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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Existentialism Is a Humanism

Existentialism Is a Humanism

Sartre, Jean-Paul
Macomber, Carol
Cohen-Solal, Annie

Paperback

Philosophy

Publisher Price: $9.95

ISBN10: 0300115466
ISBN13: 9780300115468
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Jul 24 2007
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.25
Height: 0.40 Width: 5.00 Depth: 7.70
Language: English
A fresh translation of two seminal works of existentialism

To understand Jean-Paul Sartre is to understand something important about the present time.--Iris Murdoch

Sartre matters because so many fundamental points of his analysis of the human reality are right and true, and because their accuracy and veracity entail real consequences for our lives as individuals and in social groups.--Benedict O'Donohoe, Philosophy Now

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (Existentialism Is a Humanism) was to expound his philosophy as a form of existentialism, a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity.

The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre's doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence--his self, his being--through the choices he freely makes (existence precedes essence). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre's 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus's The Stranger, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre's introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture.

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