Existentialism in Philosophy and Literature

Philosophy and literary experience

Freedom, responsibility, authenticity, anxiety, and meaning connect these readings, but they do not add up to one doctrine. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are important precursors; Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are central figures in the later movement. A fictional speaker’s self-justification is evidence to examine, not automatically the author’s philosophy.

The selected corpus passages below come from Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Joyce. Kierkegaard, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus are contextual references here, not advertised as available primary texts.

Historical background: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Existentialism.

Key Reading Paths

1. Nietzsche: the crisis of inherited meaning

   Read the madman passage in Book Third (§125), distinguishing the speaker’s alarm from a simple celebration of unbelief.

2. Dostoevsky: freedom against calculated interests

   Ask whether refusing a supposedly rational advantage establishes freedom or creates another kind of dependence.

3. Kafka: a stranger before authority

   Read the opening demands for permission as a problem of recognition and belonging.

Questions for comparison

These precursors and literary comparisons ask what freedom might mean when inherited answers lose their force. Attend to the difference between announcing a position and finding a way to live with its consequences.

• Who hears the crisis of meaning? Read Nietzsche’s madman in relation to his listeners. How does their response change the meaning of the announcement, and why does the speaker describe himself as arriving too early?
• Can a refusal prove that we are free? The Underground Man resists accounts of predictable rational interest. When might choosing against advantage express freedom, and when might it become another compulsion?
• Who grants a person a place? In The Castle, follow K.’s attempts to establish his standing. What happens to agency when the authority that should recognize it remains difficult to locate or interpret?
• Is self-knowledge liberating? Compare a character’s explanations of himself with what he actually does. Can intense reflection widen the possibilities of action while also providing reasons to avoid them?
• What would responsibility look like without certainty? Choose a moment where a character cannot secure an adequate explanation or guarantee. What grounds for action remain, and who else is affected by the choice?

Teaching with these readings

Begin with a difficult freedom. Ask whether a choice is necessarily free because someone insists on making it. Let students formulate competing answers, then read the Underground Man’s resistance to calculated advantage.

Keep the speaker and the audience together. Compare the madman’s unsuccessful address with K.’s search for recognition. Students should examine a scene of communication rather than extracting a statement as a complete philosophical position.

Let a literary detail disturb the concept. Have groups choose a gesture, contradiction, or failed exchange that complicates their account of freedom. Use it to distinguish the character’s view of himself from the possibilities the narrative reveals.

Develop a question across forms. Students compare how an aphoristic scene, a first-person narrator, or a novel’s institutions make uncertainty available. Their final claim should specify the kind of freedom at stake. Preserve the guide’s scope: these readings are routes into existential questions, not a roster of self-identified existentialists.

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