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Existentialism and the Authentic Life
“What’s the point of it all?” Most of us have asked ourselves that question at one time or another. The philosophers known as the existentialists certainly did—and for the same reasons you might: war, love, politics, racism, mortality, and more. Luckily for us, they did not just ask the questions. Sartre, Beauvoir, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Fanon, and others also came up with some answers, ideas, and suggestions we can apply to our own lives today.
In the 24 fascinating lectures of Existentialism and the Authentic Life, Professor Skye C. Cleary will lead you through the writings of many existentialists to help you understand how they addressed the biggest of all questions. Writing about love, death, sex, war, plagues, intrigue, murder, deception, and more, these thinkers guide you toward living an authentic and meaningful life in a world that often seems absurd.
In this course, you’ll learn about the main issues addressed by existentialism. These include:
• Anxiety. In many ways, anxiety, choice, and freedom go hand in hand. When you realize that you are in charge of your one and only finite life, anxiety can certainly come into play.
• Freedom. The existentialists did not believe in absolute freedom. You are not free to do anything you want, for example, if you don’t have the power or if your actions harm others. However, you do have the freedom to make your own path in this life and to choose your own actions within limits.
• Responsibility. With that freedom comes responsibility, and not just responsibility for yourself. Being authentic means that you have a responsibility to support others in pursuing their authentic paths.
In Existentialism and the Authentic Life, discover how the existentialists can guide you in answering life’s most pressing questions for yourself.
In the 24 fascinating lectures of Existentialism and the Authentic Life, Professor Skye C. Cleary will lead you through the writings of many existentialists to help you understand how they addressed the biggest of all questions. Writing about love, death, sex, war, plagues, intrigue, murder, deception, and more, these thinkers guide you toward living an authentic and meaningful life in a world that often seems absurd.
In this course, you’ll learn about the main issues addressed by existentialism. These include:
• Anxiety. In many ways, anxiety, choice, and freedom go hand in hand. When you realize that you are in charge of your one and only finite life, anxiety can certainly come into play.
• Freedom. The existentialists did not believe in absolute freedom. You are not free to do anything you want, for example, if you don’t have the power or if your actions harm others. However, you do have the freedom to make your own path in this life and to choose your own actions within limits.
• Responsibility. With that freedom comes responsibility, and not just responsibility for yourself. Being authentic means that you have a responsibility to support others in pursuing their authentic paths.
In Existentialism and the Authentic Life, discover how the existentialists can guide you in answering life’s most pressing questions for yourself.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
11 pages, Audiobook
Published March 1, 2024
2 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 11, 2024
The lectures are a little heavy on Camus and Beauvoir but I can see why Cleary leans on them: Camus had a lot of very smart things to say and Beauvoir is certainly some sort of heroine for the professor. I still have not read Kierkegaard but he sounds a bit wacko. I know that everyone points to him as the first real existentialist but he was too religious for me. To say that a highly religious person could also be an existentialist seems like a paradox.
July 7, 2025
Some courses teach; others provoke. Existentialism and the Authentic Life does something rarer: it unsettles. It confronts you with the irreducible fact of your own existence and then steps aside, resisting the urge to guide, to moralize, or to resolve. In doing so, it remains faithful to the very spirit of existentialism, a philosophy defined not by conclusions, but by questions that we can neither escape nor fully answer.
To attempt to “lecture” on existentialism is, in some sense, a contradiction. How does one offer instruction on a worldview built upon radical subjectivity, where meaning is self-created, and even truth is lived rather than stated? This course does not try to tidy up the chaos. It respects the discomfort. It honors the ambiguity. And in that, it becomes less a course and more a companion for the long, inward journey.
Existentialism begins with the most incontestable truth: we exist. But from this single fact unravels a thousand uncertainties. Every other value—purpose, morality, success, love—is something we must choose and uphold ourselves. That choice, existentialists remind us, is not supported by any divine blueprint or universal telos. We invent our reasons, often defensively, sometimes defiantly. And the sobering insight the course invites us to accept is that, with sufficient distance, no one else may see any utility or meaning in our chosen path. That doesn’t make it any less real. Only less shared.
The series carefully presents how thinkers like Sartre, Kierkegaard, Beauvoir, and Camus wrestled not only with philosophical abstractions but also with their own inner contradictions. Their thought lives in tension: a tension between freedom and responsibility, authenticity and alienation, revolt and resignation. This isn’t a flaw of the philosophy; it is the philosophy. The course refuses to sand down those edges, allowing us to see how each thinker struggled to reconcile personal convictions with the absence of external certainties.
It also refuses easy solace. Freedom, the course reminds us, is not liberation from consequence. Every decision we make creates ripples that collide with others' freedoms and societal boundaries. That we must bear the weight of those choices is, paradoxically, one of the few existential constants. And yet, there is a harder truth: sometimes, the fulfillment of one’s desires necessarily entails the diminishment of another’s. A general may save a town from floods, but only if a child forfeits his innocent game. These tragic trade-offs are not errors of judgment; they are conditions of life.
What makes Existentialism and the Authentic Life remarkable is that it refuses both cynicism and romanticism. It does not lionize the existential hero as a rugged individualist above reproach, nor does it suggest that the burdens of freedom can be neatly resolved. Instead, it offers an honest meditation on what it means to take ownership of a life without guarantees and what it entails doing so alongside others who are also doing the same, often in conflicting directions.
In the end, the course doesn’t aim to leave you with a doctrine. It leaves you with a mirror. You are invited to grapple with your own absurdities, your own evasions, your own authenticity. And in doing so, you come to understand that existentialism is not a school of thought to be mastered, but a way of being to be confronted again and again.
To attempt to “lecture” on existentialism is, in some sense, a contradiction. How does one offer instruction on a worldview built upon radical subjectivity, where meaning is self-created, and even truth is lived rather than stated? This course does not try to tidy up the chaos. It respects the discomfort. It honors the ambiguity. And in that, it becomes less a course and more a companion for the long, inward journey.
Existentialism begins with the most incontestable truth: we exist. But from this single fact unravels a thousand uncertainties. Every other value—purpose, morality, success, love—is something we must choose and uphold ourselves. That choice, existentialists remind us, is not supported by any divine blueprint or universal telos. We invent our reasons, often defensively, sometimes defiantly. And the sobering insight the course invites us to accept is that, with sufficient distance, no one else may see any utility or meaning in our chosen path. That doesn’t make it any less real. Only less shared.
The series carefully presents how thinkers like Sartre, Kierkegaard, Beauvoir, and Camus wrestled not only with philosophical abstractions but also with their own inner contradictions. Their thought lives in tension: a tension between freedom and responsibility, authenticity and alienation, revolt and resignation. This isn’t a flaw of the philosophy; it is the philosophy. The course refuses to sand down those edges, allowing us to see how each thinker struggled to reconcile personal convictions with the absence of external certainties.
It also refuses easy solace. Freedom, the course reminds us, is not liberation from consequence. Every decision we make creates ripples that collide with others' freedoms and societal boundaries. That we must bear the weight of those choices is, paradoxically, one of the few existential constants. And yet, there is a harder truth: sometimes, the fulfillment of one’s desires necessarily entails the diminishment of another’s. A general may save a town from floods, but only if a child forfeits his innocent game. These tragic trade-offs are not errors of judgment; they are conditions of life.
What makes Existentialism and the Authentic Life remarkable is that it refuses both cynicism and romanticism. It does not lionize the existential hero as a rugged individualist above reproach, nor does it suggest that the burdens of freedom can be neatly resolved. Instead, it offers an honest meditation on what it means to take ownership of a life without guarantees and what it entails doing so alongside others who are also doing the same, often in conflicting directions.
In the end, the course doesn’t aim to leave you with a doctrine. It leaves you with a mirror. You are invited to grapple with your own absurdities, your own evasions, your own authenticity. And in doing so, you come to understand that existentialism is not a school of thought to be mastered, but a way of being to be confronted again and again.
September 8, 2025
I have always struggling with the meaning of existentialism and I found Ms. Cleary to be helpful in helping me grasp the meaning of this philosophy. This is a course I will at sometime listen to again.
November 19, 2025
A little depressing, but excellent lectures!
December 24, 2025
Very nice historical and contextual lecture. It goes way beyond Sartre. Too bad some lectures are complete spoilers of certain books. Will have to revisit after reading them.
December 24, 2024
I am only now restarting my learning of personal philosophy.
In my more recent past it has been Popper and Kuhn, and their and others’ ideas on more scientific philosophical issues. That was very good professionally, but didn’t really help with my personal life, which was in a long, long period of stagnation.
These lectures and the other books I have reopened or found as a result are just what I needed, maybe 10 years ago. I am giving the lectures 5 stars not because they are exceptional — they are quite good, but are not thorough studies — but because they are helping me personally so much.
In my more recent past it has been Popper and Kuhn, and their and others’ ideas on more scientific philosophical issues. That was very good professionally, but didn’t really help with my personal life, which was in a long, long period of stagnation.
These lectures and the other books I have reopened or found as a result are just what I needed, maybe 10 years ago. I am giving the lectures 5 stars not because they are exceptional — they are quite good, but are not thorough studies — but because they are helping me personally so much.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews