The Existentialistist Legacy and Other Essays on Philosophy and Religion is a collection of ten essays on topics in the two primary areas of the author's research and teaching: existentialist philosophy and the philosophy of religion. The common thread running through the essays is a way of approaching issues in philosophy and religion that reflects the author's career-long indebtedness to the methods and emphases of the existentialist movement in philosophy. Among the essay topics are studies of the existentialist legacy in the context of the contemporary situation in the sciences and humanities; Iris Murdoch's sympathetic but narrowly "Sartrian" interpretation of existentialism; the congeniality of existentialism and feminism; the problem with "high" existentialist doctrines of freedom; three philosophical autobiographies; a new look at Pascal's Wager as a description of the situation of the modern believer; theistic evolutionism including a Christian existentialism; and Walter Kaufmann as an existentialist manqué in his "heretical" approach to religion.

"Woelfel provides a wonderful set of essays written in a clear and forceful style critiquing the existentialist legacy and the study of philosophy and religion. Some of the strongest work comes forth in a fair but withering critique of I. Murdoch...By illuminating some misinterpretations of existentialism that Murdoch perpetuated...the essays are very well written and come from many years of teaching, reading, and writing on the subject at the University of Kansas." - Religious Studies Review