Common threads · 6 books
Freedom, absurdity, commitment, and meaning. These books offer arguments about living well rather than promises of an easy answer.
Books, curator notes, and what to read next.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Read Sartre's defense of existentialism as an argument about choice and responsibility, then test its account of freedom.
Next: The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
Camus asks how to live with the absurd. Track his argument about revolt without assuming he shares every existentialist conclusion.
Next: The Ethics of Ambiguity
Simone de Beauvoir
Beauvoir connects freedom with the freedom of others. Ask how situated lives complicate a purely individual account of choice.
Next: The Sovereignty of Good
Iris Murdoch
Bring Murdoch’s account of attention into the question of a worthwhile life. Ask how seeing another person clearly can change what you regard as meaningful.
Next: The Reasons of Love
Harry G. Frankfurt
Frankfurt asks how love gives us reasons and shapes what we care about. Test the account against conflicting commitments.
Next: Meaning in Life and Why It Matters
Susan Wolf
Wolf combines personal engagement with worthwhile projects. Compare meaningfulness with happiness and moral goodness.
Also includes Existentialism Is a Humanism
Faith, temporality, consciousness, absurdity, and situated freedom. Follow a set of influential encounters without flattening their authors into one school.
Also includes The Myth of Sisyphus
Study the fear of death, the value of a finite life, and our dependence on a future we will never personally see.
Also includes Meaning in Life and Why It Matters
Pleasure, dignity, luck, and flourishing. Test the idea that a good life is simply a life with more happiness in it.
