What does the word exententialism mean and what philosophers were considered existentialist?

Question

I have seen this word so many times when reading and recently there was a debate in my bible class about whether all these great thinkers were atheist. I feel kind of dumb when discussions break out about this word. So simple Curious Claude is going to "throw a deep one" tonight.

Answer 1

ex·is·ten·tial·ism  

ex·is·ten·tial·ism [ègzi sténshə lìzzəm, èksi sténshə lìzzəm]

n

philosophical movement centered on individual existence: a 20th-century philosophical movement that denies that the universe has any intrinsic meaning or purpose and requires individuals to take responsibility for their own actions and shape their own destinies  

[Mid-20th century. From German Existentialismus , a translation of Danish existents-forhold “condition of existence.”]

-ex·is·ten·tial·ist, adj n

Answer 2

A (mostly) twentieth-century approach that emphasizes the primacy of individual existence over any presumed natural essence for human beings. Although they differ on many details, existentialists generally suppose that the fact of my existence as a human being entails both my unqualified freedom to make of myself whatever I will and the awesome responsibility of employing that freedom appropriately, without being driven by anxiety toward escaping into the inauthenticity or self-deception of any conventional set of rules for behavior, even though the entire project may turn out to be absurd. Prominent existentialists include Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus.

Answer 3

The term existentialism is commonly used to refer to a type of thinking that empasizes human existance and the qualities of "being" that are peculiar to it rather then to nature or the physical world. "Emphasis on human existance" is the beginning of a definition of existentialism, but this is too vague for use in reference to the more modern movement because  existentialism's concern about modern mankind grows out of specifically modern conditions. Among these  are the loss of the individual in mass culture and technology, the consequent alienation of the person from himself and the loss of meaning in his/her life. One popular name for this loss is called "existential dread". Sociologists use the term "anomie" for a similar condition. A humanist psychologist or therapist may use this term for clinical depression. This psychologist certainly believes that this is "at the bottom" of a lot of people who seek help. Not every mental condition can be explained by physiology. Some of the more well know existentialists (oftened labeled by scholars and not the man himself) include Pascal, Kierkegaard (often thought of as the founder or originator), Heidegger (he tried to separate himself from this label), Jean-Paul Satre (one of my favorites), Nietzsche, Jose' Ortega y Gasset, Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich, F.H. Heineman, among others. These came to mind and I probably left out some philosopher's favorites.     Curious Claude you did throw a deep one. I hope this "wide receiver" old goat of a professor did your question justice.

Answer 4

For me the best way to understand it is this:

Before existentialism, people used to believe that ESSENCE came before EXISTENCE.  

The best way to imagine it is to think of a carpenter making a knife.  Before he even begins crafting the knife, he has an idea in mind of what the ESSENCE of that knife will be - what it's properties, purpose and characteristics will be - eg. sharp, designed to cut.

Existentialism says that a person's EXISTENCE comes before their ESSENCE.  This means that your ESSENCE [who you are] is determined by your actions, and what you do - it wasn't pre-determined before your birth.

So before existentialism, you might have said - "He ran away because he was a coward."  But really, we should be saying "He is a coward because he ran away."

Do you see the difference? Existentialism says that we create who we are ourselves - through our actions [existence] - who we are is not forced upon us from outside, but created from within.

A lot of people thinks that existentialism and atheism go hand in hand, but not really.  It is very possible to be a Christian existentialist because God's existence doesn't really matter when we consider this equation - most often when the existentialism/atheism debate comes up, it's because people don't understand what existentialism's really saying.  [And if you're a Christian -which I'm not- you could argue that existentialism is really an explanation of the free-will that God gave us.]