Existentialism

[Nightson]

I was wondering what people's experiences were with existentialism, and if they could shed some light on existentialist concepts, I must admit that I'm finding it very hard to grasp, I've spent the whole day studying it and i think I've *almost* got ahold of the basics. So any inout is appreciated.
http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/exist.html

 

[nadroj1985]

Existentialism is tough to define, because so many different philosophers get labelled as existentialists, when there are in fact major areas of disagreement among them... Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty... all these guys are very different and lumping them under one label is really unfair to all of them.

As a starting point, I would suggest reading Sartre's lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" (which is probably online somewhere). It's fairly easy to read for a beginner, and though some ideas are oversimplified, you still get a feel for thinking existentially. The fundamental idea you want to absorb is that existence precedes essence -- the world is not such that we are defined as a specific "thing" and merely fulfill the obligations that that "thing" is supposed to fulfill. Rather, we originally exist in the world and then decide for ourselves what kind of "thing" we want to be (i.e. our "essence") by acting in the world. There's a hell of a lot more to it, of course, but that's the starting point.