Curated playlist
Existentialist concepts
- Meaning (existential)What does your life actually mean to you? Kierkegaard, Sartre and Frankl each answered differently.
- AbsurdismAbsurdism begins with a person throwing a shoulder against a heavy front door. The house has no back wall, so anyone could walk in from behind. Philosophers call this an absurd situation, because effort and reality are badly mismatched.…
- Abandonment (existentialism)In existentialism, abandonment means living without a god who gave humans a purpose. Sartre said it meant only that.
- Existential crisisAn existential crisis can be picked up by a questionnaire that asks people to place their own life between two opposite statements. One item on the Purpose in Life Test stretches from "In life I have: (1) no goals or aims at all... (7)…
- AngstKierkegaard argued that angst comes from the freedom to choose. Later, punk and grunge carried the feeling into music.
- AbsurdityThe word absurd first meant out of tune. The Latin absurdum was a musical term before it meant unreasonable.
- Authenticity (philosophy)Sartre said jazz is authentic, while Adorno said it is fake. Their clash shows how far the idea of authenticity reaches.
- GazeA child at a mirror first learns others can see them. Lacan tied that moment to language and culture.
- ÜbermenschIn Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the Übermensch is a goal for humanity, not an existing person.
- Meaning of lifeThe English phrase "meaning of life" first appeared in a Thomas Carlyle book in 1833 to 1834.
- ThrownnessThrownness, known in German as Geworfenheit, is a concept from the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who lived from 1889 to 1976. It describes each human existence as something thrown into the world. Nobody is asked first. Nobody picks the…