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Aug 19, 2023 · Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence.1 Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world, as well as ...
Christian existentialist Vytautas Mačernis: June 5, 1921 – October 7, 1944 Lithuania Poet Naguib Mahfouz: December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006 Egypt Novelist Gabriel Marcel: December 7, 1889 – October 8, 1973 France Theologian, philosopher Christian existentialist Maurice Merleau-Ponty: March 14, 1908 – May 3, 1961 France Philosopher
NameLivedNationalityOccupationJuly 15, 1901 – September 9, 1990ItalyPhilosopherJanuary 18, 1931 – September 25, 1976ColombiaPhilosopherOctober 14, 1906 – December 4, 1975GermanyPhilosopherFebruary 17, 1917 – July 25, 2002EgyptPhilosopherPeople also ask
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listen to "i" and "u," songs on To Pimp a Butterfly, to see his twin selves that are reminiscent of bipolar disorder, and/or the existentialist realization that despite transient happiness, the absurdity of life will always be present as a heavy depressing force. as Camus said, "I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul ...
Oct 28, 2023 · Existentialism is a philosophy that endures because it speaks to the human condition, with its complexities, uncertainties, and choices. It reminds individuals that, in a rapidly changing world ...
- At The Existentialist Café, by Sarah Bakewell
- Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, by Walter Kaufmann
- The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, by Steven Crowell
- Either/Or, by Søren Kierkegaard
- Being and Nothingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre
- The Ethics of Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir
- Being and Time, by Martin Heidegger
- The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus
- Further Reading
Published in 2016, Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Caféis a fantastic place to start for anyone with a budding interest in existentialism. With brilliant narrative storytelling, Bakewell outlines the intersecting lives and philosophies of key existentialist figures — from Sartre, Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, to Husserl, Heidegger, and Camus. ...
Walter Kaufmann was a 20th-century philosopher, poet, and renowned translator of Friedrich Nietzsche (see our reading list on Nietzsche’s best books here). In his 1956 Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Kaufmann assembles extracts from key existentialist influencers and thinkers including Dostoevsky (see Dostoevsky’s best books here), Kierke...
If you’re seeking to complement Kaufmann's existentialist anthology with some hardcore critical analysis, look no further than philosophy professor Steven Crowell’s The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, published in 2012. In this volume of original essays, Crowell brings together a team of distinguished commentators to discuss the ideas of Kie...
Turning from introductions and anthologies to primary existentialist texts, where better to start than with the philosopher often regarded as the precursor to the movement as a whole? In his 1843 epic Either/Or (which also features in our reading list of Kierkegaard’s best books), the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard discusses the search for a ...
Arguably the cornerstone of existentialist thinking, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s epic 1943 Being and Nothingness— coming in at over 800 pages — is a dense, vivid, and challenging depiction of human existence, and the most explicit expression of existentialist philosophy on this list. If you’re seeking a less daunting introduction to Sartr...
In her classic 1947 introduction to existentialist thinking, The Ethics of Ambiguity, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir critiques the positions of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, and sets out to provide a new ethics for existentialism. In clear, accessible, insightful prose, Beauvoir provides novel arguments for and developments of existentialism, an...
Throughout the history of philosophy, argues the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, we’ve all massively missed something: we’ve never really contemplated what it means to exist, to be. The philosophical branch of metaphysics has skimmed over this question, focusing instead on things like substance and the categories of our experience; but behind ...
Though the French thinker Albert Camus rejected the label ‘existentialist’, his writings are widely considered core to the existentialist tradition. His particular brand of existentialism, dubbed ‘absurdism’, explores how even in the face of the outrageous absurdity of the human condition, we can salvage meaning and happiness. In his hugely influen...
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The existentialist philosophers did not refrain from formulating internal (aesthetic) and external (ethical and political) constraints to artistic practice, but their aesthetics fundamentally proclaims the radical freedom of the artist, also seeing in it the privileged exemplar of human freedom in general.
