Customer Reviews

Existentialism For Dummies

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Chris Panza is an old philosophy professor of mine, so I was able to review this material before publication. Since authenticity is nowhere more important than in a review on existentialism, I make that disclosure up front. Thankfully, I can attest that the book serves as an excellent introduction.

First, you should know that Dr. Panza is one of the most popular (and challenging) professors at Drury University because he brings a deep passion to teaching. Students love him and his lectures have a crazy ability to stick with you years after leaving the classroom. The good news is that his teaching style translates well into the Dummies format, meaning that you've got a personal copy of the wonderful examples and anecdotes he used in the classroom.

I was skeptical about how well existentialism would fit into a Dummies book. I've used other books in the series on investing and a few other topics, and I've always been impressed with the authors and the presentation... but existentialism? Thankfully, this title continues the tradition of quality. It takes a complex subject and boils it down into a manageable -- and, more importantly for the topic, relevant -- format.

None of the Dummies books are comprehensive treatises on their subject, but they are concise and can act as a foundation for further study. No one will put this book down without a sharper understanding of what it means to be human.

Get this book if you're interested in a life that means something. Existentialism isn't pedantic philosophy, as this book shows... it's about living.

-Jason Swadley
University of Chicago

As a self-proclaimed existentialist, I thought it was about time to understand what it is I profess to believe in. For some reasons (not all obvious even to me) I have gravitated to the Existentialist Philosophers, because their explanations of the world just feels more right, more honest and closer to "ground truth" to me than any other philosophies. And also I guess, because, once one has sampled Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Ernest Becker, and Cornel West, unless he is profoundly religious or insane, he is likely to be completely absorbed by their deeply passionate (and, Heidegger aside) clearly explained views. So I chose to start at the bottom and work my way back up to the top of the ladder.

I was thus quite pleasantly surprised to discover this very fine "How To" book for dummies summarizing beautifully all one needs to know about my newly adopted philosophy, Existentialism. With what I already knew from sampling other readings, this book put all of the fragments of the puzzle in place, into one coherent framework. And for that I will forever be grateful to these authors.

What is Existentialism?

It is according to this book a philosophy that says essentially that the world in the raw is absurd. When the doctor spanks air into our lungs, we wail because we have come fearfully into a disordered, isolated, alienated, stress-producing, cold, dependent and basically neurotic and profoundly absurd world. It is absurd for the ten reasons outlined in this book and for so many others not mentioned, not the least of them being that the world is not teleological: that is, it has no purpose whatsoever. And once here, we flounder around purposelessly and aimlessly in darkness in search of light through meaning, and whether or not we find it, we then die. That's it, period; end of story: As Ernest Becker puts it so elegantly in the book of the same name, life is "The Birth and Death of meaning." That's all there is to it period.

As we try to navigate our way around in the darkness, we create our own meaning as a way of trying to make sense of a fearful, cold and disordered world. But this attempt by us only makes the world even more absurd. Our mind, mostly through the perceptions it affords us as a window onto reality, is the only survival tool we come into the world equipped with. And as we harness the fruits of our perceptions, we immediately began to reify them, trying to get beyond and transcend their limitations: the neurotically filtered reality that our own mind has created. Nothing could be more absurd than trying to "pretend" that this self-defined representation crafted out of the language of our perceptions, mostly to ward-off fear and disorder, somehow is the same as reality itself?

We thus learn to play "pretend reality games" fashioned out of language. We train ourselves socially and culturally to believe that these exercises in the formulation of meaning through language, somehow transcends the very symbols that give those same meanings, life and form. Existence for us thus seems like little more that a child's game played with the symbols of language.

Yet, deep in our heart of hearts we know that the meaning we make through language is not all there is. We know that no matter how much we may reify them, and try to stretch them beyond their own limited boundaries, our meanings are but a desperately delusional trick we have learned to play on ourselves. A great deal of the life of humans is thus about creating such "reality tricks" and "playing such reality games" to fool ourselves about the "truth" of the reality "out there." In the end, all of our "reality projects" are guaranteed to fail. They are in the end just self-imposed tricks to give us the illusion that we can somehow transcend the ultimate limitation: our finitude. They are, it is safe to say, profoundly and intentionally self-delusional.

As the comedian Richard Pryor has put it best: The ultimate test is whether we can survive death? So far, no one we know has passed that test. So no matter how sophisticated and complex our neurotic machinery may be, or the reality games that it spews, become we know that in the end our immortality tricks will not work. We can invent myths, in which we make ourselves its heroes; and we can build elaborate monuments to ourselves, but in the end there are no tricks or immortality projects that will allow us to overcome death. Existentialism reminds us that our reality, our meanings and our elaborate language games are just individual or collective self-defined projects in self-delusion, and little more. And in the end, that is of course the ultimate absurdity.

Despite being unable to overcome death, we must nevertheless be responsible to ourselves, and muddle through life trying to live an authentic life in the gap between the fearful reality "out there" and the meanings we make to negotiate the larger reality. We cannot overcome death by painting pretty word pictures, or by building monuments to ourselves. No matter what other philosophies say, no matter what the religious prophets say, no matter how expensive our headstones may be, death will not go away. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The only hope is that we negotiate the journey honestly facing the truth of both the reality "out there" and our inner limitations; and to do both without fear and self-delusion.

Five Stars

This book is absolutely amazing. It's like Martin Luther translating the Bible from Latin for me. I've read the existentialists but never could fully grasp them.

Now that I understand this thinking, it's given me a lot more confidence in life.

I just finished Thus Spoke Zarathustra and could really understand what was being said.

I think this book even with the wacky title is a really important book written for the layman and those who don't have a chance to study with really good professors like Panza and Gale.

Thank you so much for writing it.

As for the Dr. who wrote that this book is disappointing and you should read Walter Kauffman, I read Kauffman before reading this, but there was a lot of points Kauffman made which I couldn't fully grasp. This book is great for starting at the ground level and then moving up. I can now understand some of the points Kauffman was making that I didn't understand before.

The series and the name do not go together, but for tough subjects to understand, this series is one of the best. There are sections that one can skip entirely and not hurt the reader. I have had several philosophy courses and even a Media Criticism course where the subject and definition of Post Modernism were discussed. To this day I cannot give a good explanation of what Post Modernism is, however there is a diagram of it in this book which helps. The sections of Nietzsche and Sartre are the ones to be covered and highlighted. I always looked for a good label to describe me and atheist always fell short of what I wanted to define me. Existentialist is a great label to describe me and now with the help of this book I can tell people what an existentialist is and believes. Overall good book for a tricky subject. It is not the only book to read, but a great place to start for anyone wanting to understand something that is difficult even when in a college setting.

This is a good overview of Existentialism and is well explained. I've spent some time trying to figure this stuff out and I've always come away thinking, "I think this is what he is trying to say", but I wasn't always sure. I also needed to read a lot of stuff and the gist was often lost. I'm glad that Heidegger was included - even though he claimed he was not an existentialist (he was wrong-I think). I think this is a very good place to start - before you struggle with the original material. I highly recommend this book.

This book provides an excellent overview of existentialism. This is perfect for folks who want to gain a basic understanding of the concept and the movement. I teach at the university level and recommend this book to my students who have an interest in existentialism and want to learn more about it. The thing that really surprised me about this book was how well-written it is. It is funny and irreverant. It is full of detailed examples. Sometimes philosophy can be tough reading, but this is not. I highly recommend it!

This is a wonderfully written book and an excellent introduction to the topic. Please do not be misled into thinking anything otherwise, given that it belongs to this series. I am a big fan of the "for dummies" series; however I had never read anything of this character (philosophy) from the series. As a previous reviewer has said, "Existentialism for dummies" is definitely not just "for dummies". I have previously had an extremely hard time reading and comprehending the original material written by the existentialist philosophers (you probably know this, in case you have tried to read Heidegger). However, I have hugely benefited by reading this book. Existentialism, if properly understood, is actually a philosophy that is very relevant to each of our lives and can be extremely enriching. Highly recommended!

"Existentialism for Dummies"--so smart it could change your life. Seriously interesting read. The themes are daunting--freedom, death, anxiety--but the message is hopeful.

I'm no expert in philosophy. I've always had an interest, but I have found reading the original sources can be difficult. So, I can't tell you how accurate this book is to the intentions of the existentialist philosophers it refers to. But I can tell you that I really enjoyed it, and I feel like I have a smattering of an understanding of existentialism. In fact, I now have confidence that I can open up Kierkegaard or Sartre, and understand them a bit better than I would have otherwise.

It's also strangely motivating. Whether this is thanks to this book itself, or simply to the existential philosophy it explains, I am feeling a bit more confident of being in control of my own life, and finding my own way in the world.

I got into Nietzsche by watching the sci-fi series Andromeda, which featured a race of warriors called the Nietzscheans, and after having a hard time getting through Nietzsche's novels went looking for something easier and was pleased to find this. Very understandable and it didn't hurt my head to read. Liked the list of novels, plays and books with existentialist themes but they should add Andromeda to the list, and i'd be curious what the authors think of how they were portrayed in the series.