--- title: Existentialism description: Existentialism asks how to live authentically in a world without given meaning. You will learn Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus and de Beauvoir, their key works and their influence. category: social-sciences subcategory: philosophy difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/existentialism --- # Existentialism Existentialism asks how to live authentically in a world without given meaning. You will learn Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus and de Beauvoir, their key works and their influence. ## Available Resources 4 Books • 1 Courses • 3 Websites ## Courses ### 1. Philosophy 185: Heidegger - Being and Time (UC Berkeley lectures) **Author:** Hubert Dreyfus 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. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://archive.org/details/Philosophy_185_Fall_2007_UC_Berkeley **Tags:** heidegger, being and time, phenomenology, ontology, lectures ## Books ### 1. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre **Author:** Walter Kaufmann (editor) 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. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0452009308?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** anthology, kierkegaard, nietzsche, sartre, camus, primary sources ### 2. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails **Author:** Sarah Bakewell 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. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1590518896?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** intellectual history, phenomenology, sartre, beauvoir, camus, biography ### 3. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays **Author:** Albert Camus 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. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679733736?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** existentialism, absurdism, camus, meaning-of-life, essays ### 4. Man's Search for Meaning **Author:** Viktor E. Frankl 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. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** existentialism, logotherapy, meaning-of-life, holocaust-memoir, existential-psychology ## Websites ### 1. The Ethics of Ambiguity (full text) **Author:** Simone de Beauvoir 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. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/index.htm **Tags:** simone de beauvoir, ethics, freedom, primary source, full text ### 2. Existentialism Is a Humanism (full text) **Author:** Jean-Paul Sartre 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. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm **Tags:** sartre, freedom, responsibility, primary source, full text ### 3. Existentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) **Author:** Steven Crowell Peer-reviewed scholarly survey of existentialism as a movement: the priority of existence over essence, anxiety, authenticity, bad faith and freedom, traced through Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus, with a curated bibliography. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/ **Tags:** existentialism, authenticity, bad-faith, phenomenology, reference --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/existentialism