Word: existentialist
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...wonder the existentialist suffers from irremediable anguish, James might say. He exalts the self and existence at the expense of instinct, sensation, and being. Life is absurd for the existentialist; it is not for the female fly on the bit of dung. The existentialist moans, "I am." The fly simply shakes with a "voluptuous thrill," as her ovipositor discharges...
This is not to say that the female fly possesses greater wisdom than the existentialist. Assuredly she has little capacity for refining and broadening her faculties of appreciation. And he, on the other hand, can alter many of the organic and social rules that control his behavior. Nonetheless, the fly attains fulfilment--she achieves the "only fitting thing." Would we not condemn the fly as the victim of a perverse obsession if she never discharged her ovipositor, but instead fretted continuously about her existential plight? No doubt we would be forced to conclude that her life was absurd...
...that the formal doctrine--over the long run--contained a theory of truth as rigorous as that of any positivist. But, in addition to the demand for rigor, it stresses man's freedom and ultimate moral responsibility. If it were not for his optimism, one might call James an existentialist. And the optimistic style did not come easily. With it James sought to encourage, to cure and rejuvenate--none other so much as himself...
...heaven-above-hell-below framework of Scripture as religious myths; he argues that the essential Gospel message must be "demythologized" by liberating it from antiquated supernatural language. Rejecting the Biblical image of a transcendent God in the sky, Robinson suggests that Christians think of God the way Existentialist Theologian Paul Tillich does: as the "ground of all being...
...Knowledge of Death. Before Rome, Greene used to paint frozen tableaux that mirrored modern existentialist ideas. He trapped his figures-as in Sartre's No Exit-in shallow doorless and windowless spaces, amputated their legs, and left them relying on crutches. The Burial (see color) shows a legless living cadaver sprawled in a coffin, stifling back a scream with his hand-a scream that comes from "the pain of knowledge of that death in life which we begin experiencing early," Greene explains. Behind the coffin lid, a mourner gestures upward as if in hope. But his candle remains unlit...