existentialism

Noun

existentialism (countable and uncountable, plural existentialisms)

1. (uncountable) A 20th-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices; also (generally), a philosophy which emphasizes existence over essence.
   • The heyday of existentialism occurred in the mid-twentieth century.
   • This [dialectal] theology takes sides against idealism and for ‘existentialism’, in other words, for a philosophy which makes being its starting-point. But in the idealists there are already highly significant elements of existentialism, as [Eduard] Spranger convincingly urges.1933 January, Arthur Liebert, translated by George H[olland] Sabine, “Contemporary German Philosophy”, in Frank Thilly, G. Watts Cunningham, George H. Sabine, editors, The Philosophical Review...

   Antonyms:

   noumenalism

2. (countable) The philosophical views of a particular thinker associated with the existentialist movement.
   • Sartre’s existentialism is atheistic, but the existentialism of Marcel is distinctly Christian.
   • In the "existentialisms" of [Martin] Heidegger, [Karl] Jaspers, [Jean-Paul] Sartre, [Gabriel] Marcel, etc., no less than in the "dialectal" or "crisis" theology of Karl Barth and his associates, [Søren] Kirkegaard's thought lives on as a challenge to the twentieth century.1952, Kurt F[rank] Reinhardt, “Introduction: The Crisis of Human Existence”, in The Existentialist Revolt: The Main Themes and Phases of Existentialism […], Milwaukee, Wis.: The Bruce Publishing...
3. (historical, uncountable) Synonym of structuralism (“a school of thought that focuses on exploring the individual elements of consciousness, how they are organized into more complex experiences, and how these mental phenomena correlate with physical events”).
   • I sought to 'psychologise' [Franz] Brentano's act as being, existentially, the temporal factor intrinsic to psychological subject-matter. […] My attempt sprang, indeed, from a rather desperate desire somehow to bring intentionalism and existentialism together at close quarters, and to transcend the...1922 January, E[dward] B[radford] Titchener, “Functional Psychology and the Psychology of Act: II”, in Edward Bradford Titchener, editor, The American Journal of Psychology, volume XXXIII, number 1...
   • [T]here was the argument of existentialism that the qualities of experience, or of the contents of gnomic mind, rather than acts constitute the subject matter of psychology.1943, Coleman R[oberts] Griffith, “The Principles of Experimental Method”, in Principles of Systematic Psychology, Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, →OCLC, ¶ 339, page 438

   Synonyms:

   structuralism