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On Being and Becoming offers a new approach to existentialist thinking as a vital source of philosophical direction for living meaningfully. Overcoming reductive accounts of existentialist thought, this book critically assesses existentialism's varied and diverse origins, its contemporary relevance, and the ways it encourages creative responses to the question of life's meaning.
List of contents
- Part I: Encountering Existentialism
- Prologue
- Chapter 1:Existentialism in Style and Substance
- Part II: Existentialism: from Antiquity to Modern Europe
- Chapter 2. The Rise of Existentialism: A Philosophy for Human Existence
- Chapter 3. Historical Roots of Existentialism
- Chapter 4. Romantic Upheavals, Modern Movements
- Chapter 5. Literature and Art of Existentialism: the 20th Century
- Part III. Existentialism in Living Dimensions
- Chapter 6. Self
- Chapter 7. Others
- Chapter 8. World
- Chapter 9. Earth
- Chapter 10. Being
- Part IV. Living Existentialism
- 11. Existentialist Lives: Imitation, Inspiration, and Authenticity
- 12. Seeking and Taking (and Giving) Advice
- 13. Being in the Crowd: Anonymity and Individuality in Modern Life
- 14. Into One's Own, or on 'Finding' Oneself
- 15. I Selfie, Therefore I Am: On Self-Imaging Culture
- 16. Being and Waiting (Tables), or The Roles We Play
- 17. Seizing the Day: On the Present and Presence
- 18. Love in the Time of Existentialism
- 19. Existential Suffering, Happiness and Hope
- 20. Life as a Work of Art: an Existential Need for Creativity
- Bibliography
About the author
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei is Professor and Kurrelmeyer Chair in German and Professor in Philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University. She is author of The Life of Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2018); Exotic Spaces in German Modernism (Oxford University Press, 2011); The Ecstatic Quotidian (Penn State University Press, 2007); Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language (Fordham University Press, 2004); and a book of poetry, After the Palace Burns (Zoo Press, 2003) which won The Paris Review Prize. She is the author of Imagination: A Very Short Introduction, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Summary
On Being and Becoming offers a new approach to existentialist thinking as a vital source of philosophical direction for living meaningfully. Overcoming reductive accounts of existentialist thought, this book critically assesses existentialism's varied and diverse origins, its contemporary relevance, and the ways it encourages creative responses to the question of life's meaning.
Additional text
This small book weaves together a generous discussion of the history of philosophy and an erudite presentation of key themes of existentialism....Gosetti-Ferencei erases naïve formulations of existentialist themes and replaces them with rigorous, sometimes uplifting, accounts of freedom, responsibility, self-creation, and the inescapability of death. This work serves as both an excellent introduction to existentialist thought and a provocative read for those familiar with the works of such figures as Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka, Søren Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Richard Wright...Highly recommended.
