The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism

These essays demonstrate the contemporary vitality of existential thought, engaging critically with the main concepts and figures of existentialism.

Steven Crowell (Edited by)

9780521732789, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 February 2012

428 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.68 kg

'This volume will be most useful to students for the overview chapters, and for the substantial amount of discussion of Sartre's ideas and political activities.' Michel Petheram, Reference Reviews

Existentialism exerts a continuing fascination on students of philosophy and general readers. As a philosophical phenomenon, though, it is often poorly understood, as a form of radical subjectivism that turns its back on reason and argumentation and possesses all the liabilities of philosophical idealism but without any idealistic conceptual clarity. In this volume of original essays, the first to be devoted exclusively to existentialism in over forty years, a team of distinguished commentators discuss the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir and show how their focus on existence provides a compelling perspective on contemporary issues in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, language and history. A further sequence of chapters examines the influence of existential ideas beyond philosophy, in literature, religion, politics and psychiatry. The volume offers a rich and comprehensive assessment of the continuing vitality of existentialism as a philosophical movement and a cultural phenomenon.

Part I. Introduction: Introduction
1. Existentialism and its legacy Steven Crowell
Part II. Existentialism in Historical Perspective: 2. Existentialism as a philosophical movement David E. Cooper
3. Existentialism as a cultural movement William McBride
Part III. Major Existentialist Philosophers: 4. Kierkegaard's single individual and the point of indirect communication Alastair Hannay
5. 'What a monster then is man': Pascal and Kierkegaard on being a contradictory self and what to do about it Hubert L. Dreyfus
6. Nietzsche: after the death of God Richard Schacht
7. Nietzsche: selfhood, creativity, and philosophy Lawrence J. Hatab
8. Heidegger: the existential analytic of Dasein William Blattner
9. The antinomy of being: Heidegger's critique of humanism Karsten Harries
10. Sartre's existentialism and the nature of consciousness Steven Crowell
11. Political existentialism: the career of Sartre's political thought Thomas R. Flynn
12. Simone de Beauvoir's existentialism: freedom and ambiguity in the human world Kristana Arp
13. Merleau-Ponty on body, flesh, and visibility Taylor Carman
Part IV. The Reach of Existential Philosophy: 14. Existentialism as literature Jeff Malpas
15. Existentialism and religion Merold Westphal
16. Racism is a system: how existentialism became dialectical in Fanon and Sartre Robert Bernasconi
17. Existential phenomenology, psychiatric illness, and the death of possibilities Matthew Ratcliffe and Matthew Broome
Bibliography of works cited
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Philosophy [HP], Literature: history & criticism [DS]