Humanistic Existentialism


Book Description

Click for larger cover scan Humanistic Existentialism The Literature of Possibility Paper: 1959, X, 419, CIP.LC 59-11732 ISBN: 0-8032-5229-3 Price: $29.95 University of Nebraska Press -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "This study in humanistic existentialism is highly informative as well as entertaining. It is a scholarly, detailed analysis of the literary art, the philosophical ideas, and the psychologies of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. It is also a competent effort to explain the positive implications for the theory of freedom and possibility which lie half buried under this literature of nothingness, alienation, and absurdity. . . . Miss Barnes makes thoroughly enjoyable reading of a subject-matter which might have seemed forbidding."--Herbert W. Schneider, Journal of Philosophy. "Recommended unqualifiedly as the most thorough and reliable exposition of the works of Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir to have appeared in this country."--Willard Colston, Chicago Sun-Times. "Those who want a real understanding of existentialism instead of the usual superficial generalizations are certain to gain it from this book."--Walter Kaufmann, The American Scholar. "The book captures much of the forlorn dark grandeur of the existentialist vision of the human condition."--Yale Review. "The philosophy of Sartre is presented accurately and with rare elegance and simplicity. . . . The section on psychoanalysis compares Sartre to Freud, then to Horney and Fromm, then to the phenomenologists. The treatment is fair-minded and careful."--Robert Champigny, L'Esprit Crateur.




The World of Perception


Book Description

'In simple prose Merleau-Ponty touches on his principle themes. He speaks about the body and the world, the coexistence of space and things, the unfortunate optimism of science – and also the insidious stickiness of honey, and the mystery of anger.' - James Elkins Maurice Merleau-Ponty was one of the most important thinkers of the post-war era. Central to his thought was the idea that human understanding comes from our bodily experience of the world that we perceive: a deceptively simple argument, perhaps, but one that he felt had to be made in the wake of attacks from contemporary science and the philosophy of Descartes on the reliability of human perception. From this starting point, Merleau-Ponty presented these seven lectures on The World of Perception to French radio listeners in 1948. Available in a paperback English translation for the first time in the Routledge Classics series to mark the centenary of Merleau-Ponty’s birth, this is a dazzling and accessible guide to a whole universe of experience, from the pursuit of scientific knowledge, through the psychic life of animals to the glories of the art of Paul Cézanne.




Briefly: Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism


Book Description

Briefly: Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism is a short summary of Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism which is designed to assist university and school-leaving students in acquiring knowledge and understanding of this key text in the philosophy of religion. The book closely adheres to Sartre's text, enabling the reader to follow each development in the argument as it occurs. Following the detailed summary which page references the original and includes useful key quotes, is a shorter summary acting as an overview of Existentialism and Humanism, which is intended to aid memory.




Essays in Existentialism


Book Description




The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre


Book Description

This unique selection presents the essential elements of Sartre's lifework -- organized systematically and made available in one volume for the first time in any language.




Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction


Book Description

Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, and Camus were some of the most important existentialist thinkers. This book provides an account of the existentialist movement, and of the themes of individuality, free will, and personal responsibility which make it a 'philosophy as a way of life'.




Comparing Kant and Sartre


Book Description

For a long time, commentators viewed Sartre as one of Kant's significant twentieth-century critics. Recent research of their philosophies has discovered that Sartre's relation to Kant's work manifests an 'anxiety of influence', which masks more profound similarities. This volume of newly written comparative essays is the first edited collection on the philosophies of Kant and Sartre. The volume focuses on issues in metaphysics, metaethics and metaphilosophy, and explores the similarities and differences between the two authors, as well as the complementarity of some of their views, particularly on autonomy, happiness, self-consciousness, evil, temporality, imagination and the nature of philosophy.




Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre


Book Description

Existentialism is perhaps the most misunderstood of modern philosophic positions-- misunderstood by reason of its broad popularity and general unfamiliarity with its origins, representatives, and principles. Existential thinking did not originate with Jean Paul Sartre. It has prior religious, literary, and philosophic origins. In its narrowest formulation it is a metaphysical doctrine, arguing as it does that any definition of man's essence must follow, not precede, an estimation of his existence. In Heidegger, it affords a view of Being in its totality; in Kierkegaard, an approach to that inwardness indispensable to authentic religious experience; for Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Rilke the existential situation bears the stamp of modern man's alienation, uprootedness, and absurdity; to Sartre it has vast ethical and political implications. This book contains only complete selections or entire works by the major thinkers.--From publisher description.




Rethinking Existentialism


Book Description

In Rethinking Existentialism, 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.




Between Existentialism and Marxism


Book Description

This book presents a full decade of Sartre’s work, from the publication of the Critique of Dialectical Reason in 1960, the basic philosophical turning-point in his postwar development, to the inception of his major study on Flaubert, the first volumes of which appeared in 1971. The essays and interviews collected here form a vivid panorama of the range and unity of Sartre’s interests, since his deliberate attempt to wed his original existentialism to a rethought Marxism. A long and brilliant autobiographical interview, given to New Left Review in 1969, constitutes the best single overview of Sartre’s whole intellectual evolution. Three analytic texts on the US war in Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the lessons of the May Revolt in France, define his political positions as a revolutionary socialist. Questions of philosophy and aesthetics are explored in essays on Kierkegaard, Mallarme and Tintoretto. Another section of the collection explores Sartre’s critical attitude to orthodox psychoanalysis as a therapy, and is accompanied by rejoinders from colleagues on his journal Les Temps Modernes. The volume concludes with a prolonged reflection on the nature and role of intellectuals and writers in advanced capitalism, and their relationship to the struggles of the exploited and oppressed classes. Between Existentialism and Marxism is an impressive demonstration of the breadth and vitality of Sartre's thought, and its capacity to respond to political and cultural changes in the contemporary world.