http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

Existentialism is a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[1][2] took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual[3][4] and his or her conditions of existence (e.g. death, loneliness)— as a starting point for philosophical thought. Existential philosophy is the "explicit conceptual manifestation of an existential attitude"[5] that begins with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.[6][7] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.