or dread. Søren Kierkegaard and Feodor Dostoyevsky in the nineteenth century, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Camus in the twentieth century, were existentialist writers.

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Other Word Forms

• existentialist adjective
• existentialistic adjective
• existentialistically adverb
• nonexistentialism noun

Etymology

Origin of existentialism

First recorded in 1940–45; from German Existentialismus (1919); existential, -ism

Example Sentences

It’s confounding that Johnson ignores the book’s brutal existentialism.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 12, 2025

What it does, in practice, is lend a strange vibrancy to Dot’s back story that recalls the stop-motion existentialism of Charlie Kaufman’s “Anomalisa” in how it uses a familiar technique to unfamiliar ends.

From New York Times • Dec. 26, 2023

Mr. Oe went on to study French literature at the University of Tokyo, where he immersed himself in existentialism and wrote his thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre.

From Washington Post • Mar. 13, 2023

“The Batman”: You’d think the “Batman” film franchise wouldn’t need yet another moody reboot drenched in cynical existentialism with a touch of nihilism mixed in.

From Seattle Times • Dec. 20, 2022

It can stand in for anything—a stuffed piranha, existentialism, the Monroe Doctrine, or buttered toast.

From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner