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Product Description
Product Description
Existentialism was one of the leading philosophical movements of the twentieth century. Focusing on its seven leading figures, Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Camus, this Very Short Introduction provides a clear account of the key themes of the movement which emphasized individuality, free will, and personal responsibility in the modern world. Drawing in the movement's varied relationships with the arts, humanism, and politics, this book clarifies the philosophy and original meaning of 'existentialism' - which has tended to be obscured by misappropriation. Placing it in its historical context, Thomas Flynn also highlights how existentialism is still relevant to us today.
About the Author
Thomas Flynn is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He is a specialist in contemporary continental philosophy, aesthetics and social and political philosophy. His previous publications include Sartre and Marxist Existentialism: The Test Case of Collective Responsibility (Chicago 1986) and Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason (Vols. I & II; Chicago, 1997, 2005).
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First Sentence
Despite its claim to be novel and unprecedented, existentialism represents a long tradition in the history of philosophy in the West, extending back at least to Socrates (469-399 BC). Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Despite its claim to be novel and unprecedented, existentialism represents a long tradition in the history of philosophy in the West, extending back at least to Socrates (469-399 BC). Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Couldn't agree less with the other reviewer. Hence, the five-star rating. As an area of thought that had always interested me but had yet to be looked at in any depth, I found this book a great - as it says on the tin - introduction to the area. Yes, you can't just skim through it in a couple of hours and know enough to hold your own in a brief existentialist chit-chat but, with a little effort, you get quite a lot out of a little package, and I think the author deserves a lot of credit for that.
So, yes, although it is an introduction, it isn't a dumbed-down text, but one that provides a nice background and foundation for anyone approaching this area for the first time and, as such, is highly recommended.
So, yes, although it is an introduction, it isn't a dumbed-down text, but one that provides a nice background and foundation for anyone approaching this area for the first time and, as such, is highly recommended.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm afraid that I, for one, was deeply disappointed with this offering from the frequently excellent "Very Short Introduction" series, and now bitterly regret buying it. The style of writing is suffocatingly dense, leaden and dreary: the history of existentialism and existentialist thought itself makes for a fascinating story in the right hands. These are not the right hands, and in fact it seems as though the author is going out of his way to make existentialism seem as cataclysmically dry and tedious as possible, making the book a "Very Short Introduction" to something almost unendurably boring. One star merely because (for some reason) Amazon still doesn't allow reviewers to give a book zero stars. The reader genuinely interested in a good overview of existentialism would do infinitely better in tracking down John MacQuarrie's magnificent book - now out of print, I believe, but still findable.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When writing a very short introduction, it would seem prudent to keep the intended audience in mind and try to 'introduce' concepts rather than assume too much prior knowledge. The book fails to do either, and reads like one of the dry, overly-academic and dense works I used to have to chew through as a third year cultural studies student; at least I know of some the concepts Flynn is trying to communicate. Many Laymen will not.
Not only is the prose a chore, but the structure is a little scattershot, and there seems no overarching narrative to the historical progress of the field; we swap between Kierkegaarde, Nietzsche, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Jaspers and Heidegger in a brainstorm that makes the reader think some of this was a mere distraction for the author. Only the final chapter seems logically positioned.
A number of ideas are not explained, and comparisons with contemporary philosophers who were not existentialists, such as Russell and Wittgenstein, are not there to establish a perspective of where continental existentialism sat with regards to the wider picture of philosophy.
The author does manage to set existentialism against structuralist thinking of later French intellectuals, and addresses the seeming paradox of existentialism's social concerns, which at last gives a vantage point from which to analyse the real-world impact of the movement. There is also a good deal of focus on Sartre, perhaps too much where time could've been given to establishing a better narratiive.
I'm more familiar with the structuralists, so i'd hoped that this book would establish a clear precedent for what i'd learnt about in university, alas it is anything but clear.
Not only is the prose a chore, but the structure is a little scattershot, and there seems no overarching narrative to the historical progress of the field; we swap between Kierkegaarde, Nietzsche, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Jaspers and Heidegger in a brainstorm that makes the reader think some of this was a mere distraction for the author. Only the final chapter seems logically positioned.
A number of ideas are not explained, and comparisons with contemporary philosophers who were not existentialists, such as Russell and Wittgenstein, are not there to establish a perspective of where continental existentialism sat with regards to the wider picture of philosophy.
The author does manage to set existentialism against structuralist thinking of later French intellectuals, and addresses the seeming paradox of existentialism's social concerns, which at last gives a vantage point from which to analyse the real-world impact of the movement. There is also a good deal of focus on Sartre, perhaps too much where time could've been given to establishing a better narratiive.
I'm more familiar with the structuralists, so i'd hoped that this book would establish a clear precedent for what i'd learnt about in university, alas it is anything but clear.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Unreadable
Many of the sentences in this book contain so many technical terms that I couldn't understand them no matter how many times I read them. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mark
A Dull Read
This is the first in this series of books I have read and based on this example it will be the last. As an introduction it's hard going. Read more
Published 22 months ago by A. J. Bush
Good but incomplete Intro
A very good point of this book is the first part which links the ancient stoics with the 19th and 20th century existentialists. Read more
Published on 17 Sep 2008 by asp
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