1. A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.

1. A twentieth-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices.
2. the philosophical views of a particular thinker associated with the existentialist movement.

1. a philosophical theory or attitude having various interpretations, generally emphasising the existence of the individual as a unique agent with free will and responsibility for his or her own acts, though living in a universe devoid of any certain knowledge of right and wrong; from one's plight as a free agent with uncertain guidelines may arise feelings of anguish. existentialism is concerned more with concrete existence rather than abstract theories of essences; is contrasted with

1. (philosophy) a 20th-century philosophical movement chiefly in europe; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves