| 释义 |
existential, a.|ɛgzɪˈstɛnʃəl|
[ad. late L. existentiāl-is, f. existentia existence.]
1. Of or pertaining to existence.
1693tr. Barlow's Exercit. i. Rem. 483 Enjoying the good of existence..and..the being deprived of that existential good. 1809–10Coleridge Friend (1818) III. 96 note, The essential cause of fiendish guilt, when it makes itself existential and peripheric. 1878S. H. Hodgson Philos. Refl. II. iii. vii. §1. 12 There is a certain parallelism between the logical and existential analyses.
2. Logic.
a. Of a proposition, etc.: Expressing the fact of existence; predicating existence.
1819Coleridge Philos. Lect. (1949) ix. 276 This necessarily led men..to doubt whether a logical truth was necessarily an existencial one, i.e. whether because a thing was logically consistent it must be necessarily existent. 1837–8Sir W. Hamilton Logic xiii. (1866) II. 229 Existential propositions, that is, those in which mere existence is predicated. 1846― Diss. in Reid's Wks. 811 The character of the existential Judgments they involve. 1888J. Venn in Mind July 415 Convention does not allow us to say ‘It executes’..But we can just as conveniently adopt the existential form, ‘There was an execution’.
b. existential import: significance concerning the existence of something, usually of items denoted by the subject-term of a propostion; the implication that something exists.
1887J. N. Keynes Formal Logic (ed. 2) ii. viii. 138. §101 (title) Formal logic and the existential import of propositions. 1898A. N. Whitehead Treat. Univ. Algebra p. vii, A conventional mathematical definition has no existential import. 1946Mind LV. 109 The Ethics [of Spinoza] is a prolonged effort to deduce truths of existential import out of a combination of definitions. 1962W. & M. Kneale Devel. Logic 412 Those Aristotelian inferences which depend on existential import.
3. Philos. Concerned with or relating to existence (freq. as distinct from ‘essence’), esp. human existence as seen from the point of view of existentialism; existential philosophy = existentialism.
[1846Kierkegaard Afsluttende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift in Wks. (1902) VII. ii. iv. 374 Den existentielle Pathos er Handling, eller Existentsens Omdannelse.] a1937M. Geiger in Philos. & Phenomenol. Res. (1943) III. 256 ‘Existential Philosophy’ is a collective term for many problems, many methods of thinking, many points of view. Ibid. 257 The distinguishing feature of all existential philosophy is the fact that its basic category is existential significance. 1939V. A. Demant Religious Prospect vii. 186 The ‘existential theology’ declares that human life can gain religious meaning only by a bare act of faith which has no relation to and is even falsified by attempts to give the object of faith, God, any content in man's consciousness. 1940H. Read Annals of Innocence ii. vii. 182 That philosophy is an existential one: it is the expression of all my faculties, of the whole consciousness of a living organism. 1941Philosophy XVI. 267 Its influence permeates the whole school both of existential philosophy and dialectical theology. 1941Swenson & Lowrie tr. Kierkegaard's Concl. Unscientific Postscript ii. ii. 74 The existing subjective thinker is in his existential relation to the truth as negative as he is positive. Ibid. iv. 386 Existential pathos is action, the reconstruction of the individual's mode of existence. 1944[see existentialism]. 1956C. Wilson Outsider ix. 273 Kierkegaard's attitude is so Existential that his Christianity is a religion that regards God as the intermediary between himself and his fellow human beings, and cannot even accept their existence without first accepting the existence of God. 1962R. G. Olson Introd. Existentialism iv. 129 Existential psychoanalysis, the method for discovering an individual's fundamental project of being. 1964Amer. Philos. Q. I. 122/1 Existential psychiatrists seem to be publishing much more.
Hence exiˈstentially adv., by virtue of existence; also, in an existential manner; according to existentialism.
a1834Coleridge (Webster 1864) Whether God was existentially as well as essentially intelligent. 1895W. James Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) 400 The various [mental] ‘contents’..are integers, existentially, and their parts only live as long as they live. 1938M. R. Adamson tr. Maritain's True Humanism i. 13 A perfect natural wisdom, of which man considered existentially was supposed to be in fact capable. 1941Philos. & Phenomenol. Res. I. 349 According to the fundamental principle of the philosophy of existence..even the fundamental analysis is in the last analysis ‘existentially rooted’ and is in agreement with the system's phenomenological claims. 1948E. Waugh Loved One 7 Sir Ambrose had a more adventurous past but he lived existentially. He thought of himself as he was at that moment, brooded fondly on each several excellence and rejoiced. 1959Times Lit. Suppl. 20 Mar. p. x/5 Interpreting myth ‘existentially’, which is what the New Testament is trying to do. |
