In this course we study two major texts of Søren Kierkegaard, the father of the existentialist movement in modern philosophy. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard contrasts the life of fun and pleasure with the life of duty and commitment, and raises questions about whether there is an ultimate justification of one of these lives over the other. In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard offers a pioneering and celebrated analysis of despair, which, he argues, provides the underlying framework of human life.
In addition to Kierkegaard, we will also read a shorter essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, and a shorter essay by Martin Heidegger in reply to Sartre, called A Letter on Humanism, two key texts in 20th Century existentialism.