Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction

Personally, I wasn’t a fan. It’s too condensed, there’s simply too much content packed into too little time. By the end of the book, I came away with only a general sense of what the philosophers were about, most of which I already knew: individualism, freedom, choice, overcoming oneself, and similar themes.

The story about the French existentialist feud was entertaining, though. They all worked at the same literary magazine and constantly fought with each other because of their differing attitudes toward communism and anarchism. Meanwhile, Heidegger seemed to be watching from the sidelines, not even wanting to be called an existentialist. But that’s politics, who cares.