Section I: introduction

Where it comes to the fore, in its diverse disciplinary framings, existential enquiry builds a picture of a human being who is the maker of a meaningful world, albeit never a world free of conflict and contradiction. In centring its enquiry this way, existential enquiry grounds itself in empathic, typically phenomenological, description and analysis of people-in-their-situation. In this, our first section offers, then, a sampling of how existential questions, ideas and themes currently appear in the enquiry and practice of a range of human science disciplines. Existentialism is a sub-current throughout the humanities and sciences from philosophy, psychology, anthropology and geography, through semiotics and the history of science to psychiatric practice.