A powerful new anthology that redefines our understanding of existentialism and argues for its contemporary relevance.

'Superb ... I can't imagine a better way of meeting the existentialists in all their variety' - Sarah Bakewell, author of At the Existentialist Café

'Existentialist thought [...] is an effort to reconcile the objective and the subjective, the absolute and the relative, the timeless and the historical.' Simone de Beauvoir

In the aftermath of the Second World War, a group of intellectuals gathered to discuss urgent questions of existence, commitment, racism, colonialism, and feminism. Their ideas would continue to shape those debates throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

his major new anthology gathers the key texts of existentialism, and their major intellectual influences, along with other works previously neglected in overviews and anthologies of the movement. Incorporating the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon, alongside selections from Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger, it significantly expands and redefines our understanding of what existentialism means, and why it matters.

Edited with an Introduction by Jonathan Webber

"Webber is an expert on French Existentialism... it’s wonderful to have this range of existentialist writings in a single affordable volume" - The Best Philosophy Books of 2025, Five Books