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On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life
While existentialism has long been associated with Parisian Left Bank philosophers; sipping cocktails in smoke-filled cafés; or a brooding, angst-filled outlook on life, Gosetti-Ferencei shows how vital and heterogeneous the movement really was. In this concise, accessible book, Gosetti-Ferencei offers a new vision of existentialism. As she lucidly demonstrates, existentialism is a rich and diverse philosophy that encourages meaningful engagement with the world around us, offering a host of fascinating concepts that pertain to life as we experience it.
The movement was as heterogeneous as it is now misunderstood, influenced by jazz music, involving diverse thinkers from around the world, challenging received ideas about the meaning of human existence. Part of the difficulty in defining existentialism is that it was never a unified philosophy but came to identify a set of shared concerns about the meaning and possibility of human freedom as it may be expressed in authentic choices, actions, and projects. Existentialists all explored how, in the absence of traditional reassurances about the meaning of life, we may transcend our present circumstances, and give our situation new meaning. With existentialism, concrete, lived experience of the single individual emerged from the shadow of abstract systems and long-defended traditions, and became subject matter in its own right for philosophical inquiry. Far from solipsistic, Gosetti-Ferencei shows that existentialist attention to the human self can be intertwined with ways of conceiving the world, our being with others, the earth, and the encompassing concept of being.
Fully appreciating what existentialism has to offer requires recognizing the rich diversity of its prospects, which involve not only anxiety, absurdity, awareness of death, and the loss of religious meaning, but also hope, the striving for happiness, and a sense of the transcendent. On Being and Becoming unpacks this philosophical movement's insights, and reveals how its core ideas promote creative responses to the question of life's meaning.
The movement was as heterogeneous as it is now misunderstood, influenced by jazz music, involving diverse thinkers from around the world, challenging received ideas about the meaning of human existence. Part of the difficulty in defining existentialism is that it was never a unified philosophy but came to identify a set of shared concerns about the meaning and possibility of human freedom as it may be expressed in authentic choices, actions, and projects. Existentialists all explored how, in the absence of traditional reassurances about the meaning of life, we may transcend our present circumstances, and give our situation new meaning. With existentialism, concrete, lived experience of the single individual emerged from the shadow of abstract systems and long-defended traditions, and became subject matter in its own right for philosophical inquiry. Far from solipsistic, Gosetti-Ferencei shows that existentialist attention to the human self can be intertwined with ways of conceiving the world, our being with others, the earth, and the encompassing concept of being.
Fully appreciating what existentialism has to offer requires recognizing the rich diversity of its prospects, which involve not only anxiety, absurdity, awareness of death, and the loss of religious meaning, but also hope, the striving for happiness, and a sense of the transcendent. On Being and Becoming unpacks this philosophical movement's insights, and reveals how its core ideas promote creative responses to the question of life's meaning.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published November 9, 2020
45 people are currently reading
1608 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
12 books7 followersJennifer Gosetti-Ferencei is Professor and Kurrelmeyer Chair in German and Professor in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include Continental philosophy, particularly phenomenology and existentialism, aesthetics and the philosophy of literature, cognitive literary theory, poetics, philosophy of imagination, modernism, especially modern German literature, and literary ecology. She has previously taught in modern languages departments in the UK (Oxford and Birmingham, at the latter of which she was Chair and Professor of German and Comparative Literature) and was Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. She received a DPhil in German and MSt in European Literature from Oxford; MA and PhD in Philosophy from Villanova; and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. For 2023, she has been appointed Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
Gosetti-Ferencei’s research has included books on existentialism, on the philosophy of imagination, on the construction of the exotic in German modernism, on the relationship between the quotidian or everyday experience and ecstatic reflection in phenomenology, modern art and literature, and a critical reading of poetics in Heidegger and Hölderlin. Her work explores the boundaries between philosophy and literature, poetic experience and cognition, and in addition to Hölderlin her work has engaged the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke, Wallace Stevens, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, and many other modernist writers. Her work in aesthetics has engaged the visual art of Paul Cézanne, Cy Twombly, Giorgio Morandi, Alfred Kubin, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. Her book of poetry, After the Palace Burns, won The Paris Review Prize.
In On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life (Oxford University Press, 2020), Gosetti-Ferencei presents a new interpretation of existentialist thought and literature, exploring, beyond the existentialism of the French phenomenologists, its historical origins in nineteenth century German, Danish, and Russian thought, contributions to existentialism of African-American thinkers, and its relevance for the social and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.
Gosetti-Ferencei’s previous book, The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World (Columbia University Press, 2018), is grounded in philosophy and a range of other disciplines, including cognitive theory, evolutionary anthropology, aesthetics and literary theory, and offers a new theory of imagination as both emerging from the wider cognitive ecology of our embodied life and engagement with the world, and affording its transformation and transcendence. In contrast to a long tradition of philosophy that sequestered imagination from cognition proper, in this work Gosetti-Ferencei demonstrates how imagination must be understood as multimodal, shaping our ordinary experience and affording the heightened manifestations of creativity in scientific discovery and artistic and literary creation. Among other accomplishments of the book is the development of an understanding of cognitive play (drawing from Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, and Husserl), which show how creativity affords ‘situated transcendence.’ and in so doing both relies upon, and diverges from, the operations of ordinary thinking. This expansive and probing account of imagination demonstrates its reach across human experience and its crucial role in shaping and transforming our relationship to the world.
Previous works include Exotic Spaces in German Modernism (Oxford University Press 2011), in which Gosetti-Ferencei illuminates the construction of the ‘exotic’ in modern German literature. The rendering of spaces projected as exotic is shown to situate examination of the modern self and its relation to a foreign other, sometimes exploiting, otherwise destabilizing, colonialist or Eurocentric assumptions. She engages prose works of Hofmannsthal, Dauthendey, Hesse, Benn, Brecht, Ku
Gosetti-Ferencei’s research has included books on existentialism, on the philosophy of imagination, on the construction of the exotic in German modernism, on the relationship between the quotidian or everyday experience and ecstatic reflection in phenomenology, modern art and literature, and a critical reading of poetics in Heidegger and Hölderlin. Her work explores the boundaries between philosophy and literature, poetic experience and cognition, and in addition to Hölderlin her work has engaged the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke, Wallace Stevens, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, and many other modernist writers. Her work in aesthetics has engaged the visual art of Paul Cézanne, Cy Twombly, Giorgio Morandi, Alfred Kubin, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. Her book of poetry, After the Palace Burns, won The Paris Review Prize.
In On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life (Oxford University Press, 2020), Gosetti-Ferencei presents a new interpretation of existentialist thought and literature, exploring, beyond the existentialism of the French phenomenologists, its historical origins in nineteenth century German, Danish, and Russian thought, contributions to existentialism of African-American thinkers, and its relevance for the social and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.
Gosetti-Ferencei’s previous book, The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World (Columbia University Press, 2018), is grounded in philosophy and a range of other disciplines, including cognitive theory, evolutionary anthropology, aesthetics and literary theory, and offers a new theory of imagination as both emerging from the wider cognitive ecology of our embodied life and engagement with the world, and affording its transformation and transcendence. In contrast to a long tradition of philosophy that sequestered imagination from cognition proper, in this work Gosetti-Ferencei demonstrates how imagination must be understood as multimodal, shaping our ordinary experience and affording the heightened manifestations of creativity in scientific discovery and artistic and literary creation. Among other accomplishments of the book is the development of an understanding of cognitive play (drawing from Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, and Husserl), which show how creativity affords ‘situated transcendence.’ and in so doing both relies upon, and diverges from, the operations of ordinary thinking. This expansive and probing account of imagination demonstrates its reach across human experience and its crucial role in shaping and transforming our relationship to the world.
Previous works include Exotic Spaces in German Modernism (Oxford University Press 2011), in which Gosetti-Ferencei illuminates the construction of the ‘exotic’ in modern German literature. The rendering of spaces projected as exotic is shown to situate examination of the modern self and its relation to a foreign other, sometimes exploiting, otherwise destabilizing, colonialist or Eurocentric assumptions. She engages prose works of Hofmannsthal, Dauthendey, Hesse, Benn, Brecht, Ku
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September 2, 2021
The take-away message from this book :
زندگی اگزیستانسیال:بودن یا شدن
You strive to live a good and fulfilling life. You’re aware that you only have this life, and you don’t want to waste it. This awareness might even cause you anxiety. After all, you can’t be sure that the decisions you make now are going to benefit you later.
This anxiety is the bread and butter of existentialism. Unlike most modern philosophies, rife with abstract theorizing, existentialism takes philosophy back to its roots as a practice of life. Its starting point is the human individual faced with the daunting prospect of choosing how to live.
This book explains how existentialism brings some clarity to this fundamental task by outlining what it means to live life with freedom, happiness, and authenticity
Living authentically means relating to other beings in a way that doesn’t reduce them to mere objects, but instead remains attuned to the profound possibilities inherent within them.
Existentialists identify three fundamental types of being: the self, the other, and the world. To live authentically, you must attune yourself appropriately to each of them. Relate authentically to yourself by not identifying too closely with any image of yourself and remaining aware of your freedom to choose. Relate to others authentically by never treating them as objects, but with the same respect for their freedom that you would demand for yourself. And, finally, relate authentically to the natural world by not reducing it to a mere resource to be exploited. Promote harmony with nature by rekindling the sense of mystery and wonder it once inspired in us.
Actionable advice:
Try an authenticity thought experiment to identify areas in your life that you’d like to change.
Nietzsche once developed a thought experiment that he called the eternal return. He envisioned this experiment as a kind of device that would help you to make more authentic decisions. For this experiment, ask yourself what changes you would make to your life were you to know that you would have to relive it, exactly as it is, again and again for all eternity. What do you think? Is there anything you would change, or can you honestly say that you’d be content to live your life over and over again, forever?
..........
Existentialism was a diverse philosophical movement centered on the theme of human freedom.
Today, the word existentialism tends to evoke images of fashionable intellectuals smoking cigarettes in trendy Parisian cafés. This is likely because it was in the French context that existentialism first erupted into mainstream awareness. The movement's figureheads, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, were the first existentialist philosophers to enjoy celebrity-like status. And the couple’s famously open relationship and bohemian lifestyle would become synonymous with an existentialist way of life.
But this perception of existentialism is far narrower than the movement really was. For one thing, its main ideas had already begun to develop in the nineteenth century with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Both of these thinkers, in their own ways, sought to rescue authentic individuality from an increasingly homogenized mass culture. Other influences include the German phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, and also great works of literature, like the masterpieces of Dostoevsky and Kafka, all of which explore existentialist themes.
Existentialism, then, isn’t a single, unified philosophy – it’s more a collection of works that focus on similar problems. That being said, all existentialist writers agree on a few basic principles.
To begin with, all existentialists sought to reorient philosophy away from abstract theorizing and back to the real problems of life as people actually experience them. All existentialist philosophy begins from the position that a human being experiences the world from a first-person, subjective point of view. In fact, they remind us, it’s only from this point of view that philosophy has any value at all.
The unique nature of our first-person perspective means that each person’s experience of the world is profoundly personal, and can never be interchanged with anyone else’s point of view. So, in the end, you, and you alone, are capable of making sense of your experiences and deciding how to act.
For this same reason, existentialists tend to eschew traditional interpretations of the meaning of life – like the ones found in religious and philosophical doctrines. While it’s fine to draw inspiration from anywhere, existentialists caution against blindly adopting prepackaged answers to the big questions in life.
To existentialism’s credit, it’s not a philosophy that tells you how to live your life. Rather, it seeks to orient you to these big questions so that you can answer them for yourself.
Lastly, all existentialists emphasize human freedom. While you can’t control everything in life, much of it unfolds according to the choices and commitments you make. You may not like it, but you’re responsible for creating the life you want, as well as the person you want to become.
Blinkist.com
زندگی اگزیستانسیال:بودن یا شدن
You strive to live a good and fulfilling life. You’re aware that you only have this life, and you don’t want to waste it. This awareness might even cause you anxiety. After all, you can’t be sure that the decisions you make now are going to benefit you later.
This anxiety is the bread and butter of existentialism. Unlike most modern philosophies, rife with abstract theorizing, existentialism takes philosophy back to its roots as a practice of life. Its starting point is the human individual faced with the daunting prospect of choosing how to live.
This book explains how existentialism brings some clarity to this fundamental task by outlining what it means to live life with freedom, happiness, and authenticity
Living authentically means relating to other beings in a way that doesn’t reduce them to mere objects, but instead remains attuned to the profound possibilities inherent within them.
Existentialists identify three fundamental types of being: the self, the other, and the world. To live authentically, you must attune yourself appropriately to each of them. Relate authentically to yourself by not identifying too closely with any image of yourself and remaining aware of your freedom to choose. Relate to others authentically by never treating them as objects, but with the same respect for their freedom that you would demand for yourself. And, finally, relate authentically to the natural world by not reducing it to a mere resource to be exploited. Promote harmony with nature by rekindling the sense of mystery and wonder it once inspired in us.
Actionable advice:
Try an authenticity thought experiment to identify areas in your life that you’d like to change.
Nietzsche once developed a thought experiment that he called the eternal return. He envisioned this experiment as a kind of device that would help you to make more authentic decisions. For this experiment, ask yourself what changes you would make to your life were you to know that you would have to relive it, exactly as it is, again and again for all eternity. What do you think? Is there anything you would change, or can you honestly say that you’d be content to live your life over and over again, forever?
..........
Existentialism was a diverse philosophical movement centered on the theme of human freedom.
Today, the word existentialism tends to evoke images of fashionable intellectuals smoking cigarettes in trendy Parisian cafés. This is likely because it was in the French context that existentialism first erupted into mainstream awareness. The movement's figureheads, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, were the first existentialist philosophers to enjoy celebrity-like status. And the couple’s famously open relationship and bohemian lifestyle would become synonymous with an existentialist way of life.
But this perception of existentialism is far narrower than the movement really was. For one thing, its main ideas had already begun to develop in the nineteenth century with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Both of these thinkers, in their own ways, sought to rescue authentic individuality from an increasingly homogenized mass culture. Other influences include the German phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, and also great works of literature, like the masterpieces of Dostoevsky and Kafka, all of which explore existentialist themes.
Existentialism, then, isn’t a single, unified philosophy – it’s more a collection of works that focus on similar problems. That being said, all existentialist writers agree on a few basic principles.
To begin with, all existentialists sought to reorient philosophy away from abstract theorizing and back to the real problems of life as people actually experience them. All existentialist philosophy begins from the position that a human being experiences the world from a first-person, subjective point of view. In fact, they remind us, it’s only from this point of view that philosophy has any value at all.
The unique nature of our first-person perspective means that each person’s experience of the world is profoundly personal, and can never be interchanged with anyone else’s point of view. So, in the end, you, and you alone, are capable of making sense of your experiences and deciding how to act.
For this same reason, existentialists tend to eschew traditional interpretations of the meaning of life – like the ones found in religious and philosophical doctrines. While it’s fine to draw inspiration from anywhere, existentialists caution against blindly adopting prepackaged answers to the big questions in life.
To existentialism’s credit, it’s not a philosophy that tells you how to live your life. Rather, it seeks to orient you to these big questions so that you can answer them for yourself.
Lastly, all existentialists emphasize human freedom. While you can’t control everything in life, much of it unfolds according to the choices and commitments you make. You may not like it, but you’re responsible for creating the life you want, as well as the person you want to become.
Blinkist.com
October 16, 2025
A great introduction to existentialism and existentialist philosophers. Very readable and a good source of inspiration. I loved how the author compared and highlighted the differences and similarities between the philosophers and let the reader choose their own path. I felt free to explore my own beliefs. Take what applies to me, leave what doesn’t. SUCH a good read!
Read
September 2, 2021Living authentically means relating to other beings in a way that doesn’t reduce them to mere objects, but instead remains attuned to the profound possibilities inherent within them.
Existentialists identify three fundamental types of being: the self, the other, and the world. To live authentically, you must attune yourself appropriately to each of them. Relate authentically to yourself by not identifying too closely with any image of yourself and remaining aware of your freedom to choose. Relate to others authentically by never treating them as objects, but with the same respect for their freedom that you would demand for yourself. And, finally, relate authentically to the natural world by not reducing it to a mere resource to be exploited. Promote harmony with nature by rekindling the sense of mystery and wonder it once inspired in us.
Actionable advice:
Try an authenticity thought experiment to identify areas in your life that you’d like to change.
Nietzsche once developed a thought experiment that he called the eternal return. He envisioned this experiment as a kind of device that would help you to make more authentic decisions. For this experiment, ask yourself what changes you would make to your life were you to know that you would have to relive it, exactly as it is, again and again for all eternity. What do you think? Is there anything you would change, or can you honestly say that you’d be content to live your life over and over again, forever?
---
Our freedom depends on the recognition of others.
All this talk of authentic individuality – a bit egocentric, no? And isn’t it insensitive to say that people are always free when so many people are oppressed?
These are common criticisms of existentialism, but, in fact, many existentialist writers anticipated these criticisms and accounted for them in their philosophy. Simone de Beauvoir, for example, argued that in order for us to live fully fledged authentic lives, we have to recognize each other's freedom.
Because, just as we depend on others for our physical survival, we also depend on them for the survival of our sense of self, through their recognition of us as people who have value and freedom. But, just as others have the power to recognize us as free subjects, they also have the power to deny us that freedom by treating us like objects.
In a famous passage, the philosopher René Descartes once described how he couldn’t be sure that the people walking by outside his window were even conscious. He insisted that, for all he knew, they could be mechanical automatons walking around in hats and coats.
Several centuries later, Sartre incorporated this insight into his own thought. He argued that, just as it was possible for Descartes to see the people outside his window as potential objects, it’s also possible to treat people as objects, too.
The most extreme case of this is slavery, in which one group of people treats another group as objects to be used and traded.
But, Sartre argued, even in supposedly free and equal societies, people objectify each other all the time. For example, when you’re dealing with the clerk at the post office, it probably doesn’t cross your mind that this person has desires and aspirations and struggles just like you. From your perspective, this person is just a letter-stamper.
For the most part, this kind of objectification is relatively harmless. It becomes problematic when people objectify you in ways that harm your self-esteem and limit your sense of freedom.
A common example of this kind of objectification is shame. As Sartre argued, when someone shames you for something, he imposes a very one-sided and negative image of you onto your consciousness. Not only does this feel bad, but it limits the way you think about yourself, reducing your possibilities for living.
Shaming someone, then, is not an authentic way of relating to others. Authentic relationships mean trying your best not to reduce others to mere objects, and instead recognizing others as free and dynamic subjects just like you.
---
Existentialism was a diverse philosophical movement centered on the theme of human freedom.
Today, the word existentialism tends to evoke images of fashionable intellectuals smoking cigarettes in trendy Parisian cafés. This is likely because it was in the French context that existentialism first erupted into mainstream awareness. The movement's figureheads, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, were the first existentialist philosophers to enjoy celebrity-like status. And the couple’s famously open relationship and bohemian lifestyle would become synonymous with an existentialist way of life.
But this perception of existentialism is far narrower than the movement really was. For one thing, its main ideas had already begun to develop in the nineteenth century with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Both of these thinkers, in their own ways, sought to rescue authentic individuality from an increasingly homogenized mass culture. Other influences include the German phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, and also great works of literature, like the masterpieces of Dostoevsky and Kafka, all of which explore existentialist themes.
Existentialism, then, isn’t a single, unified philosophy – it’s more a collection of works that focus on similar problems. That being said, all existentialist writers agree on a few basic principles.
To begin with, all existentialists sought to reorient philosophy away from abstract theorizing and back to the real problems of life as people actually experience them. All existentialist philosophy begins from the position that a human being experiences the world from a first-person, subjective point of view. In fact, they remind us, it’s only from this point of view that philosophy has any value at all.
The unique nature of our first-person perspective means that each person’s experience of the world is profoundly personal, and can never be interchanged with anyone else’s point of view. So, in the end, you, and you alone, are capable of making sense of your experiences and deciding how to act.
For this same reason, existentialists tend to eschew traditional interpretations of the meaning of life – like the ones found in religious and philosophical doctrines. While it’s fine to draw inspiration from anywhere, existentialists caution against blindly adopting prepackaged answers to the big questions in life.
To existentialism’s credit, it’s not a philosophy that tells you how to live your life. Rather, it seeks to orient you to these big questions so that you can answer them for yourself.
Lastly, all existentialists emphasize human freedom. While you can’t control everything in life, much of it unfolds according to the choices and commitments you make. You may not like it, but you’re responsible for creating the life you want, as well as the person you want to become.
Existentialists identify three fundamental types of being: the self, the other, and the world. To live authentically, you must attune yourself appropriately to each of them. Relate authentically to yourself by not identifying too closely with any image of yourself and remaining aware of your freedom to choose. Relate to others authentically by never treating them as objects, but with the same respect for their freedom that you would demand for yourself. And, finally, relate authentically to the natural world by not reducing it to a mere resource to be exploited. Promote harmony with nature by rekindling the sense of mystery and wonder it once inspired in us.
Actionable advice:
Try an authenticity thought experiment to identify areas in your life that you’d like to change.
Nietzsche once developed a thought experiment that he called the eternal return. He envisioned this experiment as a kind of device that would help you to make more authentic decisions. For this experiment, ask yourself what changes you would make to your life were you to know that you would have to relive it, exactly as it is, again and again for all eternity. What do you think? Is there anything you would change, or can you honestly say that you’d be content to live your life over and over again, forever?
---
Our freedom depends on the recognition of others.
All this talk of authentic individuality – a bit egocentric, no? And isn’t it insensitive to say that people are always free when so many people are oppressed?
These are common criticisms of existentialism, but, in fact, many existentialist writers anticipated these criticisms and accounted for them in their philosophy. Simone de Beauvoir, for example, argued that in order for us to live fully fledged authentic lives, we have to recognize each other's freedom.
Because, just as we depend on others for our physical survival, we also depend on them for the survival of our sense of self, through their recognition of us as people who have value and freedom. But, just as others have the power to recognize us as free subjects, they also have the power to deny us that freedom by treating us like objects.
In a famous passage, the philosopher René Descartes once described how he couldn’t be sure that the people walking by outside his window were even conscious. He insisted that, for all he knew, they could be mechanical automatons walking around in hats and coats.
Several centuries later, Sartre incorporated this insight into his own thought. He argued that, just as it was possible for Descartes to see the people outside his window as potential objects, it’s also possible to treat people as objects, too.
The most extreme case of this is slavery, in which one group of people treats another group as objects to be used and traded.
But, Sartre argued, even in supposedly free and equal societies, people objectify each other all the time. For example, when you’re dealing with the clerk at the post office, it probably doesn’t cross your mind that this person has desires and aspirations and struggles just like you. From your perspective, this person is just a letter-stamper.
For the most part, this kind of objectification is relatively harmless. It becomes problematic when people objectify you in ways that harm your self-esteem and limit your sense of freedom.
A common example of this kind of objectification is shame. As Sartre argued, when someone shames you for something, he imposes a very one-sided and negative image of you onto your consciousness. Not only does this feel bad, but it limits the way you think about yourself, reducing your possibilities for living.
Shaming someone, then, is not an authentic way of relating to others. Authentic relationships mean trying your best not to reduce others to mere objects, and instead recognizing others as free and dynamic subjects just like you.
---
Existentialism was a diverse philosophical movement centered on the theme of human freedom.
Today, the word existentialism tends to evoke images of fashionable intellectuals smoking cigarettes in trendy Parisian cafés. This is likely because it was in the French context that existentialism first erupted into mainstream awareness. The movement's figureheads, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, were the first existentialist philosophers to enjoy celebrity-like status. And the couple’s famously open relationship and bohemian lifestyle would become synonymous with an existentialist way of life.
But this perception of existentialism is far narrower than the movement really was. For one thing, its main ideas had already begun to develop in the nineteenth century with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Both of these thinkers, in their own ways, sought to rescue authentic individuality from an increasingly homogenized mass culture. Other influences include the German phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, and also great works of literature, like the masterpieces of Dostoevsky and Kafka, all of which explore existentialist themes.
Existentialism, then, isn’t a single, unified philosophy – it’s more a collection of works that focus on similar problems. That being said, all existentialist writers agree on a few basic principles.
To begin with, all existentialists sought to reorient philosophy away from abstract theorizing and back to the real problems of life as people actually experience them. All existentialist philosophy begins from the position that a human being experiences the world from a first-person, subjective point of view. In fact, they remind us, it’s only from this point of view that philosophy has any value at all.
The unique nature of our first-person perspective means that each person’s experience of the world is profoundly personal, and can never be interchanged with anyone else’s point of view. So, in the end, you, and you alone, are capable of making sense of your experiences and deciding how to act.
For this same reason, existentialists tend to eschew traditional interpretations of the meaning of life – like the ones found in religious and philosophical doctrines. While it’s fine to draw inspiration from anywhere, existentialists caution against blindly adopting prepackaged answers to the big questions in life.
To existentialism’s credit, it’s not a philosophy that tells you how to live your life. Rather, it seeks to orient you to these big questions so that you can answer them for yourself.
Lastly, all existentialists emphasize human freedom. While you can’t control everything in life, much of it unfolds according to the choices and commitments you make. You may not like it, but you’re responsible for creating the life you want, as well as the person you want to become.
October 19, 2025
The book on being and becoming – an existentialist approach to life is as engaging a book as it is a frustrating one. The good and the could-be-better of Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei’s work are neatly illustrated in two adjacent chapters towards the end of the book.
Chapter 13 - Being in the crowd – anonymity, conformity, and individuality in modern life (from the title alone, you’ll know whether this book is for you through the use of the Heideggerian noun ‘being in the crowd’). This chapter exemplifies the book. It begins by teeing up a classic worry:
Chapters close with a drawing together of the various threads of thinking.
The author does well to tackle salient modern challenges through the lens of existentialism. Were this book described as an innovative history of the topic, one that focusses on past thinkers, but with an awareness of how their work maps to today’s problems, it would be a success. But in a book that claims to describe an existentialist ‘approach to life’, it does not go far enough. It spends too long on the historical and gets too bogged down in the nuances that separate key thinkers.
What I think the book could have been – a true existentialist approach to life - is teased in Chapter 12 - on seeking and taking (and giving) advice. This tiny four-and-a-half-page chapter asks how we draw inspiration from others. It discusses Sartre’s famous case of being asked to give advice during World War II by a man who could not decide whether to fight or look after his mother. Sartre uses this example to argue that there is no fixed value which could help the man solve his problem (in the manner, say, a utilitarian may argue). Instead, whatever the man does will become his value. “We may ordinarily think our values dictate our actions … Sartre argued the opposite: any values the young man may hold are not the cause, but the result, of his choices”.
When we ask for advice, we generally know what sort of response we will get: “we contribute to our decision by choosing the sort of advice we invite”. The student asking an atheistic philosophy professor is likely to get a very different response than if he had asked a priest or his aunt.
The author goes on to describe a similar time she was asked for advice by a student considering a second tour in the military. She “prevaricated” and eventually wrote to “wish him well”; the student was later fatally wounded. The author reflects on how that student had taken “her class on existentialism, so he would have known the view that to ask me was already to generate value in whatever direction he thought I might advise”.
This discussion is the best part of the book: routed in Sartre and the tradition but applying it in the present to thorny, real problems. Unfortunately, the author leaves it there. A paragraph later, we are back with Rilke for his views on the matter.
This chapter highlights for me what the book could have been. The brief foray into the discussion of values (do we ‘have’ them or are they created in our actions) could have fruitfully been developed into a consideration of how we decide our values, what makes good values (or is that a meaningful question), what do modern existentialist philosophers have to say on the matter and so on. We get glimmers, like the discussion of social media in the wonderfully named chapter ‘I selfie, therefore I am’, yet in a book dubbed an ‘existential approach to life’ I expected more about, well, life today
This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book; I’m excited to see what Gosetti-Ferencei writes next. With more focus on the modern, less discussion of the history of philosophy and less needlessly complex language, this book could have been a top tier work of popular philosophy.
Chapter 13 - Being in the crowd – anonymity, conformity, and individuality in modern life (from the title alone, you’ll know whether this book is for you through the use of the Heideggerian noun ‘being in the crowd’). This chapter exemplifies the book. It begins by teeing up a classic worry:
If you have ever commuted to work on a packed subway train … you may have feared your individuality submerging into an indistinct mass … How can one be ‘oneself’ within a crowd, or in a culture of the ‘masses’?What follows is a few pages of mostly chronological discussion of what existentialist thinkers thought (or may have thought) about this challenge. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are usually in the vanguard; Sartre, De Beauvoir and a smattering of less well-known names bring up the rear (Georg Simmel in this chapter, for instance). In a nice addition, the author brings in novelists like Kafka and Dostoevsky as well to broaden the range of ideas.
Chapters close with a drawing together of the various threads of thinking.
Being an authentic individual in an age of mass culture does not have to mean cultivating isolation from our fellow human beings … While the crowd can threaten us with anonymity, we can cultivate our authentic modes of being with others through our recognition of others’ individuality as well as of our own.This illustrates the good and the bad of the writing: challenging thinking is helpfully centred on intelligible topics, such as feeling like a ‘non-playable character’ (NPC) on crowded public transport (something I was once called by a teenager on a commuter train). Yet at the same time, the author falls into use of abstruse terms like our ‘authentic modes of being with others’ that make it hard to see who this book is for if not those sadists who have managed to get through Heidegger’s notoriously difficult Being and Time.
The author does well to tackle salient modern challenges through the lens of existentialism. Were this book described as an innovative history of the topic, one that focusses on past thinkers, but with an awareness of how their work maps to today’s problems, it would be a success. But in a book that claims to describe an existentialist ‘approach to life’, it does not go far enough. It spends too long on the historical and gets too bogged down in the nuances that separate key thinkers.
What I think the book could have been – a true existentialist approach to life - is teased in Chapter 12 - on seeking and taking (and giving) advice. This tiny four-and-a-half-page chapter asks how we draw inspiration from others. It discusses Sartre’s famous case of being asked to give advice during World War II by a man who could not decide whether to fight or look after his mother. Sartre uses this example to argue that there is no fixed value which could help the man solve his problem (in the manner, say, a utilitarian may argue). Instead, whatever the man does will become his value. “We may ordinarily think our values dictate our actions … Sartre argued the opposite: any values the young man may hold are not the cause, but the result, of his choices”.
When we ask for advice, we generally know what sort of response we will get: “we contribute to our decision by choosing the sort of advice we invite”. The student asking an atheistic philosophy professor is likely to get a very different response than if he had asked a priest or his aunt.
The author goes on to describe a similar time she was asked for advice by a student considering a second tour in the military. She “prevaricated” and eventually wrote to “wish him well”; the student was later fatally wounded. The author reflects on how that student had taken “her class on existentialism, so he would have known the view that to ask me was already to generate value in whatever direction he thought I might advise”.
This discussion is the best part of the book: routed in Sartre and the tradition but applying it in the present to thorny, real problems. Unfortunately, the author leaves it there. A paragraph later, we are back with Rilke for his views on the matter.
This chapter highlights for me what the book could have been. The brief foray into the discussion of values (do we ‘have’ them or are they created in our actions) could have fruitfully been developed into a consideration of how we decide our values, what makes good values (or is that a meaningful question), what do modern existentialist philosophers have to say on the matter and so on. We get glimmers, like the discussion of social media in the wonderfully named chapter ‘I selfie, therefore I am’, yet in a book dubbed an ‘existential approach to life’ I expected more about, well, life today
This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book; I’m excited to see what Gosetti-Ferencei writes next. With more focus on the modern, less discussion of the history of philosophy and less needlessly complex language, this book could have been a top tier work of popular philosophy.
April 11, 2025
Certainly not a heavy academic tome on Existentialism nor an Existentialism for Dummies. It doesn’t particularly tie the philosophy down, but takes in a series of thinkers who might be classed under the existentialist tag, even some who rejected the label, and takes various topics such as ‘the self’ ‘others’ and the like and considers what those philosophers thought about those things. It is an interesting read, but I imagine it’s having a fair grounding in the thinkers that makes it enjoyable and having no grounding in the topic might make it just confusing. Enjoyed!
July 31, 2024
I found this to be an excellent exploration of existentialist ideas and thinkers — one that helped me understand and internalize them in a way that I hadn’t with previous readings — and the author’s guide to applying these ideas to guiding our own lives was exactly the practical approach to this philosophy that I was looking for. Could not recommend this book more highly.
September 5, 2021
Existentialism focuses on the freedom to choose and maintaining that freedom. This extends to others, as Kant would have it, to demand freedom for others as well. How that freedom should be exercised in living one's life is less apparent.
October 1, 2021
If you're trying to wrap your head around existentialism, this book provides a fairly good summary and commentary.
It covers the historical development of existentialism, its different facets as well as how it can be applied to life.
It covers the historical development of existentialism, its different facets as well as how it can be applied to life.
August 21, 2021
One interest counterpoint to books that encourage the creation of habits. By living just through habit one is limiting freedom of choice and not considering all the possibilities.
April 7, 2022
Excellent read. It is great for those who are on the journey of understanding themselves and moving towards a growth mindset.
January 2, 2025
A short introduction to existentialist history, concepts, and philosophers.
Not very useful for giving sense to your own life, but a good starting point for those interested in existentialism.
Not very useful for giving sense to your own life, but a good starting point for those interested in existentialism.
August 8, 2025
Less a guide on the existentialist life and more a history and critical examination of existential thinkers and their works. An interesting and worthwhile read for anyone interested in the topic.
May 2, 2025
FRANKLIN 142.78 EXAMINED MARCH 2021
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