Reading & the Good Life
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Check out our bookshelf below for previous and future reading.
A Study in Existential Philosophy
As discussed in How to Think Like an Existentialist, How to Be Yourself — Like Nietzsche, How to Think — Like Kierkegaard, and Being in the World — According to Heidegger, Existentialism is challenging to define. Existentialist thinkers explored a broad range of issues from meaning, purpose, anxiety and authenticity, freedom, absurdity, and the value of human existence. Among the earliest figures associated with Existentialism include: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. In the 20th century, prominent existentialist thinkers included Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir.
Condemned to Be Free — Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980) was a French philosopher, novelist, and a key figure in the philosophy of existentialism. Like many of his generation, Sartre lived through a series of significant cultural and historical events that his existential philosophy responded to and attempted to shape. His notable works include: Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness, Nausea, and others.
Barrett describes Sartre’s philosophy this way in Irrational Man,
The essential freedom, the ultimate and final freedom that cannot be taken from a man, is to say No. This is the basic premise in Sartre’s view of human freedom: freedom is in its very essence negative, though this negativity is also creative.
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