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LANGUILLI, Nino, ed. European Existentialism. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1997. 468 pp. Paper, $24.95-Now that there is more distance from Existentialism as a movement in philosophy, after its influence has passed to other forms, this collection of writings by its founding members can help raise the question about just what existentialism is. Langiulli writes an interesting and freer new introduction to this 25-year-old collection. He makes a good case for looking back to the philosophical sources to see again what existentialism had and still has a hold of. He implies that "post-modernism, deconstructionism, antifoundationalism, historicism, multiculturalism, and diversityism," while stemming from existentialism, also forget what existentialism was onto (p. xviii).
In the early selections, we see Kierkegaard and Nietzsche living within and pushing to the breaking point the philosophical framework of their day. These two philosophers struggled to articulate themselves; they were, in a sense, foreign to themselves, out ahead of themselves, using language and concepts stretched from the place toward which they were driven. It is a characteristic of every selection in the book that the language adequate to the matter must be invented and uncovered. The reader...