From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds [Paperback]

In this enduring text, renowned philosopher Robert C. Solomon provides students with a detailed introduction to modern existentialism. He reveals how this philosophy not only connects with, but derives from, the thought of traditional philosophers through the works of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Thus, existentialism emerges from the school of rational thought as a logical evolution of respected philosophy.Robert C. Solomonis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of several best-selling textbooks and numerous monographs.

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 theenfant terrible- existentialism- home to its roots. This is a very important achievement... Milltown Studies

Solomon takes us on an illuminating journey through Western philosophy by his ability to find comparisons between the most seemingly incongruent philosophies. Milltown Studies

Chapter 1 Introduction
Part 2 The Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds: Kant, Hegel, and Existentialism
Chapter 3 Immanuel Kant
Chapter 4 G.W.F. Hegel
Chapter 5 Soren Kierkegaard
Chapter 6 Friedrich Nietzsche
Part 7 The Twentieth Century: Phenomenology and Existentialism
Chapter 8 Edmund Husserl and Phenomenology
Chapter 9 Martin Heidegger
Chapter 10 Jean-Paul Sartre and French Existentialism
Chapter 11 Bibliography
Chapter 12 Footnotes
Chapter 13 Index