Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
by Walter Kaufmann (editor) · Plume / Meridian
Anthology pairing Kaufmann's long introductory essay with primary selections from Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rilke, Kafka, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus. The most efficient way to meet the pre-Sartre canon - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jaspers - without buying six books. Kaufmann's introduction is itself a serious essay arguing existentialism is not a school. Revised and expanded Plume edition; several pieces appear in Kaufmann's own translations.
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More resources on Existentialism
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl's account of surviving Auschwitz and other Nazi camps, followed by an outline of logotherapy, his psychotherapy built on the search for meaning. Readers understand his argument that people can find purpose through work, love and the attitude taken toward unavoidable suffering.
Philosophy 185: Heidegger - Being and Time (UC Berkeley lectures)
Twenty-eight recorded lectures from Dreyfus's Fall 2007 Berkeley course working through Being and Time section by section. The best-known spoken commentary on Heidegger in English, preserved after Berkeley's podcast site shut down. Requires the SEP entry or Bakewell first - going in cold will not work.
The Ethics of Ambiguity (full text)
Corrects the common misreading that existentialism has nothing to say about obligation, and is the standard answer to 'if we're radically free, why not do anything?'. Free complete text of Beauvoir's 1947 book, translated by Bernard Frechtman. Builds the ethics that Sartre's Being and Nothingness never supplied, arguing my freedom is only real when it wills the freedom of others.
Existentialism Is a Humanism (full text)
The shortest route into a primary existentialist text, and free in full. Sartre later thought it oversimplified his position, which makes it the ideal first reading rather than the last. Complete text of Sartre's 1946 Paris lecture, translated by Philip Mairet. Defends existentialism against charges of quietism and despair, and sets out the doctrine that existence precedes essence, leaving each person responsible for all humanity.
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
Supplies the historical and biographical scaffolding SEP omits: who argued with whom, what the war and occupation did to the ideas, and how phenomenology feeds into existentialism. Group biography and intellectual history of the movement, following Husserl and Heidegger into Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus and Merleau-Ponty, showing how phenomenology became a philosophy of freedom under occupation and after. Other Press paperback.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
The most readable entry point into the meaning question the topic note poses. Camus's 1942 essay on the absurd opens with suicide as the one serious philosophical problem, then rejects both despair and the leap of faith, arguing for revolt, freedom and passion. Justin O'Brien translation, Vintage International.