tags: #publish links: [[Philosophy]] created: 2020-10-16 Fri --- # Existentialism Existentialists get overly stuck on "why do we exist", the authentic experience of thinking/being, and - ironically - the difficulty of connecting this immediate individual experience to abstract meaning and reason. At which point everything starts to look a bit absurd and ungrounded... Sincere, but a bit unhappy. Related: [[Theatre of the Absurd]], [[Solipsism]] ## Concepts - **Authenticity** - **Absurdity**, **Meaninglessness** and lack of grounding - **Existential angst** - dread / anxiety / confusion in the face of a meaningless world - Lots of depressing angsty literature. ## Characters - Jean-Paul Sartre - Friedrich Nietzsche - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Søren Kierkegaard