Notoriously difficult to define, given its many incarnations, Existentialism has come to mean everything from subjectivism to nihilism to humanism.  That these diverse, yet related, tendencies have found expression not just in philosophical discourse, but also novels, plays, film, music and politics, only makes it a decidedly richer, if more elusive, movement.  Of course, if one were to venture a slogan or two to characterize Existentialism, s/he could do worse than “existence precedes essence” (Sartre), or else the phenomenology of our “average everydayness” (Heidegger).  The former refers to the radical freedom of each human subject, a central tenet of Existentialism from Kierkegaard to de Beauvoir, while the latter illuminates its primarily descriptive nature, which has given us various portraits of the human condition as it is, as opposed to how it ought to be.

For all of its timelessness though, Existentialism must be read, at least in part, as so many responses to traditional philosophy (read: Platonism), religion (particularly Christianity), Marxism (as well as the other political movements of modernity), the so-called “masters of suspicion” (Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), and not least conventional culture (the “inauthenticity,” to borrow Heidegger’s phrase, of day to day life).  Hence this course will begin in the nominal birthplace of philosophy, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” against which Nietzsche, above all perhaps, railed as late as the nineteenth century, most passionately in the Twilight of the Idols.  From there, we will leap to the key texts of the “masters of suspicion,” who arguably set the stage for Existentialism, at least that of the twentieth century.  The remainder of the course will have us immersed in mostly such canonical figures as Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir.  By the end of the semester, we should hold the view that Existentialism is a broad and deep tradition, and one that not only replies to the history of ideas, but also offers timely ways of thinking about, and being in, the world today.

Required Texts

Barrett, William.  Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy.  New York City: Anchor Books, 1962.  ISBN: 0385031386.  (Approximately $11)

Existentialism.  Edited by Robert C. Solomon.  New York City: Random House, 1974.  ISBN: 0195174631.  (Approximately $31) 

McCarthy, Cormac, The Sunset Limited (New York: Vintage, 2006). (Approximately $11)