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1. Define Existentialism:

A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual

experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as
unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the
consequences of one's acts.

2. Topics present in existentialism:

 Existence and individual

A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that
the most important consideration for the individual is the fact that he or she is an
individual—an independently acting and responsible conscious being ("existence")—rather
than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the
individual fits ("essence"). The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be
called his or her "true essence" instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence used
by others to define him or her. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness,
create their own values and determine a meaning to their life

 Aguish and absurdity

The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond
what meaning we give to it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or "unfairness" of the
world. This contrasts with the notion that "bad things don't happen to good people"; to the world,
metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; what happens
happens, and it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad" person.

Because of the world's absurdity, at any point in time, anything can happen to anyone, and a tragic
event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the Absurd. The notion of the absurd has
been prominent in literature throughout history.

The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world
beyond what meaning we give to it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or
"unfairness" of the world. This contrasts with the notion that "bad things don't happen to good people";
to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; what
happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad" person.[20]

Because of the world's absurdity, at any point in time, anything can happen to anyone, and a tragic
event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the Absurd. The notion of the absurd has
been prominent in literature throughout history..
  Consciousness and freedom

For Sartre this attitude is manifestly self-deceiving. As human consciousness, we are always aware that
we are more than what we are aware of, so we are not whatever we are aware of. We cannot, in this
sense, be defined as our 'intentional objects' of consciousness, including our restrictions imposed by
(facticity) our personal history, character, bodies, or objective responsibility. Thus, as Sartre often
repeated, "Human reality is what it is not, and it is not what it is." An example would be if one were now
a doctor but wished and started to "transcend" to become a pig farmer. One is what one is not (a pig
farmer), not who one is (a doctor): it can only define itself negatively, as "what it is not"; but this
negation is simultaneously the only positive definition it can make of "what it is."

From this we are aware of a host of alternative reactions to our freedom to choose (an objective
situation), since no situation can dictate a single response. Only in assuming social roles and value
systems external to this nature as conscious beings can we pretend that these possibilities are denied to
us; but this is itself a decision made possible by our freedom and our separation from these things. "Bad
faith" is the paradoxical free decision to deny to ourselves this inescapable freedom.

 God and nothingless

Despair, in existentialism, is generally defined as a loss of hope. More specifically, it is a loss of hope in
reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or identity. If a person is
invested in being a particular thing, such as a bus driver or an upstanding citizen, and then finds his
being-thing compromised, he would normally be found in state of despair — a hopeless state. For
example, a singer who loses her ability to sing may despair if she has nothing else to fall back on,
nothing on which to rely for her identity. She finds herself unable to be what defined her being.

What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the conventional definition is that existentialist
despair is a state one is in even when he isn't overtly in despair. So long as a person's identity depends
on qualities that can crumble, he is considered to be in perpetual despair. And as there is, in Sartre an
terms, no human essence found in conventional reality on which to constitute the individual's sense of
identity, despair is a universal human condition. As Kierkegaard defines it in Either/Or: "Let each one
learn what he can; both of us can learn that a person’s unhappiness never lies in his lack of control over
external conditions, since this would only make him completely unhappy. In Works of Love, he said:

When the God-forsaken worldliness of earthly life shuts itself in complacency, the confined air develops
poison, the moment gets stuck and stands still, the prospect is lost, a need is felt for a refreshing,
enlivening breeze to cleanse the air and dispel the poisonous vapors lest we suffocate in worldliness. ...
Lovingly to hope all things is the opposite of despairingly to hope nothing at all. Love hopes all things –
yet is never put to shame. To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good is to hope. To
relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of evil is to fear. By the decision to choose hope one decides
infinitely more than it seems, because it is an eternal decision.