Understanding Existentialism (review)

This well-written survey of existentialist thought comprises an introduction to some of the movement's main antecedents before launching into an analysis of the foundational existentialist texts of its key twentieth-century thinkers: Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir. It concludes with an attempt to assess the legacy of existentialism with particular reference to its relationship to poststructuralism, specifically to the work of Derrida. In its aim of providing an introduction for undergraduates new to the subject, this volume largely succeeds: jargon-free and clear, its author escorts the reader through complex material and makes helpful in-flight connections between the various philosophical positions outlined. Valuable explanatory apparatus is provided such as summaries of key points, a chronology of key events and texts and a very useful set of questions for discussion and revision pertaining to each key thinker. In this respect, a glossary would have been a further welcome addition. Some chapters are more comprehensive in their coverage and analysis than others: discussion of Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) is as thorough as can reasonably be expected in such a volume; two chapters are devoted to Sartre's L'Être et le néant (1943); Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology is assessed beyond the usual La Phénoménologie de la perception (1945) to include subsequent critiques of the Sartrean position in 'Interrogation et dialectique', in the posthumously published Le Visible et l'invisible (1964). Yet the impact of Hegel and more specifically of the neo-Hegelian revival in France in the 1930s and 1940s in the work of Jean Hyppolite and Alexandre Kojève is rather overlooked in the opening chapter to this study. This is a pity because it helps explain the rationale for the connections which were made by Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir between Hegel, Marx and existential phenomenology — connections which were to haunt much of post-war French thought. The chapter on Beauvoir's contribution to existentialism attempts a fair analysis but is poorly organized and rather brief in comparison. Analysis of L'Éthique de l'ambiguïté (1947) is sandwiched between anti-chronological sections of Le Deuxième Sexe (1949) — Beauvoir's intentions are judged on page 139 to be 'more sociological than philosophical' — in a discussion which fails to do justice to the existential, phenomenological and ethical import of 'becoming woman'. With certain caveats, therefore, this volume can be recommended as a useful means of understanding Existentialism.