Eksistentialismi

Eksistentialismi (Finnish for existentialism) is a philosophical tradition centered on human existence, freedom, responsibility, and the search for meaning in a world without inherent purpose. It emerged from late 19th-century thought through the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, and was later developed and popularized in the 20th century by Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir, among others. Rather than presenting a single system, existentialism comprises a family of related approaches that emphasize individual experience, choice, and personal responsibility.

Core themes include the primacy of existence over predefined essence, meaning that individuals must create their own values through acts of will; authenticity, living in accordance with one’s inward self rather than social fabrication; radical freedom and responsibility, with the burden of choice borne by the agent; and existential anxiety or angst as a natural response to the weight of freedom and finitude. Encounters with mortality, isolation, and the absurd are common motifs, and religious existentialism combines faith with existential questions in different ways.

Impact and scope: existentialism has influenced philosophy, literature, theology, and psychological thought. It contributed to phenomenology and postwar continental philosophy, and it has been a reference point in existential psychotherapy and in debates about freedom, ethics, and social engagement. Critics have argued that existentialism sometimes overemphasizes individual subjectivity at the expense of social structures or risks nihilism. See also: phenomenology, absurdism, existential psychotherapy, postwar continental philosophy.