Existentialism is a term used to define philosophers
from the late 19th and 20th century, who felt that the conventional philosophy
is too abstract and remote from real human experience. Therefore, their
philosophy started from human individual, and describes its disorientation in
absurd and meaningless world. There is not, actually, the precise definition of
existentialism, but Soren Kierkegaard is considered to be the first existential
philosopher, despise that he never used that term. The second most important
philosopher of existentialism from 19th century was Friedrich Nietzsche.
Existentialistic way of thinking could be also found in the works of great
Russian writer, F.M. Dostoyevsky. The one to coin the expression "existentialism" was Jean-Paul Sartre, and important existentialistic thinkers and artists from
20th century were: Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Eugène
Ionesco, Luigi
Pirandello and Joseph
Heller.
