Existentialism
A Very Short Introduction

During my high school and college days, existentialism was all the rage in Kerala. In my mind, it conjures up an image of a youth with unkempt hair and three days' growth of a scraggly beard, wearing large spectacles with a dark frame and a shapeless upper body garment we called a "jubba". He would......more

Notes: I. Five Themes of Existentialism: 1. Existence precedes essence. What you are (your essence) is the result of your choices (your existence) rather than the reverse. Essence is not destiny. You are what you make yourself to be. 2. Time is of the essence. We are fundamentally time-bound beings. Un......more

I did not enjoy this volume as much as I might have, since I had recently read Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café, which covers the same information with a more accessible exposition. Indeed, though Flynn is making the case for the continued relevance and value of the existentialists, I cam......more

While reading this book I came to the conclusion that "very short introductions" do not work, at least not for philosophy. The starting point for many, probably most, philosophical systems, is the creation of a carefully planned system with its own terms and nuanced logical inferences. To truly unde......more

Ideally, as a man with absolute zero grounding in philosophy, I’d have liked ‘Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction’ to be simpler. For something that bills itself as ‘introduction’, it’s a volume that does assume a lot of prior knowledge of not only philosophical modes, but hard-fought, high le......more