Description
What does it mean to live freely, authentically, and responsibly in the twenty-first century? What use do we have for existentialism today? Is it just a tangle of irrational and individualist pessimism, or does it speak to our contemporary minds?
Stereotypically ascribed to the cliques of Bohemia, pretentious café dwellers and tyro philosophers, existentialism is probably the most misunderstood and caricatured of philosophical movements. Rather than offering a dry history of ideas or an angsty guide to intellectual despair however, Existentialism Now shows that existentialist understandings of concepts like freedom, embodiment, ambiguity, authenticity and responsibility speak urgently to the pressures and possibilities of contemporary modern life.
21 iconic quotations from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Beauvoir, Fanon, Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and others bring the electrifying force of existentialist thought to bear on our contemporary moment. Lines including: “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman”, “Hell is other people”, and “Remain true to the earth” offer pathmarks for navigating a world shaken by ecological crisis, political polarisation and technological acceleration, and are launch points for exploring gender, race, trauma, anxiety, technology, ecology, politics, violence, love, and the future of humanity. Ultimately, Nik Farrell Fox argues that we can overturn the misinterpretations that plague existentialism and find instead their renewed relevance to contemporary thought.
Table of Contents
1. “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” (Nietzsche, The Joyous Science)
2. “He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy.” (Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety)
3. “Remain true to the earth.” (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
4. “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” (Beauvoir, The Second Sex)
5. “Racism, hatred, resentment… alone cannot nurture a war of liberation.” (Fanon, The Damned of the Earth)
6. “Without music, life would be a mistake.” (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols)
7. “To life, to the here-and-now reality.” (Beauvoir, The Prime of Life)
8. “Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves.”“Language is the house of being. In its home man dwells.” (Heidegger, Letter on Humanism)
9. “In all areas of existence, man will be encircled ever more tightly by the forces of technology.” (Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking)
10. “I am not in front of my body, I am in it, or rather I am it.” (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception)
11. “Hell is… other people.” (Sartre, No Exit)
12. “Man is always congested, drowned in contingency.” (Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks)
13. “You shall become who you are.” (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo)
14. “To be dead is to become prey to the living.” (Sartre, Being and Nothingness)
15. “Existence is one, across and through the separation of existents.” (Beauvoir, The Second Sex)
16. “The question is not to know whether one accepts or rejects violence, but whether… it tends towards its own suspension or toward self-perpetuation.” (Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror)
17. “Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity.” (Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks)
18. “Ambiguity is the essence of human existence and everything we live or think has always several meanings.” (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
19. “There must be a concept of man, a concept about the future of mankind.” (Fanon, The Damned of the Earth)
20. “Animals. As I see it they are a philosophical problem.” (Sartre, Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre)
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | 20 Aug 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 336 |
| ISBN | 9781350435452 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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