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The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy
It took a while, but now at long last the next major phase of the Rethinking Existentialism
project has almost arrived!
The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy is due to be published on 13 November 2025.
You can already order it from all good bookshops (and some other ones).
It is designed to be used as a course text. Here are the Contents pages ––
It is published, as its name suggests, by Penguin Books — in the black-spine Classics series.
Symposium on Rethinking Existentialism now published !
A symposium on Rethinking Existentialism has been published in Sartre Studies International volume 30, number 1 (2024).
It comprises responses by Matthew C. Eshleman on Sartre, Kate Kirkpatrick on Beauvoir, and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc on Fanon, followed by Jonathan Webber arguing that readings offered in these papers can be integrated with his own to their mutual benefit.
The symposium is available here.
And there is a free pdf of Webber’s paper here.
UK Sartre Society conference 2023
Exciting news! Rethinking Existentialism is the topic of a book symposium at this year’s UK Sartre Society conference.
Critical responses to the book will be presented by Matthew Eshleman (UNC Wilmington), Kate Kirkpatrick (Oxford), and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (Sheffield). Jonathan Webber will respond.
The conference includes keynote addresses from Annie Cohen-Solal (Milan) and François Noudelmann (NYU) and a wide range of talks on Beauvoir and on Sartre in parallel sessions.
The conference will be held at the beautiful Maison Française d’Oxford on Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th July.
Full information is available at the registration site.
Interview on the Microphilosophy podcast
There hasn’t been much Rethinking Existentialism news to report since the arrival of Covid-19.
But now there is a new podcast!
Julian Baggini interviews Kate Kirkpatrick and Jonathan Webber about the contemporary relevance of the works of Beauvoir and Sartre.
The interview was recorded live at St George’s in Bristol towards the end of the pre-Covid era. It is now an episode of one of the longest and slowest running podcasts in the world, Microphilosophy.
It is freely available here.
Climbing trees, stereotypes, and a weekend course
Two online articles have been published in the past few months.
Climbing Trees and Raising Children with Simone de Beauvoir is a short article at the New Statesman website that argues for an existentialist approach to parenting based on Beauvoir’s moral philosophy and analyses of childhood and motherhood.
Against Type is a longer essay at Aeon magazine that argues for a range of contributions that a renewed attention to existentialism can make to the psychology and ethics of stereotyping and implicit bias.
Jonathan Webber will be presenting ideas from Rethinking Existentialism at a weekend course in January 2020 in Oxford. The course will feature talks by Kate Kirkpatrick, author of Becoming Beauvoir, an important new philosophical biography being published in August 2019.
Sedimentation article at Aeon
A new Rethinking Existentialism online article is now available at Aeon magazine.
Sedimentation: the existentialist challenge to stereotypes briefly outlines the concept of sedimentation in the philosophies of Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon.
This is the third online article to present ideas from the book, following on from
The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Existentialist at OUP Blog
and Five Underrated Existentialist Classics at Five Books.
All being well, there should be more of these in 2019. Happy new year!
Oxford event and new online article
The next event is at Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford at 11am on Saturday 1st December.
This is an interview by Nigel Warburton in the best room of the best bookshop in the world.
There will probably be (early) festive drinks and nibbles. There will certainly be books.
Please do come along if you can! To help them gauge numbers, you can register your interest online.
And a new online article has just been published: The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Existentialist.
Book Launch in Cardiff and Publication in North America
Rethinking Existentialism is published in North America this week. The best way to buy it is probably through A Libris.
But I don’t know anything about book buying in North America, so if you have a better idea do let me know.
To celebrate the full release of the book, there is a book launch party in Cardiff on Tuesday 25th September at Ride My Bike café, 26 Park Place, Cathays, 6pm-8pm.
The café will be serving cakes, teas, coffees, beers, wines, ciders, juices, and fizzy pop.
There will be some books. There will be brief words about the book, probably around 6.45.
Everyone is welcome!
Book released today in the UK
Rethinking Existentialism is now available in the UK.
It will be available in North America in early October.
The book is currently available from Blackwell’s bookshop with a huge 28% discount and free UK delivery.
There is a full synopsis of the book, including an abstract for each chapter, on the Rethinking Existentialism website.
Underrated Existentialist Classics at Five Books
Rethinking Existentialism is now at the printing press.
It is available to pre-order with at 12% discount and free UK delivery from Blackwell’s bookshop.
The first online article exploring the book’s central themes is now available on the Five Books website.
It is an interview with Nigel Warburton about five underrated existentialist classics.
It was a lot of fun to do and I hope you enjoy reading it.
All being well, there should be more articles like this in the next few months. They will be advertised here when they appear.