Worlds Existentialism [Paperback]

Maurice Friedman (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1991

Maurice Friedman's masterly anthology still stands apart decades after its original publication. It has become established as a classic - the most comprehensive collection of existentialist writing ever assembled. This edition includes a special preface by Professor Friedman surveying the developments in the field since this monumental work was first published and commenting on its relevance for present intellectual trends. The aim of this anthology is to elucidate the critical issues that exist among the existentialists, such as phenomenology and ontology, the existential subject, intersubjectivity, religion, and psychotherapy.To accomplish this aim Friedman has presented a large number of short selections from the most important existentialist writers and their forerunners, subsumed under these themes. Since this anthology is uniquely organised not by authors but by issues, the student should be able to recognise the various strains of existentialism, which Friedman views not as a single philosophy but a mood embracing a number of disparate philosophies, thus avoiding the easy labelling that distorts and oversimplifies this multifaceted movement.

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Delmar (April 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573922765
• ISBN-13: 978-1573922760
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent selection: quality, quantity and breadth, June 10, 2011

By 

M. J. QUINN "Matt Quinn" (Brighton, U.K.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Worlds Existentialism (Paperback)

The book is divided into seven parts:
1. Forerunners
2. Phenomenology and ontology
3. The existential subject
4. Intersubjectivity
5. Atheist, humanist and religious existentialism
6. Existentialism and psychotherapy
7. Issues and conclusions

The range of writers featured is very broad. There are all the usual suspects, Sartre, Buber, Frankl, Kirekegaard, Camus, Tillich, Jaspers, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and so on, but there also many names I wasn't familiar with, such as Rosensweig, Ebner, Berdyaev, Lynd, and Maritain, for example. In total, there are more than 50 different authors featured. Oddly, there is nothing by Simone de Beauvoir. Possibly this is because her contribution to existentialist thought was rather belatedly recognized and this book was published back in 1964. I was also a little surprised that R.D. Laing was absent from the psychotherapy section of the book. But it's difficult to complain too hard given the wealth of what is included.

I liked the style of this reader. Friedman does not restrict himself to simply selecting intact portions of text from the writers concerned. He does do this, but often he instead produces abbreviated versions by quoting a sequence of selected short extracts - a kind of edited highlights approach (usefully he gives page numbers for each extract). To me, this works really well. It also allows him to fit even more into the 550 pages. There are hundreds of selections, so this book is great for opening at random and letting yourself be surprised.

The only real downside is that there is nothing here that was published post-1964. This means, for example, that although the psychotherapy section includes Rollo May, Medard Boss and the Rogers-Buber dialogue, there is necessarily no Irvin Yalom or James Bugental. Even so, I've still given this book 5 stars because of the quality, quantity and breadth of what it does include. And anyway, I can't really criticise Maurice Friedman for not including work that hadn't been written at the time he published this book.

A phenomenal amount of work has clearly gone into choosing and arranging the various selections from so many different sources. The result is in an excellent reader, and I recommend it highly.