The Existentialist Reader: An Anthology of Key Texts

This volume provides an anthology of key texts across a broad range of themes by eight Existentialist philosophers: Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jose Ortega y Gasset and Jean-Paul Sartre. In the introduction, Paul McDonald describes the intellectual and philosophical scene between the wars and outlines the central characteristics of the various Existentialists’ approaches to immediate and pressing issues of their time. After reviweing the main figures within the movement, the work analyzes distinctively Existentialist themes, such as absurdity, anxiety, alienation and death, and the ways in which the various thinkers diverged in their understanding of human being. Each philosopher is situated in terms of their relation to other thinkers, both in the previous tradition and in the 20th century.