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

But it unfolds like more recent films such as “Inherent Vice” and “Under the Silver Lake” — self-conscious takes on L.A. noir that come with extra layers of existentialism and winking commentary.

From Los Angeles Times

“We are gods,” a colleague insists to Cross in one of several midnight symposiums on ethics and existentialism.

From New York Times

Later, in a film degree program at the University of Texas at Austin, he wrote scripts about existentialism.

From New York Times

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