Existentialism (trope)

"To be is to do"

- Quote by existentialist philosopher Sarte

"Do be do be do"

- Lyric by Frank Sinatra

Philosophy is about polite and civilized debate mixed with thoughtful comparison, just like the internet! In the spirit of philosophy, we have decide to, for this article, compare Wikipedia's style with All the Trope's.

Wikipedia:

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of certain late 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. While the supreme value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity. In the view of the existentialist, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.

All the Tropes:

A. Philosopher felt enraged! The art in front of him did not have enough duende! Mr. Philosopher wanted to feel inspired, and how could he with this fudging pathetic and poor excuse for art? How could a world where something like this be considered worth so much? He felt sad, confused, angry, disoriented with the apparent meaningless of this absurd world. And not in that way. No amount of traditional writing and discussion could clearly convey its awfulness. There is only one reasonable course of action. Form a new philosophy!

Wikipedia:

He proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely ("authentically"). Existentialism became popular in the years following World War II.

All the Tropes:

A. Philosopher is the personification of existentialists philosophers, and the art is World War II. Possibly, the bad artist might be society, or religion. Probably religion? Don't Answer That.

Rap Up:

This comparison shows All the Tropes contains much more existentialism. All the Trope's philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. The "existential attitude" is also present in the sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd writing.

Back to the Trope:

Existentialism is the response to the soul-crushingly fatalistic, Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy-fostering worldview of Nihilism. For an Existentialist, sure the "meaning of life" is brutally Deconstructed as not being able to exist objectively and all our hopes are a cruel illusion, we Humans Are Flawed and there's nothing we can do about it, but then again each individual has the choice to make the most meaningful out of each hour of our lives — those who choose to spend it being bored, or following others, or wangsting endlessly are wasting it.

Existentialism often advocates individuality and involves things like Be Yourself, Desperately Looking for a Purpose In Life, I Am What I Am, living out your Goal in Life, Earn Your Happy Ending, and sometimes moments of You Are Not Alone. This gives a world-of-cardboard/Patrick Stewart Speech to the nihilists and reconstructs the "meaning in life" concept.

The term Existential Angst is even coined to describe the sudden feeling of Quicksand Box it gave them, especially if they had just abandoned the Freedom From Choice provided by both religion and social peer pressure.

Existentialist character types include The Anti-Nihilist and The Ubermensch (the extreme Blue and Orange Morality version). The Knight in Sour Armor or Determined Defeatist have some elements of this.

While existential motifs are Older Than You Think, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche foreshadowed in the 19th century some of what would be the defining characteristics of the philosophy, although they didn't know each other and the philosophy was unnamed. The term "existentialism" seems to have been coined by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel. It gained popularity in the early 1940s around the time of the Modernist movement (amidst scientific discoveries of large and downright weird things out there, which inspired Lovecraftian Fiction, and of course the horrors of World War Two), when Jean-Paul Sartre codified existential philosophy with three words: "Existence precedes essence." It was the reverse of most previous philosophical thought, which held that the essence (soul, purpose, meaning) of a thing came first.

You'll find that many of the people held up as examples of existentialism indignantly claimed that they weren't -- probably a side-effect of the fact that noncomformity is one of the school's main tenets ("Once you label me, you negate me" is a famous line of Kierkegaard's).

The Other Wiki has an article and analysis on the subject. Related to Absurdism, 'Pataphysics, Post Modernism, Romanticism and Individualism.

Literature

 * Albert Camus's The Stranger is a famous novel about the absurd and existentialism, although Camus rejected the second term.
 * Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground is considered to be one of the first literary works related to the philosophy.
 * Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, which he considers one of his finest works, expands upon the concept of consciousness and its effect on the main character. It also served as a giant call-out to Humanism.

Theater

 * Jean-Paul Sartre wrote No Exit in 1944, an existentialist play originally published in French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or "behind closed doors"), which is the source of the popular quote, "Hell is other people." (Which does not mean what you think it means)
 * Existentialist themes are displayed in the Theatre of the Absurd, notably in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which two men divert themselves while they wait expectantly for someone (or something) named Godot who never arrives.

Real Life

 * Friedrich Nietzsche's work massively influenced the philosophy.
 * Jean-Paul Sartre was one of its key figures.