Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in Context

Published by Columbia University Press 2012

Situating Existentialism

Key Texts in Context

Edited by: Jonathan Judaken and Robert Bernasconi

https://doi.org/10.7312/juda14774

Overview
Contents

About this book

This anthology provides a history of the systemization and canonization of existentialism, a quintessentially antisystemic mode of thought. Situating existentialism within the history of ideas, it features new readings on the most influential works in the existential canon, exploring their formative contexts and the cultural dialogues of which they were a part.

Emphasizing the multidisciplinary and global nature of existential arguments, the chosen texts relate to philosophy, religion, literature, theater, and culture and reflect European, Russian, Latin American, African, and American strains of thought. Readings are grouped into three thematic categories: national contexts, existentialism and religion, and transcultural migrations that explore the reception of existentialism. The volume explains how literary giants such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were incorporated into the existentialist fold and how inclusion into the canon recast the work of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and it describes the roles played by Jaspers and Heidegger in Germany and the Paris School of existentialism in France. Essays address not only frequently assigned works but also underappreciated discoveries, underscoring their vital relevance to contemporary critical debate. Designed to speak to a new generation's concerns, the collection deploys a diverse range of voices to interrogate the fundamental questions of the human condition.

Author / Editor information

Jonathan Judaken is Spence L. Wilson Chair in Humanities at Rhodes College. He is the author of Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual and the editor of Race After Sartre: Anti-racism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism and Naming Race, Naming Racisms.

Robert Bernasconi is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University and the author of two books on Heidegger. His most recent publication is How to Read Sartre. He has edited or coedited numerous collections on Levinas, including The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, and on the critical philosophy of race, including Race.

Reviews

The essays are uniformly of high quality...highly recommended.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Jonathan Judaken Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I: (Trans) National Contexts
1. Russian Existentialism, or Existential Russianism Val Vinokur Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
2. German Existentialism and the Persistence of Metaphysics Weber, Jaspers, Heidegger Peter E. Gordon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
3. Sisyphus’s Progeny Existentialism in France Jonathan Judaken Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
4. Punching Through the Pasteboard Masks American Existentialism George Cotkin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
5. Angst Across the Channel Existentialism in Britain Martin Woessner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
6. Existentialisms in the Hispanic and Latin American Worlds El Quixote and Its Existential Children Eduardo Mendieta Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	180
II. Existentialism and Religion
7. Fear and Trembling and the Paradox of Christian Existentialism George Pattison Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
8. Jewish Co-Existentialism Being with the Other Paul Mendes-Flohr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
9. Camus the Unbeliever Living Without God Ronald Aronson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	256
III. Migrations
10. Anxiety and Secularization Søren Kierkegaard and the Twentieth-Century Invention of Existentialism Samuel Moyn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
11. Rethinking the “Existential” Nietzsche in Germany Löwith, Jaspers, Heidegger Charles Bambach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
12. Situating Frantz Fanon’s Account of Black Experience Robert Bernasconi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	336
13. Simone de Beauvoir in Her Times and Ours The Second Sex and Its Legacy in French Feminist Thought Debra Bergoffen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	360
14. The “Letter on Humanism” Reading Heidegger in France Ethan Kleinberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	386
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	419

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 440

eBook

Published: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 9780231519670