What, in plain English, is existential angst?
I read about it a lot, and think I actually experience it a lot, but the definitions I’ve found are a bit over my head…
I know somebody here’ll know. 
I think you should be asking for an answer in plain French. 
Very roughly, it is anxiety that doesn’t seem to have any clear object. By that I mean that it isn’t directed at something clear and concrete. If you are anxious about where your next meal is coming from or about an upcoming exam that’s directed anxiety with its own object. If you are just feeling anxious and it doesn’t seem to be about anything in particular, that’s existential. It’s a fancy way of saying you are anxious about life in general.
You are now ready to move on to ‘alienation’ and ‘false consciousness.’ 
I somehow knew you’d come through, Wombat.
I don’t think plain French is possible. It all looks so fancy.
Very roughly, it is anxiety that doesn’t seem to have any clear objectIt’s a fancy way of saying you are anxious about life in general.
Thank you. I do have that all the time, but I wonder…how is existential angst different from panic or anxiety disorder, then (which I have)?
You vant to know vat existential angst is?
OK, mein kinde. For you, free!
Angst is anxiety and/or depression.
According to existentialism, we are radically free.
We have no essence or nature that defines what
we are and so determines what we do. Our
existence precedes our essence.
We are what we do, and we can do anything.
If I say, I can’t steal or lie or murder…
because I’m a PROFESSOR, say, that’s
‘bad faith.’ I’m trying to deny my radical freedom
by defining myself as a thing, something which
has an essence that determines what it does.
Faced with this radical freedom, the response can
be anxiety; hence existential angst. .This can drive us into bad faith.
There’s something right about this, IMO, because
people often have a lot more options and possibilities
than they admit; they deny this because they find
it frightening. Sometimes, for instance, people
say ‘I can’t do this, because I had a difficult
childhood.’
Somehow, jim, you just put everything together. I so have existential angst.
often have a lot more options and possibilities
than they admit; they deny this because they find
it frightening…people
say ‘I can’t do this, because I had a difficult
childhood.’
That’s me! 
“L’enfer c’est les autres.”
I know. Not alone. Lots of people are scared of being free.
Jim’s account is historically accurate. The reason I resisted going into those details is that I don’t actually believe them.
For a long time I found existentialism somewhat attractive because it seemed to capture something like this condition well. I still think it comes close to insight but I don’t think it quite makes it all the way. My reason is that if this diagnosis of the condition we call existential angst were a good one, we ought to get an account of what good mental health is like that we can believe. I don’t think that existentialism delivers on this. Good health seems to consist in being constantly capricious. There doesn’t seem to be a suitable role for character restricting our choices and, absent such a role, i don’t believe that the feelings of alienation can be explained just by fear of freedom.
Thank you for the definitions, folks. I know it intrinsically, and needed no explanation.
When I was a kid I thought I wanted to be a pioneer in the 18th C. because then all my jobs in life would be clearly defined by necessity and I wouldn’t need to wonder.
Later I was grateful for the freedom, but the anxiety remains, I’ve just learned to accept it as my companion in life.
There have been times when I’ve thrown myself whole-heartedly into a pursuit so I could get lost in the busyness, only to realize that I was unsuited to that occupation. (Nursing school being a prime example.)
Mainly, I fret over what I will have “accomplished” in life, and whether I should be launching myself into a meaningful work that will outlive me in its significance–but having no compelling concept, the work would be arbitrary, and I would therefore lack belief in it. (Although I have written 2 books from a place of complete arbitrariness, just to test this theory.)
Sometimes I throw I Ching coins for guidance and the answer is always “Chill honey…just go with the flow.”
No…I’ve felt homesick for nowhere my whole life. It’s not fear of freedom, but staying really really busy can quiet the anxiety a bit.
Actually, that’s a classic definition of anxiety, more generally speaking than existential anxiety. The classic understanding of anxiety puts it into contrast with fear: Fear is a response to an identifiable threat-object and anxiety is something that feels like fear but is free-floating, without attachment to a particular object or stimulus.
My grandmother used to say that “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop”. That is not totally appropriate for the concept we are discussing, but I think that it is one of the reasons that I like to make flutes, merely to stay busy. I feel more relaxed and content if I am busy with my hands and not thinking so much.
I believe that a certain amount of anxiety is an inescapable part of the human condition. We have some control over our lives, but that control is not total. I would have liked to have had some imput over what I looked like, but even my parents didn’t have any control over that. My two brothers and I hardly look like brothers. You have to learn to accept what you have been given. Of course that means that I have had to give up any dreams of being a professional athelete or a playing a leading romantic role in Hollywood.
Also, when I start to think about it, I realize that I have no control over whether my heart will continue to beat, as it has been doing for the last 61 years. It could stop today, or I could live for another 30 years like my father, who is 90. If I just had a little more information and knowledge, it would be comforting. If I knew that I was not long for this world, I would stop what I was doing now and would plan some world travelling, with Ireland being one of the places that I would like to see. I wouldn’t have to worry about how I am going to be able to make it through my retirement years and what crazy ideas the politicians are going to come up with next.
Although somewhat trite, my solution is “Don’t worry; Be happy!”
An interesting exercise, IMO, is this:
When you find yourself saying ‘I can’t do …whatever it is,’
substitute ‘won’t’ for ‘can’t.’
As in ‘I can’t talk to her anymore,’ and ‘I can’t bring myself
to finish those math problems’ etc.
The results can be interesting and often, in my case
anyhow, closer to the truth. People make a lot of
choices they don’t own up to. Also they often see themselves
as less powerful than they are. It’s been said, truly IMO,
that many folks find the idea obnoxious
that they are responsible for their own condition.
I recall an elderly man who was being interviewed on TV.
Finally the interviewer said: ‘I can’t help but notice that
there is a great feeling of good spirits about you.’
The man responded: ‘I wake up every morning
and decide to be happy.’
Another exercise: Instead of saying ‘You made me angry’
one says: ‘I’m mad at you.’ Instead of saying ‘That scares me’
one says: ‘I’m afraid of that.’ Constantly shift from the passive,
where we create the idea that others control our feelings or that
the feelings just come and take us over,
to the active, where we own our feelings, WE have THEM,
not the other way around, and have more choices about them.
Anger is energy to solve a problem.
I was afraid this would come up. But, I feel better now that I’ve gone to the bathroom. 
Imagine the anxiety God must have felt as Evey picked the forbidden fruit. Oh that’s right, God is all-knowing and knew she’d do it. Knowledge replaces fear, knowledge replaces fear. No-ledge. Then if it wasn’t anxiety, it must have been excitement.
Existential angst translates to “fear of existence”. It is not the same thing as the philosophy of existentialism, although that philosophy may incorporate existential angst. Not being a professional physcholgist or other degreed professional in the field, I see “fear of existence” usually expressed as worries about the conditions of our lives as well as the “free-floating anxieties” about circumstances that may be below our awareness but nevertheless are present and are affecting our thoughts and behavior.
Making whistles keeps me off the streets as well, however if I saw what was on the streets, I probably wouldn’t want to go there anyway.
It doesn’t keep from thinking though.
Instead, I get wild ideas to make things like Triwhistles:
idle hands are the Devil’s workshop
So, busy hands are whistlemakers workshop?
Which one is more dangerous?
Of course you are right. But I’m still wondering about this account. In my desire to avoid using an eistentialist explanation, did I just overshoot the mark? Or is it rather that, without the lousy existentialist theory of motivation, existential angst just collapes into ordinary anxiety. IOW, existential angst as a special kind of anxiety is just an artefact of a bad theory?
Let me say a bit more about why I really hate the existentialist gloss on this stuff. The freedom that we are supposedly frightened of seems to me to be a very capricious and superficial kind of freedom. If we were all free in this sense we would be characterless, willful brats. We wouldn’t be genuinely autonomous persons. We would lack personalities. We would have no long term plans. In the deeper sense in which freedom really matters to us, we wouldn’t be free at all.
If first-order desires are things like the desire for chocolate now, or for a cigarette now, then second-order desires are desires about desires. Examples of these would be the desire not to want to smoke, the desire to diet successfully. These second-order desires have a lot to do with planning our lives and with giving our lives meaning. Almost every major goal we strive for involves suppressing countless first-order desires. It is our ability to do this that makes us truly autonomous; it isn’t bad faith and it isn’t irrational.
Perhaps what I’m calling autonomy comes at a cost and perhaps (existential?) angst is the price we pay for that. If so, it seems to me to be well worth the price. That said, there probably is a kind of motivational dysfunction which involves us in pretending we can’t act when in fact we can. But a good psychology would distinguish the two rather than run them together. Or so it seems to me.
existential angst doesn’t have a DSM-IV code, where generalized anxiety does. so it may be two ways of looking at the same blackbird.
OK, I called an existentialist, Berit Brogaard,
and asked her: ‘What is existential angst?’
‘Roughly the despair that people feel when faced
with the meaninglessness of life,’ she said.
She is Danish, tall, blond, and beautiful
in a deeply serious angst-ridden way.
This is the truth.
That sounds like post-existentialist drama.
I called my existentialist and he called his wife, also an existentialist, and she called her best friend…well you know what happened; by the time a perfect definition of existential angst all got sorted out, the operator asked what extension I’d like, and if I enjoyed being on hold. I thought she said existence. I told her I was the type that need to know in advance what was going to happen. She said, “do you need help, sir?” I said, “I knew that was coming,” and hung up. Now I don’t know whether to see a psychologist, philosopher, cleric, or a linguist. And to think, it all started from reading prophecies.