From Rationalism to Existentialism

Robert C. Solomon is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of several best-selling textbooks and numerous monographs.

• Chapter 1 IntroductionPart 2 The Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds: Kant, Hegel, and ExistentialismChapter 3 Immanuel KantChapter 4 G.W.F. HegelChapter 5 Soren KierkegaardChapter 6 Friedrich NietzschePart 7 The Twentieth Century: Phenomenology and ExistentialismChapter 8 Edmund Husserl and PhenomenologyChapter 9 Martin HeideggerChapter 10 Jean-Paul Sartre and French ExistentialismChapter 11 BibliographyChapter 12 FootnotesChapter 13 Index

Solomon's work exhibits a fine understanding of the complexity of the history of ideas. He is capable of overlooking differences of method and agenda to find the evolving core of ideas beneath that bring a unity to western philosophical thought, and so he manages to bring the enfant terrible— existentialism— home to its roots. This is a very important achievement...