Below are some recommendations and reflections, plus a few novel suggestions to complement your Existentialism course.

1. Biographies

Kierkegaard

Clare Carlisle, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
This is one of the more accessible and recent (though not brand new) full-length biographies. Carlisle, a philosopher herself, offers psychological insight, situating Kierkegaard in his Copenhagen context. The Guardian+1
Stephen Backhouse, Kierkegaard: A Single Life
This is more recent in terms of narrative approach, not a dense scholarly tome but a fluid, character-driven life that reads almost like a novel. It draws on material (“newly come to light,” per the publisher) to clarify his personal relationships, especially his complicated relation to the Church. Zondervan Academic
Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography
While older (first English translation 2005), this is still one of the most comprehensive scholarly biographies. Garff’s work is detailed, weaving together Kierkegaard’s life, cultural milieu, and writings with a novelist’s sensibility. Barnes & Noble+1

My suggestion for your course: Philosopher of the Heart for readability and teaching; pair it with Garff if you have students who might want a deeper dive or are writing a term paper.

Simone de Beauvoir

Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography
This is still among the definitive full-scale biographies. Bair spent years interviewing de Beauvoir and people close to her; she delves into de Beauvoir’s intellectual and emotional life, her partnerships (especially with Sartre), and her existential commitment. Simon & Schuster+1
Constance Borde & Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, The Prime of Life
While not strictly a third-party biography, this is volume 2 of de Beauvoir’s own memoirs; the recent reissue (or translation) makes it more accessible. Penguin Books Australia
Megan Burke, Simone de Beauvoir: The Basics
If you're looking for a more classroom-friendly, concise companion, this is great: it gives intellectual context, maps her major works (like The Second Sex), and explains her existential ethics. Routledge
Esther Demoulin, Beauvoir et Sartre. Écrire côte à côte
For a more literary / relational take: this recent work (discussed in Le Monde) explores the couple as a kind of co-creative, literary institution—very helpful for understanding how existentialist ideas played out in their shared life. Le Monde.fr

My suggestion for your course: Use Bair’s biography for a full life narrative; supplement with The Prime of Life (memoir) for de Beauvoir’s voice; and perhaps include Demoulin’s book if you want to emphasize her relational and generative intellectual partnership with Sartre.

2. American Fiction to Complement the Course

Since you're already using Richard Ford’s Bascombe novels (which are existential in their way, even if not explicitly philosophical), here are some other American or U.S.-set novels that resonate with existential themes and might pair well with your course texts (Flynn, Bakewell, Alessandri):

Walker Percy – The Moviegoer
This is a classic existential novel set in the American South. The protagonist Binx Bolling experiences alienation, a search for meaning, and a kind of quiet despair. Wikipedia
John Williams – Stoner
Often recommended for its existential depth: a quiet, inward life, with disappointments, solitude, fidelity to one’s inner world. Several readers and critics see Stoner as an “unlikely existential hero.” Reddit
Richard Wright – The Outsider
A more overtly existential novel: Wright engages with freedom, race, identity, and meaninglessness in mid-20th-century America. Wikipedia
Richard Price – Lazarus Man
More recent (2024-ish) novel with existential overtones: characters grapple with redemption, hope, identity after trauma. (Note: depending on your university library, this may be more accessible as contemporary fiction.) Financial Times
Sally Rooney – Normal People (or Beautiful World, Where Are You)
While not strictly American, Rooney’s work has been strongly associated with millennial existential dread, relational ontology, identity. Her characters often confront meaning, freedom, and emotional alienation. TIME
John Updike – Rabbit, Run
A mid-century novel about a man fleeing his life; the existential crisis is very much alive: commitment, freedom, God's absence/presence, and self-deception.

3. How to Use These in Your Course

Here are a few pedagogical ideas for weaving these in:

Biographical pairing: Assign Carlisle or Bair’s de Beauvoir biography alongside At the Existentialist Café. Students can compare how lives shaped ideas, especially existential freedom, angst, and relationships.
Novel as case study: Use The Moviegoer or Stoner as a fictional parallel to existential themes in the philosophers. For example, after discussing Kierkegaard’s notion of despair or the ethical individual, have students read The Moviegoer and write on how Binx embodies or resists those ideas.
Discussion prompts: For Lazarus Man, you might ask how contemporary existentialism (in the novel) aligns or diverges from classical existentialist concerns. Are the social and structural moments (race, poverty, community) recasting what existentialism means in our time?
Reflective writing: Use de Beauvoir’s memoir (The Prime of Life) for a reflective essay: what does freedom mean experientially, not just philosophically? How does her life challenge or reinforce your students’ understanding of the existential situation?

If you like, I can put together a reading list packet (with primary, secondary, and fictional texts) tailored for a semester course: I can suggest which weeks to pair what, assignments, etc. Do you want me to do that?

Later maybe. I want to include texts that illustrate the Existentialist aspects of American philosophy. The William James essays "What Makes a Life Significant" and "Is Life Worth Living?" are obvious candidates. Can you suggest others, by James and other classic American philosophers?

If you want students to feel the existential pulse that runs through American philosophy—less theatrical than the Café de Flore but every bit as urgent—you’ve got rich terrain to draw from. The tradition is full of thinkers wrestling with contingency, risk, self-creation, and the burden/boon of freedom. Here are the most resonant pieces, James first, then his neighbors in the American grain.

William James (beyond the obvious two)

1. “The Will to Believe” (1896)

A clear, bracing statement of existential commitment before Sartre gave it a Parisian accent. James stakes out the right—sometimes the necessity—to choose in the absence of certainty. It’s proto-existentialism in its insistence that belief is an act, not a deduction.

2. “The Moral Equivalent of War” (1910)

A meditation on courage, discipline, and the human hunger for strenuousness. Students often read it politically; encourage them to read it existentially—James is asking what kind of life we are willing to build in the face of our own softness, fear, drift.

3. “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (1899)

A gorgeously humane appeal to radical empathy, grounded in the irreducible opacity of other selves. Think of it as James’s version of Levinas: responsibility born from mystery.

**4. Varieties of Religious Experience (especially Lectures IV, V, and X–XIII)**

The sick soul, the divided self, the conversion crisis—this is existential psychology avant la lettre. The lectures on melancholy, despair, and the reconstructive power of “over-beliefs” stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Kierkegaard.

5. “The Energies of Men” (1907)

James on latent capacities, the unfinished self, and the strenuous ideal. It’s a short, powerful counterpoint to Sartrean freedom: we are not just free; we are unfinished.

6. “A Pluralistic Universe” (selected lectures)

James’s metaphysics is always existentially inflected. The lecture “Humanism and Truth” can be read as a defense of agency in a messy, contingent world.

John Dewey

Dewey isn’t usually shelved with the existentialists, but he should be. His sense of life as experimental, uncertain, forever under construction fits the frame beautifully.

**1. “The Live Creature” (from Art as Experience)**

A fierce celebration of embodied, vulnerable existence. Dewey is almost Camusian in his insistence that meaning is forged in experience, not imposed from above.

2. “Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us” (1939)

Dewey’s deepest existential claim: democracy is a way of life that requires courage, imagination, and ongoing self-renewal. Freedom is fragile; commitment is everything.

**3. Human Nature and Conduct (Parts I–II)**

A subtle exploration of habit, choice, and growth—Dewey’s version of the existential terrain between determinism and freedom.

**4. Experience and Nature (Chapter 1)**

His critique of “the quest for certainty” is a perfect bridge to students reading Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Doubt as condition; experiment as salvation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you want students to feel the American current that fed both James and the existentialists, Emerson is indispensable.

1. “Self-Reliance”

Not the caricature, but the real thing: the terrifying insistence on nonconformity, inwardness, and perpetual becoming.

2. “Experience”

One of Emerson’s most philosophical essays—an honest reckoning with grief, flux, the slipperiness of reality. It’s proto-existential in its frankness about the elusiveness of meaning.

3. “Circles”

An ode to impermanence, transformation, and the refusal of finality. Emerson as Heraclitus for a young democracy.

Henry David Thoreau

More than just the Walden hermit—Thoreau is an existential moralist.

**1. Walden (especially “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” & “Conclusion”)**

Thoreau turns life into an experiment in authenticity. Ask your students to compare him with Beauvoir’s ethics of authenticity.

2. “Civil Disobedience”

A study in conscience, freedom, and moral risk. “I must get off the shoulders of all men”—raw existential resolve.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Du Bois brings existentialism into the racialized American context with analytic and emotional clarity.

**1. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (from The Souls of Black Folk)**

Double consciousness is an existential condition—alienation, conflict, the fractured self navigating hostile worlds.

2. “Of the Meaning of Progress”

A harrowing meditation on disillusionment and the fragility of hope.

William Ernest Hocking & Josiah Royce

Lesser-taught now, but resonant for existential themes.

**1. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience (selected chapters)**

Deals with freedom, angst, and the felt absence/presence of meaning.

2. Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty

Royce offers an American answer to Sartrean commitment—communities of purpose, freely chosen, but binding.

American Voices Adjacent to Existentialism

Sometimes the best existential writing in the American tradition lies slightly outside the canonical philosophers:

**1. Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy and Prophesy Deliverance!

Existentialism meets prophetic pragmatism. West’s thinking sings with urgency, risk, courage.

2. James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time”

Moral clarity, anguish, and the demand to choose oneself without illusions. Baldwin stands with Camus in the clarity of his defiance.

3. Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk & Holy the Firm

Stark, luminous reckonings with suffering, wonder, and the terrifying surplus of existence.

If you want a shorter list for teaching:

James – “On a Certain Blindness,” “The Will to Believe,” Varieties (sick soul).
Dewey – “The Live Creature,” “Creative Democracy.”
Emerson – “Experience,” “Self-Reliance.”
Thoreau – Walden (core chapters).
Du Bois – “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.”
Baldwin – “Down at the Cross.”
Dillard – “Total Eclipse.”

Each of these texts gives students a sense of the American existential situation: freedom without guarantees; selfhood in flux; the need to choose, to commit, to repair; the persistent hope that life can be made—slowly, falteringly—significant...

If you want a clean, student-friendly selection:

Emerson – “Self-Reliance” (excerpts), “Experience”
James – “Will to Believe,” “Blindness”
Dewey – “Creative Democracy,” selections from Human Nature and Conduct
Du Bois – “Spiritual Strivings”
Baldwin – “Down at the Cross”
Thoreau – “Conclusion” from Walden
Dillard – “Total Eclipse”

It’s about 120–150 pages total, depending on how you trim...

If you want a tight, potent set of short existentialist texts—something that pairs cleanly with Existentialism Is a Humanism and The Myth of Sisyphus—you’ve got several superb options. They’re brief, forceful, and each one carries a distinctive voice in the constellation of existentialism.

Below are the best short pieces by de Beauvoir first, then other major existentialists, with a note on what each contributes to the conversation.

Simone de Beauvoir — Best Short Pieces

These are the most teachable, philosophically rich selections that won’t overwhelm students but will give them the full taste of her existential ethics.

1. “Introduction” to The Ethics of Ambiguity

Length: ~20 pages
Why it’s ideal:

It’s her clearest summary of existential freedom, ambiguity, responsibility, and the meaning of the human project.
It answers, in advance, most misunderstandings students bring after reading Sartre.
It’s a perfect counterweight to his emphasis on individual choice: she grounds freedom in a web of relations and consequences.

Teaching angle:
Have students compare her notion of “ambiguity” with Camus’s “absurd” and Sartre’s “abandonment.”

**2. “The Woman in Love” (from The Second Sex)**

Length: ~15–20 pages
Why it works:

A blistering, existential analysis of bad faith, self-loss, and the temptation to let another person define your world.
It shows Beauvoir applying existential categories to lived experience.

Teaching angle:
Ask: Is love inherently a threat to freedom, or only love distorted by inequality?

3. “Pyrrhus and Cinéas” (excerpt)

Length: ~8–10 pages if trimmed
Why it’s useful:

Early Beauvoir wrestling with action, meaning, and justification.
Explores the question: Why act at all, if no final justification can be given?

Teaching angle:
Students will hear echoes of Camus but see how Beauvoir pushes the analysis into interpersonal ethics.

Other Prominent Existentialists — Short, Stunning Texts

Each of these will amplify and sharpen different existential themes. Think of them as brief spotlights illuminating the larger terrain.

Albert Camus

1. “The Myth of Sisyphus” (the final section)

You’re already assigning it, but emphasize the last four pages—the distilled image of revolt, defiance, and yes-saying in the face of meaninglessness.

2. “The Human Crisis”

Length: ~10 pages
Why it’s strong:
Camus in wartime, reflecting on Europe’s moral collapse. A fierce call to responsibility and lucidity.

Jean-Paul Sartre

**1. “Bad Faith” (from Being and Nothingness, short excerpt)**

Length: ~8–10 pages
Why it works:

Sartre at his sharpest and most psychological.
The café waiter example is unforgettable and immediately usable by students.

2. “Existentialism and Humanism” (short excerpt)

You’re assigning the whole, but consider selecting 3–5 paragraphs that students must annotate—especially his insistence that humans create values through action.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

1. “The Primacy of Perception” (opening section)

Length: ~6 pages
Why it matters:

A corrective to the overly mentalistic readings of Sartre.
Shows existentialism as embodied, perceptual, lived—not just reflective or voluntaristic.

Teaching angle:
Ask students: Does existential freedom live in the body or the mind?

Gabriel Marcel

1. “On the Ontological Mystery” (excerpt)

Length: ~8–12 pages
Why include it:

Offers a quieter, more spiritual, more relational existentialism.
A fascinating counterpoint to atheistic existentialists; humility and fidelity replace heroic revolt.

Frantz Fanon

**1. “The Fact of Blackness” (from Black Skin, White Masks)**

Length: ~12–15 pages
Why it’s indispensable:

Places existential themes—freedom, identity, the gaze, alienation—into the crucible of colonialism and racism.
Forces students to see existentialism as a lived, historical struggle.

Teaching angle:
Pair with Sartre’s “The Look” (very short excerpt) for explosive discussion.

Martin Buber

1. “I and Thou” (First Part, trimmed)

Length: ~12 pages
Why include it:

An existential philosophy of relation.
A startling alternative to Sartre’s conflict-laden account of the Other.

Teaching angle:
Contrast “I–Thou” with Sartre’s “Hell is other people.”

Lev Shestov (a wild card, but a powerful one)

1. “Reason and Freedom” (short excerpt)

Length: 5–10 pages
Why it’s electrifying:

Challenges the rationalist undercurrent of existentialism itself.
Useful for students inclined to tidy everything up too quickly...

https://chatgpt.com/share/691bbeff-a19c-8007-8469-844d8cecb6a3

Monday, November 17, 2025

ChatGPT's suggestions