Human condition
The fundamental features and circumstances of human existence, including mortality, vulnerability, social life, and the search for meaning.
Existentialism: A philosophical movement emphasizing individual existence, freedom, responsibility, and the creation of meaning. It treats meaning as something people must confront and shape amid uncertainty.
Mortality: The condition of being subject to death. Awareness of death shapes human priorities, fears, and accounts of meaning.
Hannah Arendt: A political theorist whose work examined action, plurality, labor, and life in common. Her account of the human condition centers on the activities through which people inhabit a shared world.
Theological anthropology: The study of human nature and destiny in relation to religious beliefs about God. It grounds human purpose in divine creation or relation, unlike secular accounts.
Absurdism: A philosophical outlook centered on the conflict between humanity’s search for meaning and an apparently indifferent universe. It names the tension between the need for meaning and the world’s silence.
Embodiment: The condition of existing and experiencing the world through a body. Bodily needs and limits make human existence vulnerable and situated.
Jean-Paul Sartre: A French philosopher and writer associated with existentialism and human freedom. He argued that people shape themselves through choices made without a fixed human essence.
Scientific naturalism: The view that reality is fundamentally natural and can be studied through the sciences. It explains human existence through natural processes rather than transcendent purpose.
Meaning of life: The question of what makes human existence valuable, purposeful, or intelligible. The search for meaning is one of the condition’s defining concerns.
Human vulnerability: Susceptibility to physical, emotional, and social harm. Dependence and exposure to harm are basic features of human life.