Best Existentialist Philosophy Books
Here you will get Best Existentialist Philosophy Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage International)
Author: by Albert Camus
Published at: Vintage; Translation edition (November 6, 2018)
ISBN: 978-0525564454
One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphusfeatured here in a stand-alone editionis a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicidethe question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning.
With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.
2. The Second Sex
Author: by Simone De Beauvoir
Published at: Vintage; 1st edition (May 3, 2011)
ISBN: 978-0307277787
Simone de Beauvoir’s essential masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of woman, and a revolutionary exploration of inequality and otherness. Unabridged in English for the first time, this long-awaited edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation.
Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as when it was first published, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.
3. People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil
Author: by M. Scott Peck
Published at: Touchstone; 2nd edition (January 2, 1998)
ISBN: 978-0684848594
In this absorbing and equally inspiring companion volume to his classic trilogyThe Road Less Traveled, Further Along the Road Less Traveled, and The Road Less Traveled and BeyondDr. M. Scott Peck brilliantly probes into the essence of human evil. People who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures.
Peck demonstrates the havoc these people of the lie work in the lives of those around them. He presents, from vivid incidents encountered in his psychiatric practice, examples of evil in everyday life. This book is by turns disturbing, fascinating, and altogether impossible to put down as it offers a strikingly original approach to the age-old problem of human evil.
4. Being and Nothingness
Author: by Jean-Paul Sartre
Published at: Washington Square Press; Original ed. edition (August 1, 1993)
ISBN: 978-0671867805
A philosophical classic and major cornerstone of modern existentialism Often criticized and all-too-rarely understood, the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre encompasses the dilemmas and aspirations of the individual in contemporary society. “Being and Nothingness “contains all the basic tenets of his thought, as well as all its more intricate details.
A work of inherent force and epic scope, it provides a vivid analysis for all who would understand one of the most influential philosophic movements of any age, and makes clear why “The New York Times “hailed Sartre’s masterpiece as “a philosophy to be reckoned with, both for its own intrinsic power and as a profound symptom of our time.”
5. Phenomenology of Spirit
Author: by G. W. F. Hegel
Published at: Oxford University Press; Revised ed. edition (January 1, 1977)
ISBN: 978-0198245971
This brilliant study of the stages in the mind’s necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the reader understand this most difficult and most influential of Hegel’s works.
6. Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
Author: by Jean-Paul Sartre
Published at: New Directions; Reprint edition (March 25, 2013)
ISBN: 978-0811220309
Sartre’s greatest novel and existentialism’s key text now introduced by James Wood. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain.
Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (though he declined to accept it), Jean-Paul Sartre philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist holds a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters. La Nause, his first and best novel, is a landmark in Existential fiction and a key work of the twentieth century.
7. Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics)
Author: by Soren Kierkegaard
Published at: Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (January 7, 1986)
ISBN: 978-0140444490
The infamous and controversial work that made a lasting impression on both modern Protestant theology and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and CamusWriting under the pseudonym of “Johannes de silentio,” Kierkegaard expounds his personal view of religion through a discussion of the scene in Genesis in which Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s command.
Believing Abraham’s unreserved obedience to be the essential leap of faith needed to make a full commitment to his religion, Kierkegaard himself made great sacrifices in order to dedicate his life entirely to his philosophy and to God. The conviction shown in this religious polemicthat a man can have an exceptional mission in lifeinformed all Kierkegaard’s later writings.
His “teleological suspension of the ethical” challenged the contemporary views of Hegel’s universal moral system, and was also hugely influential for both protestant theology and the existentialist movement. Alastair Hannay’s introduction evaluates Kierkegaard’s philosophy and the ways in which it conflicted with more accepted contemporary views.
8. Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View
Author: by Richard Tarnas
Published at: Plume; Reprint edition (April 24, 2007)
ISBN: 978-0452288591
From a philosopher whose magisterial history of Western thought was praised by Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith comes a brilliant new book that traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Drawing on years of research and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Richard Tarnas explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11.
Whether read as astrology updated for the quantum age or as a contemporary classic of spirituality, Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance.
9. Existentialism Is a Humanism
Author: by Jean-Paul Sartre
Published at: Yale University Press; Annotated edition (July 24, 2007)
ISBN: 978-0300115468
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 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.
10. The Ethics of Ambiguity
Author: by Simone de Beauvoir
Published at: Open Road Media; Reissue edition (May 8, 2018)
ISBN: 978-1504054225
From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex comes a radical argument for ethical responsibility and freedom. In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities.
De Beauvoir outlines a series of ways of being (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it.
The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.
11. No Exit and Three Other Plays
Author: by Jean-Paul Sartre
Published at: Vintage; Reissue edition (October 23, 1989)
ISBN: 978-0679725169
Four seminal plays by one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. An existential portrayal of Hell in Sartre’s best-known play, as well as three other brilliant, thought-provoking works: the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict, and an arresting attack on American racism.
12. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
Author: by David Abram
Published at: Vintage; Worn Condition edition (February 25, 1997)
ISBN: 978-0679776390
Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for NonfictionAnimal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us.
This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as “inanimate.” How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world?
What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment.
13. Existentialism
Author: by Robert C. Solomon
Published at: Oxford University Press; 2nd edition (September 2, 2004)
ISBN: 978-0195174632
Existentialism, 2/e, offers an exceptional and accessible introduction to the richness and diversity of existentialist thought. Retaining the focus of the highly successful first edition, the second edition provides extensive material on the “big four” existentialists-Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre-while also including selections from twenty-four other authors.
Giving readers a sense of the variety of existentialist thought around the world, this edition also adds new readings by such figures as Luis Borges, Viktor Frankl, Gabriel Garcia Mrquez, Keiji Nishitani, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Existentialism, 2/e, also features: * New translations of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Buber * More extensive selections from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre * New selections by Hazel E.
Barnes, Miguel de Unamuno, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, and Colin Wilson * The Grand Inquisitor (from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov) Ideal for undergraduate courses in existentialism and Continental philosophy, Existentialism, 2/e, is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the subject.
14. The Essential Kierkegaard
Author: by Søren Kierkegaard
Published at: Princeton University Press; Later Printing edition (May 30, 2000)
ISBN: 978-0691019406
This is the most comprehensive anthology of Sren Kierkegaard’s works ever assembled in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton’s authoritative Kierkegaard’s Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, the selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard’s extraordinary career.
They reveal the powerful mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism that made Kierkegaard one of the most compelling writers of the nineteenth century and a shaping force in the twentieth. With an introduction to Kierkegaard’s writings as a whole and explanatory notes for each selection, this is the essential one-volume guide to a thinker who changed the course of modern intellectual history.
The anthology begins with Kierkegaard’s early journal entries and traces the development of his work chronologically to the final The Changelessness of God. The book presents generous selections from all of Kierkegaard’s landmark works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death, and draws new attention to a host of such lesser-known writings as Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air.
15. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
Author: by Albert Camus
Published at: Vintage; Reissue edition (January 1, 1992)
ISBN: 978-0679733843
By one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of our century, The Rebel is a classic essay on revolution. For Albert Camus, the urge to revolt is one of the “essential dimensions” of human nature, manifested in man’s timeless Promethean struggle against the conditions of his existence, as well as the popular uprisings against established orders throughout history.
And yet, with an eye toward the French Revolution and its regicides and deicides, he shows how inevitably the course of revolution leads to tyranny. As old regimes throughout the world collapse, The Rebel resonates as an ardent, eloquent, and supremely rational voice of conscience for our tumultuous times.
Translated from the French by Anthony Bower.
16. Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (Penguin Classics)
Author: by Soren Kierkegaard
Published at: Penguin Classics; Revised ed. edition (December 1, 1992)
ISBN: 978-0140445770
In Either/Or, using the voices of two charactersthe aesthetic young man of part one, called simply “A,” and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second sectionKierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom, and, in the famous Seducer’s Diary, the cynical seduction and ultimate rejection of a young, beautiful woman.
A masterpiece of duality, Either/Or is a brilliant exploration of the conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical – both meditating ironically and seductively upon Epicurean pleasures, and eloquently expounding the noble virtues of a morally upstanding life. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world.
With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
