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existentialism
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existentialism

Branch of philosophy based on the situation of the individual in an absurd or meaningless universe where humans have free will. Existentialists argue that people are responsible for and the sole judge of their actions as they affect others. The origin of existentialism is usually traced back to the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard; among its proponents were Martin Heidegger in Germany and Jean-Paul Sartre in France.

All self-aware individuals can grasp or intuit their own existence and freedom, and individuals must not allow their choices to be constrained by anything - not even reason or morality. This freedom to choose leads to the notion of nonbeing, or nothingness, which can provoke angst or dread.

Existentialism has many variants. Kierkegaard emphasized the importance of pure choice in ethics and Christian belief; Sartre tried to combine existentialism with Marxism.
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Gayle, Bell, and Byerman define Charles Wright and The Messenger in terms of three different African American traditions, but they ignore the existential philosophy that is at the core of the book, further shattering the book into more diverse and seemingly irreconcilable zones.
An existential reading of Charles Wright's The Messenger by Hogue, W. Lawrence / MELUS
It's the kind of mordantly comic exercise in existential philosophy that the term theater of the absurd was invented to describe.
The Play About the Baby by Shewey, Don / The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)
At such outposts as the Christian Faith-and-Life Community and the University YMCA-YWCA, disaffected young people found a free space for discussion and extra-curricular education, and they drew radical inferences from their exposure to social gospel Christianity and existential philosophy.
The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New ... by McMillian, John / Journal of Social History
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