Abstract

This anthology is designed to introduce the reader to existentialism by arranging texts according to their views on five specific themes—phenomenology and ontology, the existential subject, inter-subjectivity, religion and atheism, and psychotherapy. The anthologist's desire to acquaint the reader with the diversity of existentialism has led him to cite forty-seven authors, with the result that the selections from any given author on a given subject are very brief: Heidegger is allowed five pages on ontology, Nietzsche one page on religion, etc. In order to make such abbreviations appear viable, the anthologist has contrived discourses by pasting together sentences which in the original texts are paragraphs and even pages apart. It is doubtful, therefore, that this "critical reader" will enable the student to form a critical judgment of existentialism.—H. C.