"Displaying a masterful grasp of the texts, the author shows how otherness forces itself upon the existentialist Sartre, gradually constraining him to modify his understanding of consciousness as omnipotent. The issue is Sartre's discovery of the social and its conceptual assimilation into his individualistic, consciousness-oriented philosophy." -- Thomas R. Flynn "This very successful and accessible scholarly book... is simultaneously a succinct and clear overview of Sartre's philosophical works.... and a fresh consideration of Sartre's body of work." -- Choice "Busch's admirably clear and compact discussion is essential reading for Sartre scholars, since it powerfully addresses many issues dividing them... " -- Ethics "... a useful overview of the evolution of Sartre's thought... " -- Review of Politics "... a thought provoking reassessment of Sartre's philosophical career." -- Man and World "... succinct, richly documented survey... " -- International Studies in Philosophy

Covering the complete development of post-Kantian Continental philosophy, this volume serves as an essential reference work for philosophers and those engaged in the many disciplines that are integrally related to Continental and European Philosophy.

Understanding Existentialism provides an accessible introduction to existentialism by examining the major themes in the work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and de Beauvoir. Paying particular attention to the key texts, Being and Time, Being and Nothingness, Phenomenology of Perception, The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, the book explores the shared concerns and the disagreements between these major thinkers. The fundamental existential themes examined include: freedom; death, finitude and mortality; phenomenological experiences and 'moods', such as anguish, angst, nausea, boredom, and fear; an emphasis upon authenticity and responsibility as well as the denigration of their opposites (inauthenticity and Bad Faith); a pessimism concerning the tendency of individuals to become lost in the crowd and even a pessimism about human relations more generally; and a rejection of any external determination of morality or value. Finally, the book assesses the influence of these philosophers on poststructuralism, arguing that existentialism remains an extraordinarily productive school of thought.

Writing in the late 1990s about the tendency of encyclopedists to designate existentialism a finished project, Thomas W. Busch cautions that such hasty periodization risks distorting our understanding of the contemporary philosophical scene and of depriving ourselves of vital resources for critiquing contemporary forms of oppression, what Garbriel Marcel referred to as processes of dehumanization. We should recall that "existentialism made possible present forms of Continental philosophy, all of which assume the existentialist critique of dualism, essentialism, and totality in modern philosophy," and we should acknowledge that "existentialism remains capable of haunting today's scene as an important and relevant critic." Offered in honor of Thomas W. Busch after his more than fifty years of work in philosophy, the essays in this volume attest to existentialism as a living project. The essays are written by scholars who championed existentialism in America and by scholars who now seek to extend existentialist insights into new territory, including into research in cognitive science. The essays range from studies of key figures and texts to explorations of urgent topics such as the nature of freedom and the possibility of what Busch calls "incorporation," a sense of communicative solidarity that respects difference and disagreement.

While Sartre was committed to liberation struggles around the globe, his writing never directly addressed the oppression of women. Yet there is compatibility between his central ideas & feminist beliefs. In this first feminist collection on Sartre, philosophers reassess the merits of Sartre's radical philosophy of freedom for feminist theory. Contributors are Hazel E. Barnes, Linda A. Bell, Stuart Z. Charme, Peter Diers, Kate & Edward Fullbrook, Karen Green, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Sonia Kruks, Guillermine de Lacoste, Thomas Martin, Phyllis Sutton Morris, Constance Mui, & Iris Marion Young.

Existentialist Ontology and Human Consciousness The majority of the distinguished scholarly articles in this volume focus on Sartre's early philosophical work, which dealt first with imagination and the emotions, then with the critique of Husserl's notion of a transcendental ego, and finally with systematic ontology presented in his best-known book, Being and Nothingness. In addition, since his preoccupation with ontological questions and especially with the meanings of ego, self, and consciousness endured throughout his career, other essays discuss these themes in light of later developments both in Sartre's own thought and in the phenomenological, hermeneutic, and analytic traditions.

Thomas Aquinas and Jean-Paul Sartre are usually identified with completely different philosophical traditions: intellectualism and voluntarism. In this original study, Stephen Wang shows, instead, that there are some profound similarities in their understanding of freedom and human identity.

This book is a critical re-evaluation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology, in which a theory of egological complicity and self-deception informing his later better known theory of bad faith is developed. This novel reinterpretation offers a systematic challenge to orthodox apprehensions of Sartre’s conceputualization of transcendental consciousness and the role that the ego plays within his account of pre-reflective consciousness. Heldt persuasively demonstrates how an adequate comprehension of Sartre’s theories of negation and reflection can reveal the world as it appears to human consciousness as one in which our reality is capable of becoming littered with illusions. As the foundation upon which the rest of Sartre’s philosophical project is built, it is essential that the phenomenological ontology of Sartre’s early writings be interpreted with clarity. This book provides such a reinterpretation. In doing so, a philosophical inquiry emerges which is genuinely contemporary in its aim and scope and which seeks to demonstrate the significance of Sartre’s thought, not only as significant to the history of philosophy, but to ongoing debates in continental philosophy and philosophy of mind.

In Moments of Disruption, Kris Sealey considers Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Paul Sartre together to fully realize the ethical and political implications of their similar descriptions of human existence. Focusing on points of contact and difference between their writings on transcendence, identity, existence, and alterity, Sealey presents not only an understanding of Sartrean politics in which Levinas's somewhat apolitical program might be taken into the political, but also an explicitly political reading of Levinas that resonates well with Sartre's work. In bringing together both thinkers accounts of disrupted existence in this way, a theoretical place is found from which to question the claim that politics and ethics are mutually exclusive.