Philosophy and the Longing for Existence

Berdyev's life was nothing but a triangular struggle against the aristocratic environment in which his family belonged and lived in it, against the revolutionary Marxist environment in which he lived during his first youth and against the orthodox environment in which he lived a mature period in a certain sense.

 John Gerassi had just this opportunity as a child, his mother and father were very close friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and the couple became for him like surrogate parents. Authorized by Sartre to write his biography.

Through the interviews with both their informalities and their tensions, Sartre’s greater complexities emerge. In particular we see Sartre wrestling with the apparent contradiction between his views on freedom and the influence of social conditions on our choices and actions. We also gain insight into his perspectives on the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the disintegration of colonialism.

Reidar Thomte's Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion is an excellent read for students beginning their study of one of the "greats" of the nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. Thomte directly appropriates Kierkegaard's insightful language and discussion of theological and philosophical issues that stimulated him, all of which are still alive and well today.