By Edwin L. Battistella at OUP: A while back, a philosopher friend of mine was fretting about the adjective “existential.” She was irked by people using it to refer to situations which threaten the existence of something, as when someone refers to climate change as an “existential crisis,” or more commonly, as “an existential threat.”
Is the meaning of “existential” being corrupted?
Dictionaries give the meaning as “of, relating to, or affirming existence” and “grounded in existence or the experience of existence,” neither of which is much help. I do think “existential” has become a bit of a buzzword, but I’m not worried about its meaning.
Historically, an “existential crisis” has referred to philosophical or psychological questions of purpose, identity, and the meaning of life; and to the periods of anxiety that such questions produce. And indeed, this seems to be the way the phrase is used in serious journalism, at least in headlines like these from the New York Times:
Iowa Faces an Existential Crisis
Damar Hamlin and the Existential Crisis of ‘Monday Night Football’
Baseball’s Existential Crisis
The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis
Cure for the Existential Crisis of Married Motherhood
An Existential Crisis for Law Schools
No one expects the state of Iowa to cease to exist (perhaps becoming East Dakota). The same goes for Monday Night Football, Baseball, the G.O.P., married motherhood, or law school. The headlines refer to identity crises, not threats to existence (well, maybe for the G.O.P.). The shift of “existential crisis” from referring to a personal identity crisis to a cultural one is nothing to fret about.
Folks who use “existential crisis” only in its human “identity crisis” meaning may not like the way it is extended in these headlines, but what really annoys them is the phrase being used to indicate something is a threat to humanity. This use is becoming increasingly common, as for example, when President Joe Biden called climate change “a global, existential crisis.” Is it a crisis of the earth’s identity or a crisis of human existence? It could be both I suppose, which may be how the extended meaning comes about.
More here.
