500 Subscriber Special - Existentialism is a Humanism, Read by the Host

500 subscribers is a surprise and a delight. I started this thing just for myself and a small group of interested friends, and I'm really happy to see that 500 other fellow travelers are finding something to enjoy in all of this.

As a thank-you, I performed a reading, in my own voice and in English translation, of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1945 work Existentialism is a Humanism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism_Is_a_Humanism

This is probably the single best philosophical introduction to Existentialism on the market - the best literary introduction is likely Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, which is absolutely wild, by the way.

This text was very influential for me, and pushed me in my first year of college away from the Analytic tradition and towards Continental philosophy (Heidegger, Husserl, Foucault, Zizek, etc) which in hindsight I'm going to go ahead and say was a great move; no regrets. I don't agree with everything Sartre says in this, but if I only posted stuff I completely agreed with I'd be reduced to posting algebra or something.

If you're keeping score at home, this is the text/translation I used:

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

The photo is Sartre and the philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir being in love and rebellion all that fun mid-century stuff that we can barely even imagine anymore.

https://history.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf5351/files/european-intellectuals.png

Anyway, thanks to all the subscribers for taking a shot on a new thing - I'm gonna keep this going and post more regularly. Keep your eyes peeled for wrapping the Greek Tragedy series, new content from Roy Casagranda, Noam Chomsky, and James Baldwin/Franz Fanon.

I've received a few wonderful messages from subscribers. If you want to make my day (or chew me out) you can reach me at this email, feel free to send anything:

williamengels@substack.com

Enjoy.