existentialism

  1. Noun.  (philosophy, not countable) A twentieth-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices, with foundations in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and notably represented in the works of Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), Gabriel Marcel (1887-1973), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80).
  2. Noun.  (philosophy, countable) The philosophical views of a particular thinker associated with the existentialist movement.

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This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.