Existentialism Books

A simply excellent collection of articles on Heidegger, covering a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from Heidegger's views on technology, ontology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, theology and nihilism to art, morality, nazism, and language.

Guignon has compiled essays that are of good philosophical quality yet understandable (a big problem when it comes to some of Heidegger's own writings).

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEIDEGGER. Edited by Charles Guignon. 389 pp. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1993 and reprinted. ISBN 0-521-385970-0 (Pbk).

This excellent collection of articles for students and the general reader contains, in addition to an extremely clear and useful 40-page introductory overview of Heidegger's thought and career by Charles Guignon, the following thirteen pieces:

1. The Question of Being: Heidegger's Project - DOROTHEA FREDE; 2. Reading a life : Heidegger and hard times - THOMAS SHEEHAN; 3. The unity of Heidegger's thought - FREDERICK A. OLAFSON; 4. Intentionality and world : Division I of 'Being and Time' - HARRISON HALL; 5. Time and phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger - ROBERT J. DOSTAL; 6. Heidegger and the hermeneutic turn - DAVID COUZENS HOY; 7. Death, time, history : Division II of 'Being and Time' - PIOTR HOFFMAN; 8. Authenticity, moral values, and psychotherapy - CHARLES B. GUIGNON; 9. Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology - MICHAEL E. ZIMMERMAN; 10. Heidegger and theology - JOHN D. CAPUTO; 11. Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics - HUBERT L. DREYFUS; 12. Engaged agency and background in Heidegger - CHARLES TAYLOR; 13. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the reification of language - RICHARD RORTY.

Although many of these contributors are distinguished Heidegger scholars, most do seem to have successfully pitched their discussion at a level suited to the non-specialist, and although this book is by no means a 'Heidegger Made Simple' (a certain amount of background in both philosophy and Heidegger would be useful) most readers should come away with an enhanced understanding of Heidegger and a desire to know more. The absolute beginner, however, might prefer - after reading Charles Guignon's Introduction, and before plunging into the articles - to read a more extended general introduction such as George Steiner's 'Martin Heidegger' (1987).

Besides helping the general reader and non-specialist, the Companion will also be of use to more advanced students as providing a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Heidegger, and here the inclusion of Zimmerman's excellent article is both gratifying and noteworthy. Too often, books about Heidegger completely overlook the fact that many of the most brilliant minds in Asia have spent the last two thousand years pondering some of the very same problems that exercised Heidegger, and that a knowledge of their thoughts about such matters as Being or Time can sometimes help us to better understand Heidegger.

Readers, for example, might take a look at Book 11 of Dogen's 'Shobogenzo,' UJI (Existence-Time or Being-Time), or at such works as Graham Parkes 'Heidegger and Asian Thought' or Richard Mays 'Heidegger's Hidden Sources : East Asian Influences on his Work' (see my Listmania List 'Understanding Heidegger' for details). Dorothea Frede, in her 'The Question of Being,' asks (without answering) the question : "What led to the "breakthrough" that provided Heidegger with the clue for attacking the question of the meaning of being in a new way . . . ?" (page 51). Who knows? Might it have been Asian thought? It certainly begins to look so.

The Companion also includes a List of contributors, a Chronology, a curiously organized 22-page Bibliography of both German and English works (which would have been easier to consult if the items had been spaced) and an Index. It is well-printed in a large, clear font on excellent paper, is bound in a sturdy glossy wrapper, and comes with a glued spine. Well organized and well produced, The Companion becomes a fitting addition to the distinguished Cambridge series and should be of interest to all serious students of Heidegger.

This is a competent guide for new students of Heidegger, though it is necessarily crude to have to simplify and reorganize his thinking. The chapter death, time, and history is probably the most helpful, for it is some of Heidegger's most challenging material. Also included are essays on Heidegger's thoughts on psychotherapy, ecology, Buddhism, and technology. Although the essay on Heidegger's politics is fairly amateurish. An average text on the whole.

As a student, I found this book to be an extremely helpful introduction to Heidegger's philosophy. I get much more out reading Heidegger now than I did before having read this book. It is a well organized, clearly written, and scholarly collection of essays, which explicate major themes in Heidegger's works. I recommend it to students and laymen.

It's not a very difficult thing to imagine what the response to a book such as Demons of the Modern World will be like. If you're a skeptic demanding scientific answers to everything in this world - then you'll probably love it, but if you're more of a spiritual nature with the attitude that there are things in this world (and beyond) that science cannot reach - then you'll hate it from the very first page to the last. Or at least the sections demystifying the mysterious. And those sections come in abundance, so things don't look very good for the spiritual reader.

Not to wonder, though, since Malcolm McGrath, a political philosopher at Oxford University, is 100% focused on the fact that there is NOTHING that can be called paranormal, magical, or occult. EVERYTHING can be explained using the tools of science, and magic and religion and more are nothing but delusions that were only acceptable before the Western world and its science was able to reject everything related to the paranormal.

Still, people refuse to stop believing. And why is that? McGrath offers an interesting theory. In short, he explains how people, who all have gone through a childhood, all experience a period in their lives when demons, ghosts, and other supernatural beings and phenomena are very real. This period is later replaced, with he aid of education and experience, with a notion that whatever bogeymen one believed in as a child simply do not exist in the real world. But, and on this he focuses throughout the book, since one HAS believed in the supernatural, the memories remain, and since the memories remain, sometimes - for instance during stress or demanding situations - one cannot help but to unconsciously suspect, and fear, that the demons from one's childhood perhaps are not illusions at all.

By using this theory (and in this review the theory is, obviously, extremely shortened), McGrath explains, among other things, man's fascination with horror movies, the tragic witch hunts that caused the death of tens of thousands, different "satanic panics" that have hit America over the years, and even the contemporary notion of evil extraterrestrials that regularly abduct people and subject them to painful medical procedures.

We all live in an era when science "should" have replaced faith and illusions, but as we all know, that's not the case. And even though McGrath fails to fully explain why people believe what they believe, and not believe in what they not believe in, his theory still manages to be very fascinating and definitely worth considering. I mean, even the most devoted of skeptics has perhaps sometime wondered what would happen "if...", and McGrath demonstrates that that's simply part of being human.

Demons of the Modern World is a rare thing: it's a hardcore skeptic's book, yet at the same time it has lots of empathy and understanding, and that alone makes it worth buying. And it doesn't get worse when one considers that it's both well-written and fascinating, too.

Buy it. It'll give you something to think about. In a positive sense.

Demons of the Mordern World should be required reading for all religous people. Having a graduate degree in theology I have seen more lifes ruined and redirected to the therapist's chair then I would like to remember. Belief is a strange thing and can be hindered by popular thought, suspicions, and control. The book kindly reminds us that belief is personal and is scientific in nature. Sadly it can be a bit of a fairy tale as well. It is this fairy tale that is carried between generation to generation, family to family, church to church, religion to religion that causes problems and generates a perceived truth that is not truthful.

Religion if there is such a thing, God if he does exist, must be based on known laws that apply to the supernatural as well as the phyiscal universe in which we live. This book is one of the most brillant books I have read on a theological subject without the label of religion or theology. It is truely a must read for anyone who wishes to express their religous fairy tales, or should I say beliefs.

There have been plenty of titles on witchcraft and spirituality but relatively few on modern demonology: Demons Of The Modern World examines the spiritual and psychological ramifications of demonology, considering interplays between belief systems and psychology and considering the history and culture of beliefs in supernatural forces. Chapters focus on Western civilization as they reveal the roots of Satanism and its practices.

It's not a very difficult thing to imagine what the response to a book such as Demons of the Modern World will be like. If you're a skeptic demanding scientific answers to everything in this world - then you'll probably love it, but if you're more of a spiritual nature with the attitude that there are things in this world (and beyond) that science cannot reach - then you'll hate it from the very first page to the last. Or at least the sections demystifying the mysterious. And those sections come in abundance, so things don't look very good for the spiritual reader.

Not to wonder, though, since Malcolm McGrath, a political philosopher at Oxford University, is 100% focused on the fact that there is NOTHING that can be called paranormal, magical, or occult. EVERYTHING can be explained using the tools of science, and magic and religion and more are nothing but delusions that were only acceptable before the Western world and its science was able to reject everything related to the paranormal.

Still, people refuse to stop believing. And why is that? McGrath offers an interesting theory. In short, he explains how people, who all have gone through a childhood, all experience a period in their lives when demons, ghosts, and other supernatural beings and phenomena are very real. This period is later replaced, with he aid of education and experience, with a notion that whatever bogeymen one believed in as a child simply do not exist in the real world. But, and on this he focuses throughout the book, since one HAS believed in the supernatural, the memories remain, and since the memories remain, sometimes - for instance during stress or demanding situations - one cannot help but to unconsciously suspect, and fear, that the demons from one's childhood perhaps are not illusions at all.

By using this theory (and in this review the theory is, obviously, extremely shortened), McGrath explains, among other things, man's fascination with horror movies, the tragic witch hunts that caused the death of tens of thousands, different "satanic panics" that have hit America over the years, and even the contemporary notion of evil extraterrestrials that regularly abduct people and subject them to painful medical procedures.

We all live in an era when science "should" have replaced faith and illusions, but as we all know, that's not the case. And even though McGrath fails to fully explain why people believe what they believe, and not believe in what they not believe in, his theory still manages to be very fascinating and definitely worth considering. I mean, even the most devoted of skeptics has perhaps sometime wondered what would happen "if...", and McGrath demonstrates that that's simply part of being human.

Demons of the Modern World is a rare thing: it's a hardcore skeptic's book, yet at the same time it has lots of empathy and understanding, and that alone makes it worth buying. And it doesn't get worse when one considers that it's both well-written and fascinating, too.

Buy it. It'll give you something to think about. In a positive sense.

I enjoyed the well-written book (and I came as a sceptic). Cooper not only synthesizes the different strands of existentialism, but nicely fills in weaknesses before showing how the existentialistic argument can deliver a reasonable philosophy to live by. To help you judge where I am coming from, consider two other books of practical philosophy that I liked: Peter Singer's "Essential Singer: Writings on an ethical life" and Stephen Batchelor's "Buddhism Without Beliefs".

This is the best of all exisiting introductions to Existentialism in English, and perhaps any language. The clarity is not bogus. It is exemplary in the number of confusions it clears up. Existentialism is far from a passing post-war fad, and Cooper shows why, chapter after chapter. This is a book that should be on every philosophy student's reading list.

This is a detailed and interesting analysis of the underrated philosophy, existentialism. Dr. Cooper builds a coherent and useful philosophy from the writings of several diverse, and thoroughly vague, philosophers (focusing on the works of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Sartre). Dr. Cooper does much to dissolve the common conception of existentialism as merely a cultural movement. Although somewhat awkwardly worded in places, it is a wonderful book that will most certainly not leave the reader unchanged (if nothing else it will change the readers opinion of the importance of existentialism in the overall history of philosophy).

David E. Cooper shows how many of the popular views on existentialism are actually misconceptions about the philosophy - this book is very helpful in dispelling the dictionary definition of existentialism. The idea that Existentialism is irrational or an anti-rational form of philosophy is shown to be an incorrect interpretation of what existential thought is about. Cooper shows that the existentialists where not against reason or rational thought but where really against a narrow form of rationalism -also empiricism- which attempted, through non-involvement in the human world, to gain a god-like perspective; a detached and impersonal view from nowhere within the world. Against this the existentialists wanted to show that we are all participants in human affairs and not mere spectators. Other misconceptions mentioned in the book were; that existentialism is just a phenomena born out of post-war Europe; that existentialism is a form of subjectivist philosophy; and that there was a large gulf between Sartre and Heidegger, Sartre -it is often claimed- was a Cartesian while Heidegger was Anti-Cartesian etc.. Some other misconceptions are also mentioned.

I thought the book was missing many of the insights from literature into existentialist thought -although some people will think that is a positive thing. Dostoevsky was not mentioned; I don't remember Kafkas great existential novels (the Trial or the Castle) coming up; and Camus is only mentioned long enough for us to see that he was neither philosophical or systematic and therefore not included. Cooper is not as hostile towards Camus as Sartre was in his review of the Rebel in Les Temps Modenes, but if you are a Camus fan you might want to look away. Of course every book has to make some cuts and Cooper does give reasons for his omissions.

I found the book very helpful and enjoyable, it would probably make a good introduction, but I wouldn't base all my opinions of the philosophy on it.

I bought it for a class, and I enjoyed a good deal of the exerpts in the text. The Nietzsche selections are great, as are most of the Kierkegaard (I prefer the shorter exerpts and could have done without Fear and Trembling).

I never read much of the other sections, but the book has been invaluable to me for the introductions and any part of the Nietsche in this text alone. Kierkegaard has some great moments too. Considering how accessable and small and how much more I could get from this book, I will be looking to this book for years to come, although once you find something interesting you had best go find out where the exerpt is from in case it is not the complete picture (they chose which parts of the writings to give you, which I value highly, but it means you should not think you can speak for Nietzsche or Kierkegaard by this text alone).

We used three texts for our course and this was the only one that was important. The introductions are pleasant and interesting on their own. There's lots of good to choose from in this comfortably "small" sized collection.

Unless you already own and know well some of these philosophers or you can't stand to read the introductions in this text, I think you would find this book useful.

This text would certainly be of some use to readers who aren't overly familiar with the writings of Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, but it falls flat at times. The introductions into each philosopher are well done, but the authors mention many works that they include no excerpts from. The section on Kierkegaard is too long (especially the excerpts from _Fear and Trembling_), and Heidegger's section could be lengthened (including excerpts from works other than _Being and Time_), but, then again, Heidegger, several times, publically refuted that he was an existentialist. Another complaint is that the excerpts from Nietzsche are too random and disjointed and there are no excerpts from _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_: leaving out a great deal of insight into the Overman and the will to power. Overall, this book is more than adequate... for an introduction.

This is a very helpful, useful collection. Nowhere else will you find such generous selections from these four major contributors to the existentialist tradition. (Even though Sartre is the only one who adopted the label "existentialist," there is no doubt that all four thinkers are concerned with some similar problems and take some similar approaches.) Of course, a different editor might have made somewhat different selections, but anyone who reads the introductions and texts in this volume carefully will come away with a solid understanding of many major ideas of these philosophers -- and maybe a deeper understanding of his or her own life.

An excellent work. The wide selection of readings alone would cost quite a bit of money to assemble seperately. Major contributions by each philospher are summarized in a non-technical manner that is accesible by readers from all walks of life. One of the few books that approaches several major themes under one cover and manages to leave the reader with the seeds of interest rather than confusion and massive generalization. I first ran across the work in class and it has remained a springboard for all manner of reading and writing. All in all an excellent grounding for further study.

Martin Heidegger's special intellectual relationship with the Presocratics is often discussed as if the German philosopher was some sort of romantic originalist or nostalgist. But Heidegger always insisted that the point about going back to Heraclitus, Parmenides and rest was not to recover the specific contents of their thought (or, worse, to wallow in their supposed primitive "purity"), but to recapture the spirit of their efforts to "think the question of Being." You won't find a better presentation of this - or a more candid glimpse of Heidegger as a working philosopher - than in this text. It presents the record of a seminar on Heraclitus conducted by Heidegger and the German scholar Eugen Fink in the late 1960s. Heidegger's discussion of specific Heraclitian texts makes for difficult reading but is, generally speaking, quite lucid. And the dialog with Fink and student participants is eye-opening. (Heidegger's pronouncements are by no means always taken as Gospel!) Most important, in spite of their rather recondite subject matter, these seminar records wonderfully illuminate Heidegger's own philosophical development in the last two decades of his life. Although this book does require familiarity with Heidegger's work and somewhat unique philosophical terminology, as well as familiarity with the history of philosophy generally, I wouldn't call it a text "for specialists only." Unless, of course, all readers of philosophy are specialists! And it does provide a welcome corrective to current "New Age" tendencies to view Heraclitus and the other Presocratics as authors of quasi-religious wisdom manuals. No dumbing-down here; just a tough confrontation with difficult material!

I would like to suggest that the widest stance that I have encountered reading philosophy shows up in Greek on page 18 of HERACLITUS SEMINAR: Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, translated by Charles H. Seibert (Northwestern University Press, 1993). The English translation was copyright 1979 by The University of Alabama Press. First published in German as HERACLIT. I have the second paperbound printing, 1994. The hermeneutical circle is correlated to fragment 7, translated in Note 4 on page 163, but the discussion of the Greek terms involving a moving relatedness of things that actually exist which elucidates an indeterminate number of things of a quintessential kind. "In smoke, to be sure, things become elusive, but it does not eliminate those distinctions which become evident . . ." (Fink, p. 18). Heidegger becomes interested in the gnosis of "grasping humans" on page 19.

This book does not have an index. The page guide on page 171 shows that every ten pages in English is 16, 15, 14, or 17 pages in the German. Heraclitus wrote a book which was familiar to many thinkers in the ancient world, but all we can do now is "cast light on an inner coherence of the fragments' meaning, but without pretending to reconstruct the original form of Heraclitus' lost writing, [On Nature]. We shall attempt to trace a thread throughout the multiplicity of his sayings in the hope that a certain track can thereby show itself. Whether our arrangement of the fragments is better than that adopted by Diels is a question that should remain unsettled." (Fink, p. 4).

I believe the Fr. 1 mentioned by Heidegger on page 7 is the beginning of Heraclitus' book. In the discussion, we have the exchange of ideas:

Heidegger: Since when do we have concepts at all?
Participant: Only since Plato and Aristotle. We even have the first philosophical dictionary with Aristotle.
Heidegger: While Plato manages to deal with concepts only with difficulty, we see that Aristotle deals with them more easily. (p. 7).

One of the problems with concepts is how they are applied:

Heidegger: Thus, you mean the transformation of things with respect to one ground.
Fink: The ground meant here is not some substance or the absolute, but light and time. (p. 10).

Fink: . . . The transformations of fire then imply that everything goes over into everything; so that nothing retains the definiteness of its character but, following an indiscernable wisdom, moves itself throughout by opposites.
Heidegger: But why does Heraclitus then speak of steering?
Fink: The transformations of fire are in some measure a circular movement that gets steered by lightning, . . . The movement, in which everything moves throughout everything through opposites, gets guided.
Heidegger: But may we speak of opposites or of dialectic here at all? Heraclitus knows neither something of opposites nor of dialectic.
Fink: True, opposites are not thematic with Heraclitus. . . . (p. 11).

The set-up is basically a dialog, and considers topics like:

Fink: The problem of constitution in Husserl's phenomenology . . . (p. 84).

Heidegger: From this it follows once again that we may not interpret Heraclitus from a later time. (p. 85).
Fink: All the concepts that arise in the dispute over idealism and realism are insufficient to characterize the shining-forth, the coming-forth-to-appearance, of what is. It seems to me more propitious to speak of shining-forth than of shining-up. . . . (p. 85).

The poem "Hyperion" mentions Heraclitus and Heidegger discusses being as beauty in Hegel along with "The one that in itself distinguishes itself." (p. 113).

Participant: "There is no sentence of Heraclitus' that I have not taken up in my LOGIC."
Heidegger: What does this sentence mean? (p. 113).

Fr. 88 of Heraclitus, as Diels translates, "And it is always one and the same, what dwells (?) within us: living and dead and waking and sleeping and young and old. For this is changed over to that and that changed back over to this." (p. 118).

Heidegger then has to correct himself on Hegel by reading some lecture:

"The true deficiency of the Greek religion as opposed to the Christian is that in it appearance constitutes the highest form, in general, the whole of the divine, while in the Christian religion appearing obtains only as a moment of the divine." (p. 122).

But he can also complain about being translated into French:

Heidegger: In French, Dasein is translated by [being there], for example by Sartre. But with this, everything that was gained as a new position in BEING AND TIME is lost. Are humans there like a chair is there? (p. 126).

Heidegger is quite interested in how well he is understood in German, but he finally comes back to the plight of what is unthought in the end.

I must admit from the outset that my familiarity with Heidegger's philosophy, not to mention Fink's (a philosopher I'd never heard of), is not up to par with my fellow commentators (this is a generous assessment in my favor, to say the least--and obvious). That said, this review is not intended to sway Heideggar junkies one way or the other re: purchase, nor will it aid those who know Heraclitus' Fragments backwards and forwards; I am not in a position to do either. I aim to address only those nonspecialists who--like myself--are interested in Heraclitus, and who are considering making a purchase for that reason, and that reason alone.

I ordered "The Heraclitus Seminar", perhaps naively, in order to gain a better understanding of Heraclitus and his Metaphysics--I came away from the ordeal completely dumbfounded. This is partially my own fault--I knew going in that Heidegger makes for difficult reading, and that his precipitous works are, almost without exception, extremely abstruse. As such, his books require great dedication and patience. This, I was prepared for. However, I came to an impasse with the book almost immediately. This resulted from the multitude of passages that were written, within the body of the text, in Attic Greek--with *no* translations. (no kidding)

This one is better left for the later grad students and/or their profs--that is, unless you happen to be an extremely patient novice, who can read Greek without a lexicon, and who has a penchant for Heideggarian analysis of the pre-Socratics.

In terms of personal experiences, Heidegger is most revealing on page 5, in the first session of a seminar in the winter semester of 1966-67, when he mentions in his third comment to the participants, "Suddenly I saw a single bolt of lightning, after which no more followed. My thought was: Zeus." This experience is a link to the antiquity also experienced in the Biblical book of Job, in the speech of Elihu, at Job 36:27-33 and Job 37:3-24, leading up to the speeches of Yahweh. By page 7 of this translation of the seminar, Heidegger is demonstrating his link with "Fr. 1" of Heraclitus by quoting more than five lines in the original ancient Greek. Those who would prefer to know the English are given the Diels version in Note 3 on page 163. I find that Note 4, the Diels translation of Fragment 7, quoted (in Greek) by Eugen Fink in the second session of these seminars, is a bit easier for me to understand. The Glossary on pages 166 to 169 is a great guide to the Greek words for the major topics in this book. There is no index, but the approach being pursued in the fashion of this book could hardly gain any clarity by an attempt to locate the ideas in this book by any system related to page numbers. My comment on this reflects Heidegger's reaction to a participant who noted that the first philosophical dictionary didn't occur until Aristotle. (p. 7) Before things were sorted out, Heraclitus was trying to communicate something in Fr. 11 about "Everything that crawls . . ." (p. 31). The excitement picks up on page 32, when Fink quotes a poem by Holderlin called "Voice of the People."

This review is of a single essay by Sartre, "The Anti-Semite". He uses his notion of people's needing to turn away from their own natures and not look too closely at themselves, as causal to anti-semitism. He is probably correct that mankind in general wishes to concentrate the mind upon some external idea. Religion does this, of course, giving people a beautiful or demanding abstraction to focus upon at the expense of one's own nature. This is no brilliant insight. It is an idea as old as Genesis. Sartre's creation of a relationship between this
aspect of man's existence and anti-semitism is that the anti-semite concentrates feeling, thought and force of will upon the Jew individually or collectively in order to keep his own mind from
concentrating on his true nature.

As an explanation of anti-semitism Sartre is spouting pure nonsense. He says, for instance, that one cannot understand
anti-semitism unless one knows that Jews are totally blameness.

Sartre's general philosophy is of interest to many people, but is of no particular importance to me. However, his theory of the cause of anti-semitism is of importance when people accept what he is saying. His stated view is much akin to notions that anti-semitism is some sort of "virus" that infects the sufferer or that anti-semitism is "the most virulent form of raceism" or similar notions which have Jews in the position of young children being attacked, perhaps killed, by a child molester turned child killer. This view, widely promoted, is an attempt to force the public's minds to ignore cause-and-effect. Sartre's argument is infantile; it has no more connection to real causes of anti-semitism than a comic book or a video game has to real life.

As far as collections of Sartre's philosophical works go, this one is the best I've come across. The book is broken down into sections such as "Existentialism", "The Other", "Nothingness", "Politics", and so on. 16 chapters in all, each offering key excerpts from Sartre's entire corpus, especially focused on a specific philosophical matter. The editor, Stephen Priest, does a good job of introducing each chapter and his contributions offer excellent insight both to those who haven't gotten too far into Sartrean philosophy as well as those of us who occasionally need a refresher course. This book reminds me of why I first got interested in reading Sartre. It brings out the exciting spirit of Existentialist philosophy by focusing on the most poignant passages of Sartre's works. I do feel the book to be a bit pricey for a paperback, but all in all it is a rather aesthetically pleasing book. The binding and layout are high quality, as is usual for Routledge texts. Also, this book offers the complete "Existentialism and Humanism" lecture, including transcript of a question and answer forum which you will not find in most editions. Priest also does a decent job of providing biographical information in the chapter "Sartre in-the-world."

The selections in this book are very good, but unless you're up for a little bit of a challenge this book isn't for you. There were an excessive amount of typos, but that is bearable. The first and last thirds of the book were most down to earth. I would strongly recomend reading some commentary along with this, though not having read any on Sartre myself I can't recommend any. There's a good chance I will re-read this book again in the future, particularly as I now want to take a class in existentialism this fall. Really, the only drawback was how hard and next to incomprehensible the reading was at times, which is typical of philosophy. I don't even agree with most of what I read, but I still value the struggle to understand it.

In the introduction of the book Sartre's philosophical writings are spoken of as connected with the three fundamental values given in the slogan of the French Revolution, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The first Existensial writings are devoted to individual development expression and freedom. The second period in Sartre's philosophical life, the Marxist period is said to be devoted to the value of'Equality'. And the third less extensive period to the value of ' Fraternity' In this period Sartre calls for the disappearance of the State, and places the focus on bonds of friendship, Fraternity. This rough classification is of course ' rough' and as Steven Priest makes clear Sartre is an Existensialist throughout concerned with the fundamental themes of human life, liberty, justice, life, death, anxiety, being, nothingness, truth and authentic existence.
The work is divided into eighteen chapters each of which deals with a major theme of this kind.
In it the reader can have a good feeling of the overall development of Sartre's philosophy, and can judge what they regard to be of value in it.
My own sense is that the truly important Sartre is the Sartre of the first period, of the existence precedes essence, of the making of meaning in our own life through our action, period.
But the philosophy of this first period too would seem to me to fall short of answering true human needs, and providing hope of ultimate meaning.For that one has to go to a kind of religious existensialism which of course Sartre would have nothing to do with.

Most of this book isn't terribly compelling: I think in their (admirable) quests to avoid religiosity, the authors' ideas tend to be pretty thin. But James Ogilvy's essay on greed is really worth reading: a thoughtful way of approaching the place of desire in our lives, which acknowledges that the outer boundaries of desire head into greed.

"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough", sez Wm. Blake, and that might be a good overview of the point of the essay....

The authors of those passages made me think deeper into the so-called-sins and about the most-probable history that sins were not bad in God's eyes. But merely man-made ideas planted into history to make themselves feel more powerful. I highly recommend this book to anyone. Give it a try.

I am enjoying some of the seven deadly sins more but questioning what I once thought of as my virtues. Thanks, Robert Solomon, I needed that.

Wicked Pleasures is a collection of well-informed, sometimes irreverant essays that reflect upon the so-called seven deadly sins-- lust, anger, envy, gluttony, greed, pride, sloth-- and in that process explain the hold they have on the moral imagination of Western Christendom for a millennium. Well written. Well edited. A pleasure to read.

I think this book was great. Although Nietzsche is one of the greatest philosophers, his written works and thoughts are sometimes fragmented and appear to be somewhat contradictory. Bernard Reginster, pulls together most of Nietzsche's major thoughts into a format that makes it easier to comprehend and digest. After reading this book, I can say I have a greater understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed any of Nietzsche's writings.

This book has its minor faults, such as the propensity to get long winded and/or redundant at times, however as a whole it is a fabulous contribution to the wide berth of secondary lit on this giant. Reginster's systematic approach is controversial in of itself, but his arguments are well developed and do have a good deal of support. He addresses alternate interpretations of Nietzsche's thought, and discusses these other views in some depth. In all, the book concludes with a coherent and plausible interpretation of Nietzsche that is original enough to be fresh and will assuredly get one thinking again. In all, the book is most certainly worth reading, and I would recommend it highly.

This was an extremely dense (and intense) book, but that really was not the greatest annoyance I found. The first half is liberally sprinkled with unnecessary redundancies--less dedicated readers may find themselves thoroughly frustrated with such a thing; yet in spite of this, my interest remained strong: for although certainly not a novel, I awaited the tying-up of loose ends and for Reginster to expound upon his theory with finality. Such was the case in the second half of the work, which I felt completely rejuvenated his project--and not that he needs it from me, but as an advocate of Nietzsche's work myself, Reginster definitely has my backing as a new, brilliant, and fresh authority on, perhaps, the most misunderstood thinker of the last two centuries. This is without question not a starting point for those new to the Nietzsche corpus--though some will be tantalized simply by his name appearing in the title--this is a comprehensive view, with great stress placed upon two main themes of Nietzsche's pen: the will to power and the eternal recurrence. Reginster's clarification of the spurious presence of "The Will to Power", his endlessly helpful citing of Nietzsche's writings (not to deny Kant's and Schopenhauer's), and most importantly his lack of traditional views regarding Nietzsche make this book highly recommended--its flaws are not damaging to its credibility, and if you have the prior experience of Nietzsche and the patience for wading through the comprehensive approach presented here, you will find it an invaluable tool in your contemplations or pontifications of its targeted author. Bravo, Reginster!

Don't get me wrong, Husserl's contribution to post-modern philosophy is impossible to ignore. However, his constant beating of the transcendental horse is even more annoying then the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner's! At least with Rahner, you can expect man's transcedence toward God... with Husserl, it is a transcendence toward the self by the epoche - the "bracketting" - of the world and the retreat into the self. While the ideas are immensely important, they are more valuable as a transitional piece from the work of Descartes toward the work of Heidegger, Sartre, and others than they are on their own. An ego-pole? How is a pole, as Sartre would say, not simply a thing of the world? Husserl seems wed to the idea that the mind is constitutive of the world around us, and thankfully post-modern philosophy has not devoted itself entirely to that idea.

Perhaps it is the translation, but the work is hard to read, and you would be better to borrow it from a library then to spend the [price] on a 80 page book.

Still, it gets 3 stars. why? because it is so important. The work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and even Rahner would not be possible without this work by Husserl. He is a bridge thinker - now that we've crossed the river maybe occasionally we can look back at his thought for its worth but we don't have to spend any more time on that bridge.

This little book is an excellent introduction to Husserl's phenomenology. He outlines his idea of the intentionality of consciousness via the "transcendental ego". If Sartre had paid more attention to this, his outlook wouldn't have been so pessimistic.

Caveat: This book is hard reading -- it's not really for the newcomer to philosophy and Husserl's toxic and dense style will probably put off all but the determined.

The Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology was written by Edmund Husserl (the founder of phenomenology). This means the book is not muddled by the need to reconcile conflicting views on what phenomenology is according to various philosophers, like in commentaries. Also, many commentaries follow Sartre's, Heidegger's (as found in Being and Time) and Merleau-Ponty's human conciseness centered phenomenology leaving Husserl's phenomenology as a footnote. Being that Husserl's phenomenology is underrepresented in secondary sources, it is necessary to read Husserl's own writings. Cartesian Meditations offers a full understanding of Husserl's philosophy. The only other source for this is Husserl's Ideas Pertaining to Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, which is spilt in to three volumes and is around 900 pages. Ideas... is not only long, but it gives the reader a distinct feeling that many of the sections are dead ends and could have been edited out. Cartesian Meditations, on the other hand, is concise. Also, the book is easier to understand because the structure is similar to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. However, one should not think Husserl super-imposed his philosophy on Descartes'. In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl only made the similarities that could already be found in Ideas... explicit to help introduce Phenomenology to a larger audience though a familiar median. Even though the book was written as an introduction (as the title indicates), the audience need not be novice of Phenomenology. People who have read Ideas... cover to cover can still appreciate the book because it contains only what is essential to Husserl's Phenomenology, unlike Ideas..., which according to Husserl contains "imperfections". Cartesian Meditations makes one of the most influential twentieth century thinkers accessible.

In his dissertation The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, 1841 Soren Kierkegaard lays the foundation for his subsequent works and for existentialism. He states "Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony". Socrates, the master ironist, questions Sophist pretensions to knowledge and Protagoras' belief that virtue can be taught. In his dialectical method Socrates introduces irony into discourse. He concludes that the Oracle declared him the wisest man in Athens because he alone is aware of his ignorance. Kierkegaard states irony is the very incitement of subjectivity. In his/her moral freedom the individual stands alone against the established order, and irony becomes a qualification of subjectivity. The ironist's great requirement is to live poetically, to become conscious of what is original in himself, and stand above the self in freedom to create. The supreme poetic joy is in possibilities to be realized as victory over the world. In a brief discussion of Shakespeare as ironist Kierkegaard praises Shakespeare, whose use of controlled and pervasive irony allows him to "float above the work" as the characters become "free artist of themselves". Among the writers discussed this scholarly work are Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schlegel, Tieck, Solger, and Schelling whose Berlin lectures Kierkegaard critiques. The editorial appendix contains excellent notes.
Bonnie W. Jones

There are four things you need to remember about this book:

1) It is Kierkegaard's doctoral thesis and he bears a great load of hostility against his professors. He works this out passive-aggressively, by writing in a near impenetrable style. They are testing him by making him defend a thesis and he, in his turn, is testing them to see whether they can figure out exactly what thesis he is defending. He claims that Irony, the concept he is explicating, is "infinite absolute negativity." Certainly his thesis is. The thesis is not just about Irony, it enacts Irony. The thesis shows him the master of Irony.

2) The thesis seems hostile to Socrates who, throughout his authorship he always speaks of with approval. This is because among the contemporary witnesses he chooses to credit Aristophanes above Xenophon and Plato. Aristophanes' portrayal is indeed negative. Aristophanes is clearly hostile to Socrates. Socrates even blames Aristophanes at his trial for poisoning the peoples' minds against him.

3) He later repudiated the idea that Irony is "infinite absolute negativity," claiming that at the time he was an "Hegelian fool." Kierkegaard claims he did not, in his thesis, appreciate certain positive aspects of Socratic Irony, qualities that made Socrates a great ethicist. Certainly, he would never have believed Aristophanes except that he confirms Hegel's view of Socrates.

4) This book does not belong with the other books of his authorship (starting with Either/Or). While it is brilliantly shrewd, it does not carry out Kierkegaard's program. While it illustrates a mastery of technique, it is not a mature work in the sense that it lacks the his characteristic questions and concerns. This is the source of a negativity absent from his later works.

If you want to read a classic on the subject, read this book. An acquaintance with Xenophon, Plato and Aristophanes is vital. Moreover, patience with Kierkegaard's infuriating style is also a must.

1. Infuriating style? You're missing most of the irony. Don't you see it? The irony of the book has gone around like a serpent biting its own tail! And that's the point.

2. On whether or not Irony is a mature work: the first part is not. The first part begins and ends with Hegel, with occasional allusions to what points he will hit in the second part. Want to skip the first part because it's long and doesn't seem to get to the point, or you don't know enough about Socrates? Forget the second part then, which won't make any sense at all without the working definition it takes until the discussion of Aristophanes to get to. And don't worry about not having a background on the Greeks. All you have to do is have a little working knowledge of the Apology of Plato, and know that Xenophon is a bit of a dimwit. Everything you wouldn't know and Kierkegaard doesn't tell you is said in the commentary, which is both repititious to those who know, and vexatious to those who don't, but is really helpful nonetheless.

3. The second part, especially in the discussion of Lucinde is a microcosm of the rest of Kierkegaard's philosophy. It just takes a little bit of a skewed lens (an ironic lens, if you will). Irony as infinite negativity? (which is probably an infuriating way of putting it since it really doesn't say anything about irony unless you understand the context provided by the discussion on Socrates in the first part... see why you can't just skip ahead?) alludes to concious despair, or at least if you're an ironist, and you see the emptiness of your position LEADS you to concious despair. The Ironic itself becomes sublimated somewhere between the aesthetic and the humorous, something unsustainable in it of itself, because after all, it is infinite negativity (once again,i refer you to the first part. It has something to do with Socrate's position that he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew nothing, and about the soul after death. See why Socrates is so necessary an ingredient now?).

4. The discussion on Lucinde in the second part is his descisive turn away from the Aesthetic and from Regine, not the Seducer's Diary as presented in EITHER/OR. In fact, EITHER/OR is his more direct explanation of his position that he first touched upon in Irony. Do you see the irony in that? He had to write a pseudonymonous work of an editor who finds a pile of papers in a desk in order to be more direct about a subject he indirectly touched upon in his dissertaition.

5. This is seminal Kierkegaard. This is the book that makes clear the infinite bottomless pit that Kierkegaard points you to in his later work is in fact, an infinite bottemless pit--WAAAUUGHHHH!

6. I hereby disclaim all my references to Kierkegaard. Especially this one.