Existentialism: Basic Writings

A friend of mine let me borrow this book several years ago. When I started reading it I was an evangelical Christian, and when I finished, I was an agnostic atheist. I thought the translations were quite good, especially the excerpts from Nietzsche's "The Gay Science." Although the transition from a person of faith to a person of reason took place over many years for me, the reading of this particular book marks perhaps the most defining moment of my life so far, and I could not have read it at a more appropriate time. I found the introductions to each section illuminating and helpful, and the actual writings were presented in a way that flowed from premise to conclusion and compressed two centuries of progressive existential humanistic thinking. I highly recommend this book to everyone (even small children and babies, who can't read). Paraprosdokian.

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.

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.

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.