- 1存在主義的；關乎人存在的。新聞說 existential threat 時，台灣常譯成「生存威脅」或「存亡威脅」。
Existential is about existence — especially human existence — or about the philosophy called . An existential question is one like “What is my life for?” or “Who am I if I am not this job?” An existential reading of a book looks at how people choose, fear, and make meaning. That is the school meaning. In news English people now also say an existential threat: a danger that could wipe a thing out (a country, a company, a language). That last use is looser. It is about whether something gets to go on existing, not always about deep human meaning, and not always about the philosophy. The word is serious in register: essays, news, and late-night talk, not a caption on a snack. Though actually, calling every sad mood “existential” stretches it until it only means “deep” — and then it stops teaching anything.
From the word’s history
Learned borrowing from Late Latin existentiālis, from existentia 'existence'; the noun is from the adjective.
借自晚期拉丁文 existentiālis，來自 existentia「存在」。
組成A learned borrowing from Late Latin existentiālis (“relating to existence”), from existentia (“existence”), from the Latin verb existō / exsistō (“to exist, to appear”). English also shows the adjective-making piece -al.
同家族的字
- existthe verb — to be, to be real
- existencethe noun — the fact of being
- existentialismthe philosophy this adjective often points to
- existentialista person who holds that philosophy, or writing in that vein
原始詞典資料7 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
existentialadj/ˌɛɡzɪˈstɛnʃl̩/
- 1
human-scienceslogicmathematicsOf or relating to existence.
- The third univerſal is appetite; every perfect and imperfect living creature acquires ſuſtenance to eate and drink. For exiſtential or ſenſual, I grant many, that there is a Sun that ſhineth, that the fire heateth, &c. yet a blind man and the Paralytick denies both.
- [T]he essential cause of fiendish guilt, when it makes itself existential and peripheric— […] I find the only explanation of a moral phænomenon not very uncommon in the last moments of condemned felons—viz. the obstinate denial, not of the main guilt, which might be accounted for by ordinary motives, but of some particular act, which had been proved beyond all possibility of doubt, and attested by the criminal's own accomplices and fellow-sufferers in their last confessions: […]
- 2
human-scienceslogicmathematicsOf or relating to existence.
- an existential risk or threat
- [Karl] Jaspers' main concern has been with existential dread, which he regards not as a symptom of mental illness, but as a result of rejecting religious faith. He proposes that man's only way out of existential dread is through a "leap into faith" which reconciles man with himself and with God, and provides an experience of the absolute which transcends mere sense experience.
- 3
human-scienceslogicmathematicsOf or relating to existence.
- In recent books on logic, distinction is made between two orders of inquiry concerning anything. First, what is the nature of it? how did it come about? what is its constitution, origin, and history? And second, What is its importance, meaning, or significance, now that it is once here? The answer to the one question is given in an existential judgment or proposition. The answer to the other is a proposition of value, what the Germans call a Werthurtheil, or what we may, if we like, denominate a spiritual judgment.
- 4
human-scienceslogicmathematicsOf or relating to existentialism (“a philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices”).
- Some existential thinkers are concerned with artistic expression only indirectly, that is, they are passionately interested critics and analysts of art works.
- 5
human-scienceslinguisticssciencesRelating to part of a clause that indicates existence (for example, there is).
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- existential clause
- existential type
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。