Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.
Walker Percy, OSB was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction.
Absurdism is the philosophical theory that existence in general is absurd. This implies that the world lacks meaning or a higher purpose and is not fully intelligible by reason. The term "absurd" also has a more specific sense in the context of absurdism: it refers to a conflict or a discrepancy between two things but there are several disagreements about their exact nature. These disagreements have various consequences for whether absurdism is true and for the arguments cited in favor and against it. Popular accounts characterize the conflict as a collision between rational man and an irrational universe, between intention and outcome, or between subjective assessment and objective worth. An important aspect of absurdism is its claim that the world as a whole is absurd. It differs in this regard from the uncontroversial and less global thesis that some particular situations, persons, or phases in life are absurd.
Rollo Reece May was an American existential psychologist and author of the influential book Love and Will (1969). He is often associated with humanistic psychology and existentialist philosophy, and alongside Viktor Frankl, was a major proponent of existential psychotherapy. The philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich was a close friend who had a significant influence on his work.
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich taught at a number of universities in Germany before immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Chicago.
Tarzan of the Apes is a 1912 story by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the first in the Tarzan series. It was first serialized in the pulp magazine The All-Story beginning October 1912 before being released as a novel in June 1914.
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. Existentialism is a philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual, that moral thinking and scientific thinking together are not sufficient for understanding all of human existence, and, therefore, that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to understand human existence. This philosophy analyzes relationships between the individual and things, or other human beings, and how they limit or condition choice.
Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence including death, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning of life. Instead of regarding human experiences such as anxiety, alienation, and depression as implying the presence of mental illness, existential psychotherapy sees these experiences as natural stages in a normal process of human development and maturation. In facilitating this process of development and maturation, existential psychotherapy involves a philosophical exploration of an individual's experiences stressing the individual's freedom and responsibility to facilitate a higher degree of meaning and well-being in their life.
Ape and Essence (1948) is a novel by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and Harper & Brothers in the US. It is set in a dystopia, as is Brave New World, Huxley's more famous work. It is largely a satire of the rise of large-scale warfare and warmongering in the 20th century, and presents a pessimistic view of the politics of mutually assured destruction. The book makes extensive use of surreal imagery, depicting humans as apes who, as a whole, will inevitably kill themselves.
The Hairy Ape is a 1922 expressionist play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It is about a beastly, unthinking laborer known as Yank, the protagonist of the play, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first, Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an ocean liner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines and his men.
The epithelial sodium channel(ENaC), (also known as amiloride-sensitive sodium channel) is a membrane-bound ion channel that is selectively permeable to sodium ions (Na+). It is assembled as a heterotrimer composed of three homologous subunits α or δ, β, and γ, These subunits are encoded by four genes: SCNN1A, SCNN1B, SCNN1G, and SCNN1D. The ENaC is involved primarily in the reabsorption of sodium ions at the collecting ducts of the kidney's nephrons. In addition to being implicated in diseases where fluid balance across epithelial membranes is perturbed, including pulmonary edema, cystic fibrosis, COPD and COVID-19, proteolyzed forms of ENaC function as the human salt taste receptor.
Irvin David Yalom is an American existential psychiatrist who is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction.
Ellen West (1888–1921) was a patient of Dr. Ludwig Binswanger who had anorexia nervosa. She became a famous example of existential analysis who died by suicide at age 33 by poisoning herself.
Black existentialism or Africana critical theory is a school of thought that "critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world". Although it shares a word with existentialism and that philosophy's concerns with existence and meaning in life, it "is predicated on the liberation of all Black people in the world from oppression". It may also be seen as method, which allows one to read works by African-American writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison in an existentialist frame. Lewis Gordon argues that Black existentialism is not only existential philosophy produced by Black philosophers but is also thought that addresses the intersection of problems of existence in black contexts.
Edith's Diary (1977) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith, the seventeenth of her 22 novels. It was first published in the UK by Heinemann. One critic described it as "a relentless dissection of an unexceptional life that burns itself out from a lack of love and happiness".
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer.
Atheistic existentialism is a kind of existentialism which strongly diverged from the Christian existential works of Søren Kierkegaard and developed within the context of an atheistic world view. The philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche provided existentialism's theoretical foundation in the 19th century, although their differing views on religion proved essential to the development of alternate types of existentialism. Atheistic existentialism was formally recognized after the 1943 publication of Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre and Sartre later explicitly alluded to it in Existentialism is a Humanism in 1946.
Love in the Ruins is a novel of speculative or science fiction by author Walker Percy from 1971. It follows its main character, Dr Thomas More, namesake and descendant of Sir Thomas More, a psychiatrist in a small town in Louisiana called Paradise.
Death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of one's own death, and is also referred to as thanatophobia. Death anxiety differs from necrophobia, however. This type of anxiety can actually cause a lot of issues for an individual during their lifespan.
Death and adjustment hypotheses (DAH) is a theory about death and dying that focuses on death anxiety and adjustment to death. It was presented by Mohammad Samir Hossain as an answer to the overwhelming anxiety and grief about death. In an attempt to find the resolution to death anxiety, predominantly the existential one, DAH postulates two key themes. Its first part postulates that death should not be considered the end of existence and the second part emphasizes that the belief in immortal pattern of human existence can only be adopted in a morally rich life with the attitude towards morality and materialism balanced mutually.
