Book contents
- Frontmatter
- I Introduction
- II Existentialism in Historical Perspective
- III Major Existentialist Philosophers
- IV The Reach of Existential Philosophy
- 14 Existentialism as literature
- 15 Existentialism and religion
- 16 Racism is a system: how existentialism became dialectical in Fanon and Sartre
- 17 Existential phenomenology, psychiatric illness, and the death of possibilities
- Bibliography
- Index
- OTHER VOLUMES IN THE SERIES OF CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS
14 - Existentialism as literature
from IV - The Reach of Existential Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- I Introduction
- II Existentialism in Historical Perspective
- III Major Existentialist Philosophers
- IV The Reach of Existential Philosophy
- 14 Existentialism as literature
- 15 Existentialism and religion
- 16 Racism is a system: how existentialism became dialectical in Fanon and Sartre
- 17 Existential phenomenology, psychiatric illness, and the death of possibilities
- Bibliography
- Index
- OTHER VOLUMES IN THE SERIES OF CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS
Summary
To what extent does existentialism constitute itself as a literary rather than a primarily philosophical phenomenon? Or, to put a slightly different but related question: what form does existentialism take when it is viewed as literature rather than as philosophy? Such questions arise as a fairly direct consequence of the fact that a number of key existentialist works (or works that have generally been regarded as such) have indeed been works of literature – Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (La Nausée, 1938) and Albert Camus's The Outsider (L'Étranger, 1939) being two excellent examples – while some of the key figures within or close to the existentialist tradition have been literary rather than philosophical – arguably this is true of Camus, and certainly of Beckett. Rather than simply provide an exploration of existentialism in literature, or a survey of those literary works that figure within existentialism, this essay will also examine the idea of existentialism as literature, sketching a picture of existentialism as it emerges in literary rather than solely philosophical terms.
Although it is sometimes argued that existentialism stands in a special relationship to literature – that it is an especially “literary” mode of philosophizing – David E. Cooper argues that over-reliance on existentialist fiction has actually been a source of misconceptions about existentialism. Refusing to include Camus among the existentialists, or to allow that he might be a philosopher, Cooper claims that “existentialism … is not a mood or a vocabulary, but a relatively systematic philosophy.”
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- The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism , pp. 289 - 321Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012
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