existentialistn.adj.

1700 C. Ness Antidote against Arminianism x. 60 The Predestinarians cannot agree about stating their Decree, some stating it before the Fall, as the Supralapsarian (such be Creabilitarians and Existentialists) and Others after the Fall, as the Sublapsarians.

1929 Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. 41 479 Nowhere else in the world are values and meanings so readily discoverable as in the direct experience of a human being—and yet they have no place in critical psychology. It would seem that the existentialist has here slipped into the area of traditional science.

1937 Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. 50 445 As pure psychology, it was as far removed from a theory of knowledge as any existentialist or Buddhist could desire.

1930 Jrnl. Philos. 27 370 Husserl..used the existentialist's arguments (in modified form) against the formalist.

1945 A. J. Ayer in Horizon July 12 Philosophically, he [sc. Sartre] is usually described as an Existentialist. The use of this label is justified in so far as he clearly owes much to Husserl, from whom the group of contemporary German philosophers who are commonly known as Existentialists has chiefly drawn its inspiration.

1950 J. S. Huxley New Bottles for New Wine Huxley Memorial Lect. (Royal Anthropol. Inst.) 50 The existentialist's over-insistence on the individual human self.

1950 A. Huxley Themes & Variations 115 Biran was an existentialist, who insisted that man must always be considered as he really is, an incarnate spirit or mindbody.

1967 Noûs 1 112 One thinks of the ‘act of existing’ on which Thomistic Existentialists lay such stress.

1985 D. W. Viney C. Hartshorne & Existence of God ix. 122 Even the atheistic existentialists do not appear to deny that there is a beauty in the defiance of an absurd universe.

2012 Wall St. Jrnl. 26 May c14/3 In Hamburg, the Beatles..encountered young intellectuals who..were also fascinated by the French existentialists.

1895 Proc. Aristotelian Soc. 3 10 If this criticism is founded on what may be called an Existentialist or Individualist basis, if, that is to say, existence and the self are to be taken as starting points adequate to Reality and therefore above criticism.

1927 Proc. 6th Internat. Congr. Philos. 659 Professor Ortega..not only places himself in a perspectivist attitude..but in an existentialist, in the sense which the term derives from the historical distinction between temporal existence and eternal essence.

1946 Time 23 Dec. 40/2 Jean-Paul Sartre, the leader of the French Existentialist movement..drags a shady topic into the light.

1948 Mind 57 370 Existentialist reaction against the abstract ideas of personality characteristic of Kantian and post-Kantian idealism.

1956 A. J. Ayer Probl. Knowl. i. 23 Existentialist philosophers have gone so far as to deny the law of identity.

1965 Eng. Stud. 46 390 If we define Existentialism as the belief that man is born into an alien..universe..then..Melville must be recognized as America's first existentialist writer.

1992 L. May Sharing Responsibility i. i. 16 The view of responsibility I will defend..is existentialist in inspiration because of the emphasis placed on what people voluntarily choose.

2013 Jerusalem Post (Nexis) 18 Oct. 42 The great existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard..maintains that herein lies the precise nature of the Divine test.