Existentialism can be read as a mood spanning Pascal to modern alienation

Evidence

It is sometimes said that existentialism is more of a mood than a philosophy, and that it can be traced back to anguished novelists of the nineteenth century, and beyond that to Blaise Pascal, who was terrified by the silence of infinite spaces, and beyond that to the soul-searching St. Augustine, and beyond that to the Old Testament’s weary Ecclesiastes and to Job, the man who dared to question the game God was playing with him and was intimidated into submission. To anyone, in short, who has ever felt disgruntled, rebellious, or alienated about anything. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 7

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the ‘mood versus philosophy’ characterization of existentialism as a way of orienting to the movement.
• XREF: connects to: Existentialism can be traced to a mood found across millennia of troubled thinkers — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 7

Broader Connections

• Existentialism can be traced to a mood found across millennia of troubled thinkers #corroborates (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 7