Jonathan Webber articulates an original interpretation of existentialism as the ethical theory that human freedom is the foundation of all other values. Offering an original analysis of classic literary and philosophical works published by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Frantz Fanon up until 1952, Webber's conception of existentialism is developed in critical contrast with central works by Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. -/- Presenting his arguments in an accessible and engaging style, Webber contends that Beauvoir (...) and Sartre initially disagreed over the structure of human freedom in 1943 but Sartre ultimately came to accept Beauvoir's view over the next decade. He develops the viewpoint that Beauvoir provides a more significant argument for authenticity than either Sartre or Fanon. He articulates in detail the existentialist theories of individual character and the social identities of gender and race, key concerns in current discourse. Webber concludes by sketching out the broader implications of his interpretation of existentialism for philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy. (shrink)

_A fresh translation of two seminal works of existentialism__ “To understand Jean-Paul Sartre is to understand something important about the present time.”—Iris Murdoch “Sartre matters because so many fundamental points of his analysis of the human reality are right and true, and because their accuracy and veracity entail real consequences for our lives as individuals and in social groups.”—Benedict O’Donohoe, _Philosophy Now__ It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the dominant European intellectual of the post–World (...) War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

There are two main accounts of what it is for external objects to be presented in visual experience. According to particularism, particular objects are built into the representational contents of experiences. Existentialism is a quite different view. According to existentialism, the representational contents of perceptual experiences are general rather than particular, in the sense that the contents can be fully captured by existentially quantified statements. The present paper is a defense of existentialism. It argues that existentialism (...) is much better equipped than particularism to explain the contents of hallucinations, and it defends existentialism against three objections. (shrink)

This article develops a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis between classical and contemporary existentialism (Heidegger, Sartre, Lévinas, Taylor, Nussbaum, Foucault, Butler, Han, Ricoeur, Merleau-Ponty, Damasio, Braidotti, among others) and the Philosophy of Belonging formulated by Carlos Federico Obregón Díaz. The study proposes a theoretical shift from being-toward-death and radical freedom toward a relational, emotional, institutional, and scientific ontology of belonging, grounded in the thesis “to be is to belong.” Integrating philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, evolutionary biology, and institutional theory, the article (...) argues that subjectivity, freedom, identity, ethics, and justice are not merely individual or abstract phenomena but capacities constructed through affective bonds, shared narratives, and stable institutional structures. In contrast to traditional existentialist pessimism centered on alienation, anguish, and finitude, the Philosophy of Belonging introduces a constructive post-existential framework oriented toward emotional stability, structural inclusion, and institutional architectures of belonging. The paper positions belonging as the ontological infrastructure of human existence, the ethical foundation of recognition, and the socio-economic condition for agency, development, and dignity. It also advances a scientific relational humanism that synthesizes existentialism, neurophilosophy, social theory, and political economy into a unified framework applicable to contemporary challenges such as inequality, exclusion, institutional fragility, and the crisis of meaning in modern societies. Ultimately, the work contributes to 21st-century philosophy by proposing a post-existential paradigm in which freedom is understood as co-belonging, justice as structural inclusion, and identity as emotional-institutional belonging within interdependent human and social systems. (shrink)

Offers the first comprehensive survey of Mexican existentialism to appear in English. This book examines the emergence of existentialism in Mexico in the 1940s and the quest for a genuine Mexican philosophy that followed it. It focuses on the pivotal moments and key figures of the Hyperion group, including Emilio Uranga, Luis Villoro, Leopoldo Zea, and Jorge Portilla, who explored questions of interpretation, marginality, identity, and the role of philosophy. Carlos Alberto Sánchez was the first to introduce and (...) emphasize the philosophical significance of the Hyperion group to readers of English in The Suspension of Seriousness, and in the present volume he examines its legacy and relevancy for the twenty-first century. Sánchez argues that there are lessons to be learned from Hyperion’s project not only for Latino/a life in the United States but also for the lives of those on the fringes of contemporary, postmodern or postcolonial, economic, political, and cultural power. (shrink)

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, (...) he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss how existentialism was criticized, disseminated, and gradually autochthonized in the main philosophical journals of Socialist Romania. We show that the early critique of existentialism was both a statement against contemporary bourgeois philosophy in general and a condemnation of the local philosophical production of the interwar period. In the 1950s, this kind of critique was attuned to the growing fame of several Romanian authors who had emigrated to the West (e.g., Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade) (...) and targeted both past and contemporary irrationalism. Following a period of critique of existentialism without existentialists (i.e., without reference to individual authors), the 1960s discussions of existentialism were mainly driven by interest in a small number of existentialist authors. In particular, the evolution of Jean-Paul Sartre’s work and politics was analyzed as it straddled existentialism and Marxism. The 1970s saw the integration of selected existentialist concepts and themes, in an attempt to offer a Marxist alternative to existentialism in the form of philosophical anthropology. This led to a period of engagement with existentialists without existentialism across an increasing number of separate disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. In the 1980s, following the failure of Marxist philosophical anthropology and at the height of national communism, existentialism could also be autochthonized through the recovery of selected philosophers from the interwar period whose work had been previously criticized as irrationalist. (shrink)

Christopher Devlin Brown’s The Hope and Horror of Physicalism: An Existential Treatise (2024) is a novel contribution to analytical existentialism. The book is divided into three parts. In Part 1, Brown examines the existential consequences of two broad kinds of physicalism, distinguished by their characterization of the physical: via negativa physicalism and theory-based physicalism. He then argues that the existential consequences of via negativa physicalism are more existentially severe than those of theory-based physicalism. In Part 2, he examines how (...) we ought to respond to the existential consequences of via negativa physicalism if it is true. In Part 3, he defends a version of via negativa physicalism, Russellian physicalism, arguing that it offers the most plausible response to the hard problem of consciousness. I first argue for the two-fold point that Brown mischaracterizes the theory-based approach to physicalism, and that when it is properly characterized we can see that it is just as existentially severe as via negativa physicalism. Then, I point out some gaps and omissions in Brown’s discussion of how we should respond to those existential consequences. Finally, I argue that the via negativa approach to characterizing the physical is inadequate, and that Brown’s attempt to make a case that Russellian physicalism offers the most plausible response to the hard problem is unsuccessful. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a popular view about the nature of propositions, commonly known as the Russellian view of propositions. Alvin Plantinga has dubbed it, or more precisely, a crucial consequence of it, Existentialism, and in his paper “On Existentialism” (1983) he has presented a forceful argument intended as a reductio of this view. In what follows, I describe the main relevant ingredients of the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. I present a relatively simple (...) response Russellians might want to make to Plantinga’s anti-existentialist argument. I then explore one aspect of this response—one that leads to some rather curious consequences for the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the theory of Aristotelian actualism about possible worlds, a view which conceives of possible worlds as complete and consistent sets of propositions. The theory posits that, the existence of at least some possible worlds ontologically depends on what actually exists. This is because singular propositions about contingent individuals also exist contingently. Since modal claims are analyzed in terms of possible worlds, Aristotelian actualism entails that some modal truths are themselves contingent. However, this view faces a (...) serious problem. If an individual x does not exist, then there are no singular propositions about x, including the proposition [x does not exist]. But if that is the case, then [x does not exist] is not true when x does not exist—which is absurd. In this paper, I show that the Aristotelian actualist can solve this problem by introducing two senses of truth with respect to possible worlds: truth in a world and truth at a world. Some have argued that this distinction is not substantive, since the notion of truth at a world is not meaningful and substantive. The aim of this paper is to show that this notion is indeed substantive. I support this claim by demonstrating the indispensability of the notion of truth at a world for explaining several key features of possible worlds (and more broadly, of modality) as understood by Aristotelian actualism. (shrink)

This is the editorial for Vol 19 Issue 2 of Philosophy of Management. A reflection is made on COVID-19 measures and a call for papers is made to explore the crisis through philosophical inquiry on 1) disaster management and 2) existentialist views of work. Guidance is given based on papers published previously in the journal, and on Camus’ La Peste / The Plague.

A keen athlete in his late forties, philosophy professor Kevin Aho hadn't given much thought to his own mortality, until he suffered a sudden heart attack that left him fighting for his life. Confronted with death for the first time, he realized that the things he thought gave his life meaning, such as his independence or his ability to plan his own future, were in tatters. Aho turned to those thinkers who have reflected deeply on the meaning of life and (...) the anxiety of living when every heartbeat might be your last: the existentialists. Armed with insights from the likes of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and de Beauvoir, he found new meaning and comfort in a view of life that strives for authenticity and accepts aging and death as part of what makes life worthwhile. Existentialism asks us to face the frailty of our existence and to live with a sense of urgency and gratitude toward its manifold beauties. It is only then that we can be released from patterns of self-deception and begin to appreciate what truly matters in our fleeting, precious lives. (shrink)

In this paper, Kate Kirkpatrick argues that the recent return to moral exemplars in exemplarist moral theory might benefit from engaging with existentialists' use of exemplars in two ways: first, by considering the role of negative exemplars and the power of emotions other than admiration in moral formation; and second, by considering objections to exemplarist education, in particular Simone de Beauvoir's objection that narrative exemplars often serve an ideological function and perpetuate oppressive ideals — especially (but not only) about women. (...) After situating this discussion in ancient and recent debates about the role of literary narratives in moral formation, Kirkpatrick outlines a moral perfectionist reading of Beauvoir and an objection to exemplarist moral theory's reliance on exemplars that “we” admire on the basis that “the admirable” often serves to promote the interests of the powerful rather than the flourishing of all human beings. Finally, while agreeing with this symposium's editors that efforts to improve our understanding of how to use narrative exemplars in educational settings are valuable, she asks how, given the force of the Beauvoirian objection, their criterion of “appropriate critical reflection” might be met. (shrink)

An exposition in five parts of the character of existentialist philosophy, including an analysis of the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre. Author Gabriel Marcel, a famous French dramatist, philosopher, and author of Le Dard, was a leading exponent of Christian existentialism.

In this essay I consider the question that divides quetism from existentialism and to defend a particular line on that question. The essay is in three main sections. In the first I set out a view of philosophy under which it grows out of reflection on the views that shape ordinary practice. In the second section I outline a theory as to how exactly practice commits us to such views. And then in the third section I argue on the (...) basis of that account that, notwithstanding serious difficulties, philosophy can feed back onto the views that inform practice and recast them in various ways. I reject the existentialist vision according to which there is no limit to how far philosophy may lead us to reconstruct ourselves. But I also reject the quietist view that philosophy must leave everything as it was. Under the picture adopted, philosophy can be expected to have a threefold impact--meditative, methodological, and moral--on people's habits of experience and behaviour. (shrink)

Kant’s critical philosophy represents a rudimentary existentialism, or a proto-existentialism, in the following respects: He emphasizes human finitude, limits our knowledge, and argues that human consciousness is characterized by mineness (Jemeinigkeit). He introduces the influential concept of autonomy, something that lead to controversies about constructivism and anti-realism in meta-ethics and anticipated problems concerning decisionism in Existentialism. Kant makes human freedom the central philosophical issue, arguing (in the incorporation thesis) that freedom is inescapable for human agents. He even (...) holds that awareness of freedom leads to anxiety (as opposed to fear), and that anxiety precedes the fall into evil. In the doctrine of radical evil, he argues that human agents are always already suffering from self-deception because of this fall. In order to overcome self-deception and evil, Kant proscribes a radical self-choice in which the agent takes over himself and society by thinking independently and consistently. However, this is not only a moral issue for Kant but also something that concerns religious faith and hope, since Kant argues that we need religion to overcome not only moral evil but also despair. Although he criticizes traditional natural theology, Kant develops a practical (moral) interpretation of religion that anticipates religious Existentialism. In this context, he developed an influential critique of philosophical theodicies and a notion of the hiddenness of God that emphasizes the importance and inscrutability of evil. By doing this, and by introducing philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology as new disciplines, Kant prepared the ground for Existentialism. (shrink)

In this highly original book, Markus Gabriel offers an account of the human self that overcomes the deadlocks inherent in the standard positions of contemporary philosophy of mind. His view, Neo-Existentialism, is thoroughly anti-naturalist in that it repudiates any theory according to which the ensemble of our best natural-scientific knowledge is able to account fully for human mindedness. Instead, he shows that human mindedness consists in an open-ended proliferation of mentalistic vocabularies. Their role in the human life form consists (...) in making sense of the fact that the human being does not merely blend in with inanimate nature and the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans rely on a self-portrait that locates them in the broadest conceivable context of the universe. What distinguishes this self-portrait from our knowledge of natural reality is that we change in light of our true and false beliefs about the human being. Gabriel’s argument is challenged in this volume by Charles Taylor, Andrea Kern and Jocelyn Benoist. In defending his argument against these and other objections and in spelling out his theory of self-constitution, Gabriel refutes naturalism’s metaphysical claim to epistemic exclusiveness and opens up new paths for future self-knowledge beyond the contemporary ideology of the scientific worldview. (shrink)

Professor Grossman’s introduction to the revolutionary work of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre studies the ideas of their predecessors too, explaining in detail Descartes’s conception of the mind, Brentano’s theory of intentionality, and Kierkegaard’s emphasis on dread, while tracing the debate over existence and essence as far back as Aquinas and Aristotle. For a full understanding of the existentialists and phenomenologists, we must also understand the problems that they were trying to solve. This book, originally published in 1984, presents clearly how (...) the main concerns of phenomenology and existentialism grew out of tradition. (shrink)

In a non-German-speaking environment is Jaspers sometimes mistakenly called as an existentialist. But Jaspers saw himself as a philosopher of existence, and he sharply criticized existentialism. This error arose because of confusion in the translations of the names Existenzphilosophie and Existentialismus from German into other languages. The difference between these terms was actively discussed immediately after Sartre’s lecture on humanism, in which Sartre, as he thought, announced a new direction in philosophy — existentialism (Existentialisme), to which he also (...) included Jaspers as a religious member of this direction. The purpose of paper is to investigate and analyze Jaspers’ criticism of existentialism and his rejection of it. Because long before Sart re’s lecture, Jaspers wrote about the false philosophical method of the investigation of human being as opposed to the true way — the elucidation of existence (Existenzerhellung), and also noted that he created a new word to denote this false method — existentialism (Existentialismus). While Jaspers understood the elucidation of existence as self-reflection and self-experience, which deepen in the experiences of boundary situations (Grenzsituationen), he considers existentialism as the knowledge of human being as a certain object among other objects. Already later — after Sartre’s lecture — Jaspers began to criticize existentialism as a direction that arose under the influence of the philosophy of existence and as its decline. Jaspers connected existentialism mainly with Sartre and outlined the main grounds of his criticism: existentialism is based on bare abstraction and Sartre’s main slogan — existence (of personality) precedes essence — is an evidence of this; existentialism uses a certain poetic vagueness of some statements, and is an attempt to overcome nihilism through nihilism itself; this philosophy denies the existence of any transcendent basis of human and world. For these reasons, Jaspers rejected existentialism, which is fundamentally different from the philosophy of existence. (shrink)

This article analyses little-known short stories of modern Ukrainian writers Valerian Pidmohylny and Mykhailo Yatskiv in the context of the 20th century existentialism. It can be considered as a cultural phenomenon which combines philosophy with literature. Pidmohylny’s short stories were significantly influenced primarily by the ideas of the European philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, we can search for similar motives in the works of Pidmohylny and the existentialists, which developed under the influence of the (...) ideas of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Also, the authors consider Yatskiv’s short stories through the prism of the core concepts of existentialism, namely, fate and death. Pidmohylny and Yatskiv can be assigned to existential writers on the basis of retrospective analysis of the themes of their short stories and the thematic areas of 20th century existentialism. (shrink)

This article is a response to critiques of my book Rethinking Existentialism in this symposium. It begins with a reflection on the nature of this discussion. Then it reformulates Eshleman's ‘bridge problem’ to defend my view that eudaimonist arguments cannot establish that we ought to respect freedom. Next, it shows how my interpretation of Beauvoir's argument for authenticity can incorporate Kirkpatrick's reading of Beauvoir's ethics. Then it uses Romdenh-Romluc's description of Fanon's therapeutic methodology to present a comparative reading of (...) Fanon and Sartre, followed by an argument that Romdenh-Romluc's reading of Fanon can be incorporated into my interpretation to the benefit of both. The penultimate section incorporates Beauvoir's theory of femininity into my account of her theory of gender sedimentation. The final section considers how Eshleman's emphasis on social interdependence might enrich Sartre's picture of authenticity. The article closes with brief comments on the value of reading these texts together. (shrink)

The author analyzes the place of existentialism and its theories and concepts in modern socialphilosophical analysis of the political culture of post-industrial society. The author also examines the importance of the existential comprehension of a man in his attitude to the culture of power and to the modern political community. Besides, author considers the non-used scientific potential of researches of known existential philosophers in social space of the modern informative society. Key words: existentialism, politics, informative society, society, philosophy, (...) post-industrial society. (shrink)

The term “existentialism” was coined in the 1940s. Whereas other books regarding existentialism merely repeat the platitudes that “There is no such thing as existentialism” or that “The term ‘existentialism’ has no coherent meaning,” this two-volume set actually answers the question “What is existentialism?” ------- Volume I identifies the seven (7) principles of existentialism and the necessary and sufficient conditions for a philosophy to be existential, and introduces readers to the depth of the problem (...) by showing how the question “What is existentialism?” can be answered in multiple ways, all of which are provided in this two-volume set. ------- Vol. I, then, provides the “archaeological” answer to the question by showing the philosophical framework existentialism inherited from transcendental philosophy. Vol. I also provides the “genealogical” answer by tracing the history of the thematization of this framework through German Romanticism, concluding with an illustration of how the major existential philosophers: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Marcel, expressed and developed the principles of existentialism. ------- Volume II provides a discussion of essential distinctions with which to correctly understand, and formulate thoughts about, existentialism, for example, discussions of existentialism as a kind of character ethics, existentialism as a critique of Descartes’ philosophy, the difference between existential individuality and modern subjectivity, and a discussion of the “moment of vision.” ------- Vol. II concludes, then, with a discussion of how existential philosophy takes be-ing, as an end-in-itself, as its point of origin. Vol. II also provides a number of helpful appendices. These appendices address some miscellaneous, though important, concerns regarding existentialism, and provide charts illustrating the interrelations between the key concepts of existentialism. (shrink)

The concluding chapter compares the existentialism of Unamuno, Berdyaev and Marcel with that of non-religious existentialists, drawing both parallels and divergences. Emphasis is placed on how the existentialist approach of these three Christian thinkers has the effect of transforming Christianity from a religion based on defined dogmas to a religion based on human affects.

This anthology provides a history of the systemization and canonization of existentialism, a quintessentially antisystemic mode of thought. Situating existentialism within the history of ideas, it features new readings on the most influential works in the existential canon, exploring their formative contexts and the cultural dialogues of which they were a part. Emphasizing the multidisciplinary and global nature of existential arguments, the chosen texts relate to philosophy, religion, literature, theater, and culture and reflect European, Russian, Latin American, African, (...) and American strains of thought. Readings are grouped into three thematic categories: national contexts, existentialism and religion, and transcultural migrations that explore the reception of existentialism. The volume explains how literary giants such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were incorporated into the existentialist fold and how inclusion into the canon recast the work of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and it describes the roles played by Jaspers and Heidegger in Germany and the Paris School of existentialism in France. Essays address not only frequently assigned works but also underappreciated discoveries, underscoring their vital relevance to contemporary critical debate. Designed to speak to a new generation's concerns, the collection deploys a diverse range of voices to interrogate the fundamental questions of the human condition. (shrink)

The introductory chapter considers different approaches to twentieth-century existentialism and the various figures associated with it. It makes clear the author’s own view, suggests a revised chronology of existentialism, and explains the choice of the three thinkers—Unamuno, Berdyaev, Marcel—chosen for detailed comparative study. It ends by surveying critically the main contributions to religious existentialism.

The posthumously published diaries and letters of Beauvoir and Sartre challenge the traditional account of Beauvoir as Sartre's philosophical follower. They show Sartre drawing on Beauvoir's account of relations with the Other in her metaphysical novel, She Came to Stay, as he began writing Being and Nothingness, and point to an unexplored Beauvoirean lineage of existentialism, including Bergson as well as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger, and the African-American writer, Richard Wright.

In this paper Abbagnano outlines his conception of “positive existentialism” as a philosophy of freedom and of responsible choice, in opposition to any form of dogmatism. In our everyday existence, we constantly face possibilities, meaning we are always required to make choices between the different alternatives we are presented with. Abbagnano thus argues that philosophy must provide a criterion for our existential choices, which he identifies in the possible itself. Existentialism is then understood as that philosophy which establishes (...) valid criteria according to which human beings can choose, and that can reduce the possibility of error and constitute norms and rules of conduct. Abbagnano maintains that choosing wisely and freely means that the choice one makes in a specific moment can and should be renewed and repeated under any circumstance. Accordingly, our task is to establish criteria that will not lead us to irreparable error, but will allow us to implement a practice of always renewable choices. (shrink)

This essay examines the relations between existentialism and atheism, and argues that these are more complicated and multi-faceted than is often thought. Of the main nineteenth-century authors whose ideas prefigure existentialism—Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard—the last two are, explicitly, Christians. Even the twentieth-century existentialists who are well known for their positive atheism —Sartre and Camus—actually struggle to extricate their thought from the legacy of Christianity. Because Sartre and Camus reject traditional European moral frameworks on the grounds that these depend (...) upon belief in God, they have difficulty establishing positive ethical frameworks to guide human action and politics, as they nonetheless wish to do. Insofar as Sartre and Camus do derive ethical-political prescriptions from their versions of existentialism, they achieve this only by falling back upon aspects of the traditional Christian morality whose framework and foundations they reject. (shrink)

“[Berdyaev] sustained in his own person the multiple roles of prophet, theologian, philosopher and political writer....Here then is an anthology of chosen passages under carefully selected headings from the works of a prolific writer whose dream of Paradise consisted, among other delights, of a desk, paper and a pen-in-hand. The excerpts have been selected with more than ordinary care by Dr. Donald Lowrie who, having known Nicholas Berdyaev personally in a close working relationship for more than twenty-five years, gave us (...) the best biography of this remarkable person. The anthology touches nearly every theme that may interest epistemologist, metaphysician, theologian, missionary, mystic, or even the politician who studies Marxist economic theory. Thus if anyone is interested in the relations of Church and state, in the basic need of civilization or culture, in religion or communism, he will find in Christian Existentialism many thoughtful, arresting reflections. There is no reason or need to exaggerate Berdyaev’s value as a philosopher or theologian, either in youth or age...”- Publisher. (shrink)

The evolution of philosophy and physics seem to acknowledge that "informational existentialism" will be possible. Therefore, this contribution aims to comprehend if Heidegger existentialism can enrich the bound between information theory and the intercultural dialogue as regards to information. Even so, an important query arises: why specifically Heidegger's philosophy? Because it highlights an intercultural dialogue namely with East Asian and with Arabic philosophy, which is also consistent with the debate concerning the potential value and contribution of information theory (...) to the intercultural dialogue. Therefore, this manuscript intends to understand if information is shaping worldwide cultures as a consequence of its existence. (shrink)

This second posthumous book of Prof. Roberts, based on a course which he gave at Union Theological Seminary and two lectureships, is as fine a book on existentialism as has appeared to date. Largely completed before the author's death, it has been edited by Roger Hazleton, who rounds out the introduction and contributes a concluding section in keeping with the spirit and style of the work.--D. R.

Now that there is more distance from Existentialism as a movement in philosophy, after its influence has passed to other forms, this collection of writings by its founding members can help raise the question about just what existentialism is. Langiulli writes an interesting and freer new introduction to this 25-year-old collection. He makes a good case for looking back to the philosophical sources to see again what existentialism had and still has a hold of. He implies that (...) “post-modernism, deconstructionism, antifoundationalism, historicism, multiculturalism, and diversityism,” while stemming from existentialism, also forget what existentialism was onto. (shrink)

Philosophical trends such as the philosophy of religion, especially Thomism, existentialism, and phenomenology emerged in Lithuanian philosophy during the 20th century. The article discusses the chief preconditions of the spread of existentialism, in particular the dominant Christian existentialism, in Lithuania and its influence on Lithuanian culture. The best known representatives of this philosophical trend were J. Girnius and A. Maceina. There are two periods of existentialism and its development in Lithuania: the first one includes the independence (...) years and the second covers the time of the Soviet occupation. The author discusses its influence on Lithuanian literature and introduces the main problems of existential philosophy. (shrink)

In my presentation, I will try to develop a picture of scientific research in terms of heremeneutic phenomenology. I will claim that theoretical objects of science do exist at once as "inscriptions" on the horizon of possibilities for doing research, and as "traces" left by practices of formalization, experimentation, calibration, measurement, and calculation. The possibilities become appropriated in the research process, whereby a conceptual structure of scientific domain gradually takes shape. According to this, the horizon of possibilities remains always an (...) open fore-structure of interpretation concerning the structure of the domain. In elaborating on this view, I will sketch out a phenomenological program of "cognitive existentialism". (shrink)

Karl Rahner believed that orthodox Christology is too often perceived as mythology, irrelevant to the lives of contemporary Christians. As a result, he felt, the role of conversion as the gateway to an authentically Christian morality has been neglected. Influenced by existentialist philosophy and life-stage theories that were popular during his lifetime, Rahner established a basis for a new ethical system that would integrate psychological theory and techniques into his theological existentialism in order to provide a cohesive structure within (...) which individuals can be guided towards conversion. It is the purpose of this article to suggest a theoretical framework for Rahner’s proposed “Existential Ethics” and to make some suggestions for its concretization. (shrink)

Max Stirner pioneered a radically existentialist thinking in which the ego or the Unique One is able to appropriate its “predicates” or determinations as objects of consumption. In this sense the singular event is privileged over the intellectual “spooks” that express the predicate’s independence from and mastery over its subject. Karl Marx’s thinking was decisively altered by his encounter with Stirner, to whom he replied at length in The German Ideology. I propose that Marx and Engels’s critique and appropriation of (...) Stirner provides the basis for what I call “communist existentialism,” and that this is the proper standpoint for radical philosophy today. After giving an account of this position, I briefly adopt it to critique two of the communist standpoints associated with “communization,” those of Tiqqun and Theorie Communiste. (shrink)

This book explores the relevance of Sartrean existentialism to the contemporary socio-political landscape, with particular reference to his early novel Nausea and the concepts of bad faith and authenticity outlined in his major philosophical work Being and Nothingness. In an era where political authoritarianism has asserted itself so powerfully internationally and climate crisis has revealed the shortcomings of the political class so sharply, Stuart Sim argues that existentialism has much to offer as a worldview in addressing such issues. (...) The sense of a world order falling apart connects us strongly to Sartre's situation in the Europe of the 1930s and 40s, when fascism was in the ascendant and human rights under severe threat as a direct consequence. To read Sartre's work through these phenomena is to realise the renewed importance of key existentialist concepts to the current geopolitical situation. (shrink)

In five brief chapters the author presents Unamuno's theories of language and truth, his epistemological views, and what the author terms his "Quixotic" existentialism. None of the problems alluded to are discussed in any depth, but the brevity of the book recommends it to those seeking an introduction to the main lines of Unamuno's thought.—S. A. E.

This paper critically examines the philosophical foundations of Colin Wilson’s New Existentialism. I will show how Wilson’s writings promoted a phenomenological strategy for understanding states of ecstatic affirmation within so-called ‘peak experiences’. Wilson subsequently attempted to use the life affirming insights bestowed by peak states to establish an ontological ground for values to serve as a foundation for his New Existentialism. Because of its psychological focus however, I argue that Wilson’s New Existentialism contains an ambivalent framework for (...) establishing ontological categories, which leads his thought into theoretical difficulties. More precisely, Wilson’s strategy runs into problems in coherently integrating its explicitly psychological interpretation of Husserl’s theory of intentionality within a broader, and philosophically coherent, phenomenological framework. Wilson’s psychological reading of Husserl’s transcendental reduction, for example, manifests tensions in how it reconciles the empirical basis of acts of transcendence with an essentialist conception of the self as a transcendental ego. The above tensions, I argue, ultimately render the New Existentialism susceptible to criticism from a Husserlian-transcendental perspective. After outlining a Husserlian critique of Wilson’s position, I end the paper by suggesting how some of the central insights of the New Existentialism might help to bridge the gap that persists between pure phenomenological description and metaphysics. (shrink)

A superficial, rambling, and inconclusive sketch of existentialism, mainly of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Buber, and Sartre. Translations of German terms are given without indications of the originals. As the title would suggest, existentialism is placed on trial, and a distinct courtroom atmosphere prevails.—T. S. V.

This well designed anthology is a paperback, but not a reprint. Often sizable chunks from the works of nine writers and philosophers are included, and Mr. Kaufmann ties them all together in a series of pithy prefaces. Some of the selections are well known; others--e.g., Jaspers' "On My Philosophy" --appear here for the first time in English, in translations by the editor and others. Mr. Kaufmann's lively introduction attempts to characterize existentialism as a whole, and to place its various (...) representatives in relation to each other; it does both nicely. The volume as a whole, in fact, is a first-rate introduction to existentialism.--V. C. C. (shrink)

Abbagnano clearly belongs to the first rank of European philosophers. He is an existentialist concerned primarily with the category of "the possible." He outlines his basic ideas in several essays, "What is Existentialism?" and "Existentialism is a Positive Philosophy," in which the distinctive character of "the possible" is related to other existentialistic notions. Other essays deal with "Faith, Philosophy, Religion," "Science and Freedom," "Experience and Metaphysics," "The Method of Philosophy." What makes the volume so very attractive to the (...) American reader is the editor's introduction. Mr. Languilli, in seventy pages, places Abbagnano in the proper context of European philosophy, and traces his intellectual development within the unique Italian academic environment.--W. A. J. (shrink)

Despite the readily available discussion on counseling supervision models for over a quarter of a century, there is little attention in the literature with respect to how developmental supervision models align with existential philosophy. One model, The Integrated Developmental Model (IDM), is a robust and well-accepted model of supervision with embedded undertones of existentialism requiring scholarly discussion. The primary goal of this article is to emphasize the parallels between the IDM and Sartre’s philosophical principles of existentialism thereby creating (...) a meaning making framework for supervisors to enhance developmental growth of their supervisees. (shrink)