thankyousir

I am sort of interested in reading about existentialism especially as it relates to the moral responsibility of humans and humankind's relationship to God. I have looked at stuff from kierkegaard online and rough overviews and it looks pretty interesting.

I have looked at the eye-openers reading list and a lot of that stuff looks good too...

asaris

For existentialism, the key primary texts are probably "Sickness Unto Death" and "Fear and Trembling" by Kierkegaard and "Being and Nothingness" by Sartre. These can be pretty dense though, especially if you don't have a philosophy background. I'm not really familiar with the secondary literature.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Baraka_Guru

I'll suggest three good books I've read that have strong existentialist themes:

The Stranger, Albert Camus
Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
"Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett

Your biggest challenge should be to clearly distinguish between existentialism, nihilism, and absurdism. Though related, they are distinct parts. Beckett's play, for example, is absurdist more than existentialist proper. Also consider Camus' Myth of Sisyphus in that respect.

Unfortunately, I didn't actually study existentialism, though it is an interest of mine. I read those works with the philosophy in mind. I think asaris' suggestions are on the mark if you want to go to the core texts. Also consider reading critical works, as core philosophy texts can muddle the mind.

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"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

Willravel

I word: Nietzsche.

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ɯǝɥʇ ǝʌlos uɐɔ ǝʍ ʇɐɥʇ ǝɔuɐɹouƃı ɥƃnoɹɥʇ ʇou sı ʇı 'sɯǝlqoɹd ǝʇɐǝɹɔ uɐɔ ǝƃpǝlʍouʞ ɟı

Baraka_Guru

The Laws of God, The Laws of Man

The laws of God, the laws of man
He may keep that will and can
Not I: Let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;

And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and most condemn
Yet when did I make laws for them?

Please yourselves, Say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,

And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hellfire
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?

I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though, both are foolish, both are strong

And since, my soul, we cannot flee
To Saturn or to Mercury
Keep we must, If we can
These foreign laws of God and man.

- A. E. Housman

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"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

onesnowyowl

I haven't read it myself (it's on my long long list of books to read), but a friend recommended Jean-Paul Sartre's novel Nausea.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

roachboy

there are a number of different strands of thinking that came to be bundled under "existentialism" by people like walter kaufman...so i guess that while there's alot of possibilities for titles and so forth, i wonder what exactly thankyousir is interested in...

anyway, following this kaufman-y line, i'd recommend pascal's pensées because i think they're fabulous. and they fit into the lineage.
kierkegaard is tricky--you can read him a bunch of different ways--thigns really turn around whether you do or don't know about hegel, a comment which may or may not matter.

nietzsche is also tricky--all i'd suggest is don't get fooled by the fragmented style into thinking there are no arguments. there are. don't skip around. if you want a good orientation, check out "history of an error" from twilight of the idols (next to last work) or "on truth and falsity in the non-moral sense" (early stuff). generally speaking, the "existentialist" read of nietzsche downplays some of his more radical claims.

there's a ton of sartre that gets put into this space because he invented the category. nausea is a cool little novel, but from 1938 or so--so from before the meme got started--it's interesting, too, but not necessarily for the reasons you'd think going in. i'll be coy. maybe you'll read the book that way.

merleau-ponty is really interesting, really important--but he gets jumped into this as well. i think he was consistently a far more sophisticated thinker than sartre was. maybe that's another discussion sometime.

heidegger too--but i'm fed up with ole marty. blah blah blah.
this after *way* too much time spent reading him.
i'd recommend reading way too much of him yourself, so that you can get fed up with cause. the cause is important, and is worth getting to. but jesus christ. the lecture courses are good--the basic problem of phenomenology a fundamental starting point. a bit technical, though.

i'll just stop here.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ratbastid

"You don't talk... because of Frederich Nietzsche?"

Self

Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre - Walter Kaufmann.
From Shakespeare to Existentialism - Walter Kaufmann.

Two of my favorite books.

asaris

Eh, I wouldn't trust Kaufmann much. Probably not the worst possible place to start, though.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Self

Meaning what? It's almost the worst possible place to start? Jesus.