Glossary

Facticity (facticité) is the existentialist term for the concrete, unalterable givens of our existence that we did not choose—such as our place of birth, historical era, biological makeup, and past actions. In Sartre's philosophy, facticity represents the objective limits of our situation,

"Grue" and "Bleen" are artificial, time-dependent color predicates coined by philosopher Nelson Goodman in 1954. They demonstrate how identical empirical data can support contradictory future predictions, revealing that our choice of scientific and everyday language is based on linguistic

Transcendence (transcendance) is the existential capacity of consciousness to project itself beyond its current circumstances, past actions, and immediate physical reality. In Sartre's philosophy, it is our radical freedom to choose our attitude and our future, meaning we are never defined

The Last Man (German: der letzte Mensch) is Friedrich Nietzsche's prophetic archetype of the modern individual who has traded existential depth, creative struggle, and the pursuit of greatness for absolute physical security, predictable comfort, and homogenized social conformity.

A philosophical zombie is a theoretical construct used in the philosophy of mind to demonstrate that physical facts alone do not logically entail or explain the existence of subjective conscious experience (qualia).

The Mere Addition Paradox is the multi-step logical argument used by Derek Parfit to prove the Repugnant Conclusion. It shows that adding a group of people with lives worth living to a population (without affecting the original group) must make the world better or at least no worse, yet a

Patterned principles of justice are theories of distribution which dictate that goods should be allocated according to some specific natural dimension, combination of dimensions, or shifting end-state—such as moral merit, IQ, usefulness to society, or equal share—rather than through the hi

Eternalism is the ontological thesis in the philosophy of time asserting that all points in time—past, present, and future—exist with equal reality, contrasting directly with presentism's claim that only the current moment exists.

Eternalism is the ontological thesis in the philosophy of time asserting that all points in time—past, present, and future—exist with equal reality, contrasting directly with presentism's claim that only the current moment exists.

Passive nihilism is a state of existential exhaustion where the collapse of traditional absolute values leads not to creative rebellion, but to a weary acceptance of meaninglessness, characterized by a retreat into hedonism, comfort, and the systematic avoidance of spiritual or intellectua